Bracing for Sea Rise, Miami Beach Fights Tide of Angry Residents

By Arian Campo-Flores – WSJ

MI­AMI BEACH, Fla.—Ten­sions are com­ing to a head as this South Florida city prepares for new infrastructure projects designed to fortify the low-ly­ing is­land against in­creased flood­ing and sea-level rise.

Cli­mate ex­perts praise Mi­ami Beach—a di­verse, international city with wealthy sections—for de­vot­ing $1 billion to tackle the problem, and other coastal communities look to it as a model. But some residents say plans to raise roads as much as about 5 feet above sea level and add storm-wa­ter pumps with generators the size of vans are an unsightly intrusion and a potential drag on property values.

The conflict presents the mayor and city commissioners with a dilemma: How far can they go in accommodating homeowners’ concerns without undercutting the city’s long-term vi­a­bil­ity?

“We will have to have the po­lit­i­cal will to make un­pop­u­lar de­ci­sions,” said City Com­mis­sioner Ricky Ar­riola. “De­spite the over­whelm­ing scientific evidence and engineering solution’s proposed, there is go­ing to be a group of our cit­i­zens who want us to do nothing.”

Cities around the U.S., in­clud­ing New York, Nor­folk, Va., and Charles-ton, S.C., con­front sim­ilar chal­lenges. Be­cause Mi­ami Beach is far­ther along than many of them in feel­ing the ef­fects of cli­mate change and try­ing to re­spond, its ex­pe­ri­ence could hold lessons.

Ly­ing an av­er­age of about 4 feet above sea level on por­ous lime-stone, Mi­ami Beach is es­pe­cially vul­ner­a­ble. Sea lev­els are pro­jected to in­crease as much as 21 inches by 2040 and 54 inches by 2070, ac­cording to the Na­tional Oceanic and At­mospheric Ad­min­is­tra­tion.

Ja­cobs En­gi­neer­ing Group Inc., an en­gi­neering firm hired by Mi­ami Beach to re­view its cli­mate-adap­ta­tion strat­egy, is ex­pected to re­lease its fi­nal rec­ommen­da­tions in the next few weeks af­ter a year-long study. When the firm of­fered a pre­view of its pro­pos­als for road-rais­ing and other projects at a re­cent pub­lic meeting, homeowners balked.

“Un­til we’ve fig­ured out how to keep pri­vate prop­er­ties dry, we should not be spend­ing a for­tune on rais­ing streets in the en­tire city,” said res­i­dent Hal Phillips dur­ing a comment pe­riod.

In 2014, the city embarked on a plan to ad­dress more fre­quent and in­tense down­pours by in­stalling big­ger storm wa­ter pipes and new pump sta­tions to push rain­wa­ter out to sea. It also be­gan el­e­vating sea walls and rais­ing roads in the low­est ly­ing ar­eas to ad­dress sea-level rise. The roughly $1 bil­lion pro­gram is funded by a com­bi­na­tion of sources, in­clud­ing bonds and res­i­den­tial and busi­ness util­ity fees.

The Sun­set Har­bour neigh­bor­hood, which over­looks Bis­cayne Bay and of­ten flooded dur­ing the high­est tides, was the first com­mer­cial and condo area where these mea­sures were im­plemented. Since Jan­uary 2017, af­ter the project was com­pleted, the area has avoided 85 flood­ing in­ci­dents that would have oc­curred with­out the changes, said Roy Co­ley, the city’s pub­lic works di­rec­tor.

A Jan­uary 2020 study com­mis­sioned by the city and led by con­sulting firm ICF International Inc. es­timated that rais­ing roads in the neigh­bor­hood in­creased condo val­ues 11.9%.

Af­ter Mayor Dan Gel­ber was elected in 2017, he in­vited sev­eral or­ga­ni­za­tions to ex­amine the city’s ap­proach to re­siliency, in­clud­ing the non­profit Ur­ban Land In­sti­tute, which largely praised it. Last year, the city hired Jacobs En­gineer­ing Group.

Not all of the firm’s suggestions are con­trover­sial. Some of them in­volve “blue-green in­frastructure,” which mim­ics nat­ural de­fenses against flood­ing risks. They in­clude “bioswales,” or veg­etated chan­nels along streets, and a new park with ponds—pro­pos­als aimed at col­lect­ing and clean­ing storm wa­ter.

The recommendations that have proved most di­vi­sive are those in­volv­ing el­e­vated roads in sin­gle-fam­ily neigh­borhoods. Some res­i­dents ar­gue that by rais­ing the street above the level where houses sit, storm water will flow down and in­un­date prop­er­ties—a claim the city dis­putes. That, in turn, will depress real-es­tate val­ues, they say.

“We’re un­der siege,” said Bob Kunst, who lives in the af­flu­ent Lake­view area in the mid­dle of Mi­ami Beach. “The city’s ap­proach to this has jeop­ar­dized every­body.”

Nearly two years ago, when the city first pro-posed el­e­vat­ing streets in the Lake­view area, Mr. Kunst and other res­i-dents formed an or­ga­niza­tion to fight the ef­fort. They bat­tled a ri­val neigh­bor­hood group that supported the road rais­ing plan. The city ended up post­pon­ing the project.

Palm Is­land and Hi­biscus Is­land, wealthy en­claves sur­rounded by Bis­cayne Bay, were the first sin­gle-fam­ily neigh-bor­hoods of Mi­ami Beach to un­dergo a road-rais­ing and storm-wa­ter project. Four years af­ter it launched, it re­mains in­com­plete—and con­tinues to gen­er­ate frus­tration.

Af­ter the road in front of An­dres Asion’s house on Palm Is­land was el­e­vated about 2 feet, the prop­erty wound up be­low street level. Now, dur­ing a heavy rain, wa­ter pools 6 inches deep in his back-yard, he said. In a grassy cir­cle down the street, the city in­stalled a new pump sta­tion with an enor­mous gen­er­a­tor to en­sure it runs if the power goes out—a setup many con­sider an eye-sore.

Write to Ar­ian Campo-Flo­res at ar­i­an.campo-flo­res@wsj.­com

Source: WSJ