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How Can Stories Advance Community Resilience?

How Can Stories Advance Community Resilience?

Chapter 7 from our report summarizing the lessons we learned on the Great American Adaptation Road Trip. We partnered with the Georgetown Climate Center to get this to you. This is the last chapter! We hope you learned something. (We sure did.)

Stories are magnetic. They draw people in and bring them together. They can impart knowledge and inspire action. And yet they have been underutilized…

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How can communities reduce carbon emissions while preparing for climate change impacts?

How can communities reduce #carbon emissions while preparing for #climatechange impacts? @Climate_Center

Chapter 6 from our report summarizing the lessons we learned on the Great American Adaptation Road Trip. We partnered with the Georgetown Climate Center to get this to you. Chapter 7 coming soon.

Take-home lesson #6: Sometimes greenhouse gas mitigation and climate adaptation goals will conflict; but often times communities can reduce emissions while preparing for impacts.

With the 2014 National…

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How can communities overcome the upfront costs of adaptation?

How can communities overcome the upfront costs of adaptation? #climatechange #GAART @Climate_Center @RockefellerFdn

Chapter 5 from our report summarizing the lessons we learned on the Great American Adaptation Road Trip. We partnered with the Georgetown Climate Center to get this to you. Chapter 6 coming soon.

Take home lesson #5: A key challenge for funding adaptation efforts is finding ways to overcome upfront investment costs in order to save money in the long run. Creative financing mechanisms and savvy…

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How can new partnerships help build resilience?

Building resilience to climate change sometimes brings about unlikely partnerships, such as San Fran + Airbnb

Chapter 4 from our report summarizing the lessons we learned on the Great American Adaptation Road Trip. We partnered with the Georgetown Climate Center to get this to you. Chapter 5 coming soon.

Take-home lesson #4: Resilience efforts that span multiple government departments or include non-governmental actors are often able to leverage resources and expertise and create wider buy-in for action.

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How do communities use climate science to make decisions?

Chapter 3 from our report summarizing the lessons we learned on the Great American Adaptation Road Trip. We partnered with the Georgetown University Climate Center to get this to you. Chapter 4 coming soon.

Take-home lesson #3: Climate science is more likely to be used when it is at the appropriate geographic and temporal scale for local decision-makers.

A common barrier to building local climate…

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How can communities keep up with climate change?

How can communities keep up with climate change?

Chapter 2 from our report summarizing the lessons we learned on the Great American Adaptation Road Trip. We partnered with the Georgetown University Climate Center to get this to you. Chapter 3 coming soon.

Take-home lesson #2: Minimizing vulnerability to climate risks means both iterative, long-term planning and emergency management, depending on the likelihood and intensity of the impact.

Some…

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What drives communities to take action to adapt to climate change?

What drives communities to take action to #adapt to #climatechange? @Climate_Center

Chapter 1 from our report summarizing the lessons we learned on the Great American Adaptation Road Trip. We partnered with the Georgetown University Climate Center to get this to you. Stay tuned for Chapter 2.

Take-home lesson #1: Many drivers motivate communities to pursue initiatives that enhance resilience to climate change impacts; projects that have multiple benefits are more likely to be…

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Lessons Learned About Life in the 'New Normal'

Lessons Learned About Life in the ‘New Normal’

When we tell people that we spent 103 days together traveling around the United States reporting the ways Americans are adapting to the impacts of climate change, the first question we usually get is: “And you’re still friends?” The second question is: “What did you learn?”

Our new report, published by the Georgetown Climate Center, answers this second question. Through it, we distill six lessons…

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What does adapting to climate change look like?

What does adapting to climate change look like?

You’ve heard a lot about the scary impacts of climate change–and with the recent release of the 2014 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, it’s clear that in addition to reducing greenhouse gas emissions, communities all over the world need to begin adapting (preparing, building resilience, insert whichever phrase you like best there) to the irreversible climate changes we’re already…

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Come on the Great American Adaptation Road Trip with Us: New England Aquarium Lecture October 9

Come on the Great American Adaptation Road Trip with Us: New England Aquarium Lecture October 9

Since completing the Great American Adaptation Road Trip, we’ve been sharing the things we learned about how climate change is affecting U.S. communities and how they are adapting to the changes they’re experiencing. We’ve shared adaptation stories with all sorts of groups, from 300 6th graders to environmental professionals at the EPA, NOAA, and other agencies. If you’re in the Boston area, we…

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By Kirsten Howard and Allie Goldstein

July 20-21, 2014

Nearly two years after Superstorm Sandy made landfall in New Jersey, the main drag in the town of Sea Bright, looks almost normal again. Beach-goers unload umbrellas and coolers from the oceanside parking lot. Restaurant-goers order brunch at the sidewalk cafes. Mrs. Rooney, the widow of Sea Bright’s former mayor, is stationed at her hot dog stand, which first opened in 1965. 

Sea Bright’s 1,400 or so permanent residents put on a good face to get the tourists that are the lifeblood of their economy back in town. But it only takes a slightly closer look to see the wounds below the band-aids.

Many residents who lived through Sandy are now raising their homes so they can be better prepared for the next storm. First-floor garages are built to be ‘floodable’ and give the added benefit of off-street parking.

Bain’s Hardware store is open, but boarded up on one side. Along the side streets off of Ocean Avenue, the commercial spine of the peninsula, residential houses are at various stages of disrepair, repair, and in some cases, are being raised, with cement garages inserted under the first story. Sea Bright’s municipal offices have been temporarily located in a gym. Some residents, including current mayor Dina Long, still haven’t been able to move back into their homes.

“Probably about half of the original restaurants in town never reopened after the storm—they’ve turned over,” said Michelle McMullin, the owner of a local ice cream shop.

McMullin’s ice cream shop is a little stronger today, thanks to higher windows, stronger glass, and a flood-hardy floor

McMullin toiled to reopen her shop by August of 2013, nine months after the storm, only to close again the following winter when tourists were lethargic to return to Sea Bright. Over a cup of her homemade mint chocolate chip, she tells us her Sandy story: How 11 days after the storm, she returned to the store to find that Sandy had churned through “like a washing machine,” tearing up a 2500-pound freezer that had been bolted to the floor and leaving water marks six feet high. Today, thanks in part to flood insurance, the building has a stronger glass storefront with smaller raised windows and a new flood-hardy floor, and business is finally bustling. But McMullin has post-traumatic stress (“we all do,” she says) and doesn’t think she could live through the emotional turmoil that another Sandy would bring.

“I’m still thinking about it every day. We’re hoping and praying, quite honestly,” she said.

Michelle McMullin’s ice cream shop is called ‘Gracie and the Dudes… and Sadie, too’ after her four children. She recovered their storm-battered portraits, one of which ended up on the beach two miles away, and re-hung them in the store.

In 2050, a 1% chance annual flood event would inundate the entire borough of Sea Bright (outlined in bright blue), thanks to sea-level rise (Source: Strategic Recovery Planning Report by New Jersey Future)

Bigger than Sandy

Unfortunately, though, it is not unlikely that many Sea Bright residents will experience another Sandy-sized storm in their lifetimes. In fact, the sequel could be scarier. Sandy actually hit at the lower of the two daily high tides on October 29, 2012, and by the time it tore through New Jersey, it was a Category 1 storm. A Category 3 storm would have doubled the flooding.

And climate change ‘stacks the deck’ towards more intense storms and coastal flooding. Sea Bright lies so low that some side streets near the river already flood monthly during full moon high tides. This problem will only be exacerbated as the New Jersey coast will likely see about 1.3 feet of sea-level rise by 2050 and 3.1 feet by 2100, according to a 2013 study cited in Sea Bright’s Strategic Recovery Planning Report. The same study finds that, by mid-century, a storm with a 10-year recurrence interval “will exceed all historical storms at Atlantic City.”

“Sandy is not the worst case scenario. There’s always going to be another, even bigger storm,” said Chris Huch, a community resilience specialist at Rutgers University’s Jacques Cousteau National Estuarine Research Reserve (JCNERR). “We need to make sure that municipalities are not planning for Sandy II.”

Window of opportunity

Allie explores part of the JCNERR: expansive saltmarshes that protect inland communities from storms like Sandy

For groups such as JCNERR that have been ringing the alarm bell about climate change and coastal hazards for years, Sandy presented a window of opportunity—and a dilemma. Before the storm, JCNERR and several partners had created a web-based questionnaire called ‘Getting to Resilience’ that would help New Jersey coastal communities assess their vulnerabilities to sea-level rise and storms and begin preparing. They worried it would sit on a virtual shelf. But Huch and his colleagues have now partnered with 20 New Jersey municipalities jolted by the storm—including Sea Bright—to do the assessment.

Many homes in Sea Bright are still recovering, despite the approaching 2-year anniversary of the storm

Lisa Auermuller, watershed coordinator at the JCNERR and lead facilitator of the Getting to Resilience community projects, struggled with the balance between immediate recovery and longer-term planning. On the one hand, the recovery period is a key opportunity to build back better rather than just building back to normal, and a big storm can be a key motivator for getting local governments and residents to take action on resilience projects that may have been on the back burner for years. But communities such as Sea Bright that were still removing mountains of sand and debris from the streets months after the storm might not be ready to look at sea-level rise maps.

“I personally wrestled with—do you jump in right away, or wait until after the immediate recovery?” Auermuller said, noting that her team ultimately decided to wait about a year before pitching Getting to Resilience to Sea Bright and other towns. “It took one year for people to not be shell-shocked.”

Steve Nelson shows us some plans. He has an 18-month contract to work part-time for Sea Bright as an ‘embedded’ long-term recovery planning manager.

One year later, once some of the shell-shock had subsided, JCNERR was able to partner with Steve Nelson, who is ’embedded’ in Sea Bright as a Local Recovery Planning Manager, as part of a new approach to disaster response that’s being tested by non-profit New Jersey Future. Typically, dedicated disaster assistance lasts for a relatively short term after an extreme event. New Jersey Future is endeavoring to change that paradigm by providing part-time staff planners to help Sea Bright and six other Sandy-affected towns over an 18-month period. The idea is that by ‘embedding’ within the communities over a longer term, Nelson and the other planners can, not just help the towns make plans, but also see some plans through to be implemented. Sea Bright received a $20,000 post-Sandy planning grant from the state to bring Nelson on board.

Getting to implementation

The seawall lies between the beach and the town. Though costly to repair after Sandy, residents agree that it’s their necessary given their low-lying reality.

Nelson was involved in the Getting to Resilience process in Sea Bright, through which JCNERR staff convened key officials, including several Council members, the floodplain manager, and the borough engineer, to work through the web-based questionnaire together. JCNERR then prepared recommendations for Sea Bright, which included key infrastructure improvements, creating a debris removal plan, mapping key infrastructure like gas lines and fire hydrants so that they can be easily located after a disaster, and creating protocols for communication. These recommendations focused on actions that would help Sea Bright get into the National Flood Insurance Program’s Community Rating System, which rewards efforts to reduce vulnerability with lower flood insurance rates. But the town isn’t quite there yet.

The gap in the seawall opens on a beautiful beach scene, but it leaves Sea Bright vulnerable

In recent months, though, Sea Bright has been able to commit to some upgrades—in recognition that they can at least try to be better prepared for Sandy II, if not a bigger storm. Plans have been set in motion to fill a gap in the seawall that runs the length of the town. On the river-facing side, which is more vulnerable to flooding than the oceanfront properties because there is no beach between the homes and the water, the town has plans to raise public bulkheads (though it has no say over the many privately owned bulkheads). And in a show of flood-smart retreat, the state—with the help of a wealthy Sea Bright neighbor who agreed to pay commercial taxes on the property—used a buyback program to purchase Anchorage Inn, a local business repetitively flooded by the river, with the intent of turning it into a park.

The Anchorage Inn is the first property in Sea Bright to be ‘bought back’. Architectural plans are being drawn up to turn it into a floodplain park.

Despite this incremental progress, the transition from recommendations and plans to on-the-ground action is a difficult one. In some cases, there is no plan for getting beyond the plan.

For instance, shortly after the storm, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) engaged residents in several workshops, letting them prioritize action items such as the seawall and the bulkhead-raising in a Sea Bright 2020 Long Term Recovery Plan. But there was no attached federal funding or follow through.

“The government says we should build back smarter and then doesn’t give us the money to do it. Reality sets in,” said Frank Lawrence, Sea Bright’s volunteer coordinator and Chair of the Sea Bright 2020 Committee. “There’s a lot of frustration about how slow things are moving.”

Lawrence thinks that even small actions, such as giving the businesses on Ocean Avenue a new coat of paint and adding some planters along the side of the road, went a long way toward making residents feel like they could see the light at the end of the tunnel.

The little things go a long way: a muralist makes Sea Bright brighter

A dune dilemma

Moving from planning to implementation isn’t just a challenge in small communities like Sea Bright, but also for New Jersey as a whole. The State has developed a plan for a continuous sand dune system that Governor Chris Christie is fighting for as the only real hope for long-term, comprehensive protection of the coast. The scale of these dunes—perhaps a dozen or two dozen feet tall and more than a hundred feet wide—requires the Army Corps of Engineers to bring in sand, since the time it would take to build them naturally would far exceed the time until the next devastating storm.

In Sea Bright, volunteers are slowly rebuilding the dunes naturally, but if the Army Corps doesn’t step in, it might take too long.

Many property owners see the need for the dunes and are willingly signing the conservation easements the state needs in order to begin work, but hundreds of homeowners concerned that they will lose their view of the ocean are holding out. Meanwhile, the Army Corps is spending millions to replenish beaches to their original design standards, which doesn’t include building protective dunes. Not wanting to wait, this spring Sea Bright volunteers started the slow process of naturally rebuilding dunes by planting dune grasses and installing sand fencing.

Racing to change on their terms

On the riverside of Sea Bright, even a normal high tide rises close to overtopping the bulkhead. Raising it is a priority for the town.

Nelson is racing the clock of his 18-month position to get some more long-term planning items in the pipeline. He has received a grant to create a hazard mitigation plan for the remaining ‘repetitive loss’ properties in Sea Bright—a FEMA term for homes that flood frequently. He also plans to help update the town’s master plan and create a disaster response plan, and he hopes that his funding—which comes from the Dodge Foundation, the Merck Foundation, and the New Jersey Community Foundation—might be extended to allow him to continue work in Sea Bright for a total of three years. Nelson says he is an optimistic person by nature, but the immensity of the task has been weighing on him.

A roadside billboard advertises house raising services

“I think I can help people understand the risks [from sea-level rise and storms]. At this point, I don’t think I’ll be here long enough to see a lot of the recommended actions implemented,” he said. “The impacts of Sandy have been so far-reaching that sometimes it’s hard for me to see how one person can make a difference.”

For now, New Jerseyans are beginning to incorporate a bit more transience and uncertainty into their lives. Some residents in flood zones are timing their entrance and exit to their homes based on the tides. Lifted trucks are becoming more popular. And more contractors are making a business out of home-raising.

But Mrs. Rooney, whose hot dog stand will turn 50 next year, puts it best as she serves us our lunch: “There are some things that have changed a lot, and other things that have changed not at all.”

Mrs. Rooney’s hot dog stand is a pinnacle of resilience as the business approaches its 50th anniversary in Sea Bright. Kirsten helps keep business booming.

And, just for fun, here’s a sequence of Steve Nelson and Frank Lawrence enjoying some of Michelle McMullin’s delicious ice cream:

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To see more photos, click here.

A new #adaptationstory! Still Reeling from Superstorm Sandy, New Jersey Town Plans for Sequel @jcnerr @seabrightmajor By Kirsten Howard and Allie Goldstein July 20-21, 2014 Nearly two years after Superstorm Sandy made landfall in New Jersey, the main drag in the town of Sea Bright, looks…

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Walking the Floodplain to Protect Historic Portsmouth from Sea Level Rise

Portsmouth, NH

Kirsten Howard

The Portsmouth Flood Risk Walking Tour marches along the streets of…

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Helping marshes migrate so birds can too. Maryland rises above the rising tides in our new adaptation story:

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On Flood and Thirst: How Communities Are Adapting to the Age of Unpredictable Water

In Keene, New Hampshire, Duncan Watson looks out the window with trepidation as rain pounds the…

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Saved an endangered Blanding's turtle from the perils of the road today. Who knew this guy lives in NH woods!

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Our Road Trip in 7 Minutes

Our road trip in 7 minutes. Watch our 'outtro' video on Americans adapting to climate change. Y'all are incredible!

2 friends. 1 minivan. 31 states. 103 days. 17,358 miles. 158 interviews. 32 adaptation stories. Watch the 7-minute version of the Great American Adaptation Road Trip.

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“There are international eyes on Detroit. If we can do a climate action plan in this city, anyone can.” Adaptation in the unlikeliest city:

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