{"id":221945,"date":"2021-06-29T10:00:00","date_gmt":"2021-06-29T10:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/grist.org\/?p=539347"},"modified":"2021-06-29T10:00:00","modified_gmt":"2021-06-29T10:00:00","slug":"the-water-is-coming-florida-keys-faces-stark-reality-as-seas-rise","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2021\/06\/29\/the-water-is-coming-florida-keys-faces-stark-reality-as-seas-rise\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018The water is coming\u2019: Florida Keys faces stark reality as seas rise"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

This story was originally published by the <\/em>Guardian<\/a> and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk<\/a> collaboration.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Long famed for its spectacular fishing, sprawling coral reefs and literary residents such as Ernest Hemingway, the Florida<\/a> Keys is now acknowledging a previously unthinkable reality: it faces being overwhelmed by the rising seas and not every home can be saved.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Following a grueling seven-hour public meeting on last week<\/a>, held in the appropriately named city of Marathon, officials agreed to push ahead with a plan to elevate streets throughout the Keys to keep them from perpetual flooding, while admitting they do not have the money to do so.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The string of coral cay islands that unspool from the southern tip of Florida finds itself on the frontline of the climate crisis<\/a>, forcing unenviable choices upon a place that styles itself as sunshine-drenched idyll. The lives of Keys residents — a mixture of wealthy, older white people, the\u00a0one in four<\/a>\u00a0who are Hispanic or Latino, and those struggling in poverty — face being upended.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If the funding isn\u2019t found, the Keys will become one of the first places in the United States — and certainly not the last — to inform residents that certain areas will have to be surrendered to the oncoming tides.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe water is coming and we can\u2019t stop it,\u201d said Michelle Coldiron, mayor of Monroe County, which encompasses the Keys. \u201cSome homes will have to be elevated, some will have to be bought out. It\u2019s very difficult to have these conversations with homeowners, because this is where they live. It can get very emotional.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Once people are unable to secure mortgages and insurance for soaked homes, the Keys will cease to be a livable place long before it\u2019s fully underwater, according to Harold Wanless, a geographer at the University of Miami. \u201cPeople don\u2019t have a concept of what sea level rise will do to them. They just can\u2019t conceive it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the meeting last week, the county gave details of its plan to spend $1.8 billion over the next 25 years to raise 150 miles of roads in the Keys, deploying a mixture of new drains, pump stations and vegetation to prevent the streets becoming inundated with seawater. The heightened roadways are eagerly anticipated by residents <\/strong>who told the meeting of cars being ruined by the salt water and of donning boots to wade to front doors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Guardian
<\/figcaption><\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe roads are shot, they\u2019re full of cracks, the water is permeating up,\u201d said Kimberly Sikora, who lives in a vulnerable neighborhood of Key Largo called Stillwright Point that is still awaiting a full road elevation proposal. \u201cI\u2019m just looking for some kind of relief.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another resident, Robert Schaller of Twin Lakes, an area further along in the planning process, muttered that he \u201cshould\u2019ve done my due diligence\u201d when buying his house last year. \u201cI literally stand on my balcony and watch the water come up through my street,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s coming up right through the pavement.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But Monroe County\u2019s budget will not cover the raising of all the roads, nor any mass buyout of homes, and an appeal to Florida state lawmakers to levy a new tax to cover these mounting costs has been rebuffed. Further costs will pile up as the county grapples with how \u2013 and who pays – to keep critical infrastructure such as sewers and power substations, as well as people\u2019s homes, from being flooded along with the roads.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIf we can\u2019t raise additional money then we will have to look at prioritizing,\u201d said Rhonda Haag, Monroe County\u2019s chief resilience officer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cFor example, should we spend money on raising roads if people aren\u2019t paying to raise their yards? We are blazing trails here. We are ahead of everyone in having to think about this.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The pancake-flat Keys are in jeopardy from rising seas that are, as a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) scientist told the county commissioners in last week\u2019s meeting, accelerating upwards as the vast ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica melt away<\/a>. Human-caused global heating means an extra 17 inches of sea level rise by 2040, according to an intermediate NOAA projection used by the county<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Compounding this problem, the islands\u2019 porous limestone allows the rising seawater to bubble up from below, meaning it just takes high tides on sunny days to turn roads into ponds, while global heating is also spurring fiercer hurricanes<\/a> that can occasionally crunch into the archipelago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe Florida Keys are one of the most vulnerable places to flooding in North America,\u201d said Kristina Hill, an environmental planner at the University of California, Berkeley, who warned that the islands would face growing road and pipe maintenance costs, more pollution leaks and harmful algal blooms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWithout a change in strategy, parts of the Keys will become accessible only by boat,\u201d said Hill, adding that the islands could have to resort to floating structures and navigable canals to remain viable. \u201cThe islands will gradually disappear into a higher ocean, potentially leaving a ruined landscape of leaky underground storage tanks, old pipes, and flooded road segments behind to pollute the water.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The threats faced by the Keys are shrugged off by some of its wealthy retirees who view the situation with a certain fatalism, while others in this Republican-voting bastion openly question the science. Eddie Martinez, one of the county\u2019s five elected commissioners<\/a>, challenged the NOAA scientist, William Sweet, on his sea level rise projections last week.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The sea level rise to date is \u201creally a nothing number,\u201d said Martinez, who told Sweet: \u201cYou\u2019re a little bit more on this CO2 side, I\u2019m more on the actual measurement side.\u201d Another commissioner, David Rice, said that \u201cpredicting the future is probably best done with a crystal ball\u201d and speculated that global temperatures could change following several volcanic eruptions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere are people who don\u2019t want to sell because they love it here, others who want to get out while they can and those in complete denial who call you a troublemaker who is driving down property values by talking about it,\u201d said George Smyth, a retiree who moved to Key Largo a decade ago for the quiet, slow-paced lifestyle. In 2019, his neighborhood spent 90 days partially submerged in water.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The nature of the Keys has changed in this time. While the islands still include pockets of poverty, an influx of affluent second-home owners has caused new properties to sprout up around Smyth. \u201cIt used to be pretty rough and tumble, you\u2019d see a few fights on a Saturday night,\u201d he said. \u201cNow everyone looks like they\u2019ve just come from the cosmetic dentist.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Other new realities are more laborious — Smyth has to wash his car continually to rid it of salt water and has to pay for trucks to unload piles of crushed-up rocks around his property as a buffer against the encroaching tides. While Smyth doesn\u2019t class himself as particularly wealthy, these protections are beyond the means of low-income Keys residents, many of whom live in exposed mobile homes dotted along the islands.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Smyth fears that the county will require poorer residents to stump up the money for the roads, rather than put a levy on the tourists that flock to the Keys. \u201cWe feel we are being held hostage,\u201d he said. \u201cI feel sorrow for what is coming and the loss of what is a wonderful community.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the mayor defiantly insists the Keys can be saved, even if it is currently unclear how. \u201cWe know we live in paradise and we want to keep it that way,\u201d said Coldiron.<\/p>\n

This story was originally published by Grist<\/a> with the headline \u2018The water is coming\u2019: Florida Keys faces stark reality as seas rise<\/a> on Jun 29, 2021.<\/p>\n

This post was originally published on Grist<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Officials prepare to elevate streets despite financial shortfalls, amid recognition that not every home can be saved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":412,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[394,108,8923,905],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221945"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/412"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=221945"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221945\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":227085,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221945\/revisions\/227085"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=221945"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=221945"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=221945"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}