By Reynolds Hutchins
reynolds.hutchins@insidebiz.com
The building blocks have been laid in the White House's pilot program to address sea level rise in Hampton Roads.
Just how stable a foundation will they make? Only time will tell. But after last week, Ray Toll, director of Coastal Resilience Research at Old Dominion University, said he's optimistic.
Last Tuesday, ODU welcomed representatives of White House agencies, academics, local military bases, as well as community leaders in what was coined an "exercise" in climate adaptation, preparedness and resilience.
It was a daylong exercise, Toll explained, designed to simulate the effects of sea level rise in two distinct eras.
That is, the year 2044 - when participants' children will be braving sea level rise - and 2084 - when participants' grandchildren will be tackling even higher waters.
Participants at Tuesday's exercise were parceled out to tables depending on their field of work or study.
Over the course of the day, they used those two different scenarios - 2044 and 2084 - to draft regional response plans and procedures tailored to their backgrounds.
At the end of each exercise, tables would report back to the larger group, pooling their expertise.
"It's about a whole-of-community approach," Toll said last week. "Knowing we're all in this together."
Tuesday's exercise was just one part of a larger federal pilot program in Hampton Roads.
Thanks in large part to President Barack Obama's executive order on climate change in November 2013 and grassroots efforts locally to address sea level rise, the federal government decided to pursue the pilot in Hampton Roads, not only monitoring the changing water levels to determine how they will impact our Navy bases and waterfront communities, but to find ways to adapt.
ODU and the Hampton Roads Planning District Commission are leading the charge.
According to Toll, ODU was a natural choice, because it has the intellectual capital and ability to easily work across the different echelons of government. HRPDC was asked to be included because it's a state organization that covers 17 localities in the region. HRPDC in March formed a committee on recurrent flooding and sea level rise.
According to the latest numbers from the Center for Coastal Physical Oceanography at ODU, Hampton Roads is rated second only to New Orleans as the most vulnerable area to relative sea level rise in the country.
In the Chesapeake Bay region, the projected relative sea level rise is between 2.3 feet and 5.2 feet by the year 2100.
Norfolk's streets already plunge underwater during heavy rains - an image that garnered national attention earlier this year in the Washington Post.
Every life in Hampton Roads is affected by rising sea levels, Toll said.
"The enthusiasm is right here. The challenge is real. People want to participate," he said. "And now the federal government is ready to."
To that extent, among the representatives visiting Norfolk last week was Alice Hill, senior adviser for preparedness and resilience at the National Security Staff of the White House.
Speaking to the crowd at ODU's Ted Constant Center, Hill outlined the hard lessons the White House has learned about taking local concerns and grassroots efforts seriously.
During Superstorm Sandy in 2012, a 13-foot storm surge overwhelmed the defenses of lower Manhattan, killing power on much of the island and inundating one subway station with as much as 80 feet of untreated seawater.
Hill said community resilience is more than every individual making their own preparations.
"It's asking, 'What can I do now to address future risk,'" she said.
Hill stressed the White House's vision to empower individual communities to make their own decisions about mitigation.
"The federal government will support decisions made locally for mitigation against climate change," she said.
When it comes to regional responses, it's not just a matter of geography, folks in the Constant Center's Blue Room said last week.
As Joshua Behr, research professor of modeling and simulation with ODU's Virginia Modeling, Analysis and Simulation Center, told the crowd, it's just as much social and cultural.
In a study Behr highlighted last Tuesday, just between neighborhoods in Norfolk, "the perception of risk is markedly different."
An upper-middle class family in Algonquin Park may "up and get out of Dodge," he said. There's nothing to gain staying behind during a dangerous storm.
But, a working class family on Willoughby Spit, whose primary breadwinner works in construction, may reap a benefit from sticking behind.
He may get a call from his boss telling him there's work to be done, money to be made clearing lawns, patching roofs. He doesn't necessarily see a benefit in leaving, no matter how high the waters rise, Behr said.
The region's response to sea level rise must take both ends of the spectrum into account, Behr said.
"The pillars of Hampton Roads resiliency," he said, "include reducing long-term vulnerability, fostering a 'whole' approach to planning and communicating risk."