Not Enough Money to Get the Job Done In Time. We Need to Consider Retreat.
SNAPSHOT: The US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) is the go-to federal agency for flood protection projects. The problem is they have a $109 billion backlog in approved projects and get only $3 billion in a normal year to build those projects. With climate change, the backlog is growing - a quick internet search uncovered another $170 billion in USACE flood control projects working toward approval. And this does not include the many hundreds of billions individuals, businesses, and communities will spend on their own. Bottom line: we cannot print enough money fast enough to fix everyone’s problems before they are flooded out.
It is time to talk about who gets funding to stay in place and who gets money to be moved somewhere else.
BACKSTORY: When we started working on sea level rise adaptation 12 years ago, the problem looked manageable. Sea level rise was “only” projected to be 2 1/2 feet by 2100 and we could not see much flooding taking place then. Adaptation to these changes looked manageable if we could get people to act in time. Since then, the projected sea level rise rate has at least doubled and rainfall has become more intense.
In response to the flooding, governments began to study what was needed to protect at-risk communities from flooding. In Southeast Virginia, the bill began to grow as the studies were completed: Norfolk - needed at least $1 billion for existing stormwater fixes, Virginia Beach - found about $3 billion was needed, Hampton - start at $1 billion….and on and on. We estimated the flood control costs for Coastal Virginia at around $40 billion. And, this was in addition to ongoing bills for stormwater projects, beach replenishment, etc. This number does not include private property and business expenses nor fixes to federal installations.
In 2014 we did a study in Southeast Virginia on flood costs, this time just looking at the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). We found there was not enough FEMA funding to fix properties that flooded frequently. The backlog for this funding? In Norfolk you could wait 188 years before FEMA showed up with a check!
Meanwhile, the USACE was having trouble keeping up with its flood control costs and started running a backlog of approved projects. This backlog grew to $109 billion this year, with construction funding at only $3 billion/yr. The recent infrastructure bill provided an additional $17.1 billion, but that is just a blip. At normal funding rates, it would take 30 years to build all the projects already on the books!
Following Hurricane Sandy, the USACE began a series of storm surge studies for coastal communities and the bill rose higher. Wetlands Watch did a search and found another $170 billion in projects currently under review, adding another 57 years onto the wait list. And these projects are just storm surge protections. They do not protect against sea level rise, nuisance flooding, or increased rainfall - that bill falls back upon the state and local governments!
Stories have begun to explore this problem and have begun to use the “r” word - retreat. Wetlands Watch has also begun to accept this inevitability and we are shifting our work to begin efforts on retreat.
What is needed in Virginia, and in every state, is a cost estimate of what it will take to deal with the climate change impacts we are seeing. Virginia has started with a Coastal Master Plan, but that plan is only coastal, does not address rainfall, and does not provide a cost estimate.
Next we need to continue the Community Flood Preparedness Fund, which is providing planning funding for communities statewide and starting to put projects in place. We CANNOT end funding for this program, as we have often argued.
Finally, we need to start looking at the projections and our pocketbooks and figure out where to put scarce resilience dollars and where to fund a retreat from areas that will be too costly to save.