Few Cities More Vulnerable To Warming Than Charleston SC; City Has Done Almost Nothing To Prepare
Last edited Mon Feb 3, 2020, 10:43 AM - Edit history (1)
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Nearly all of the city’s roughly 1,200 cars and trucks still run on gas and diesel instead of cleaner fuels or electricity; the city has no solar panels on its buildings; its landscaping tools spew a toxic brew of hydrocarbon; it hasn’t formally challenged Dominion Energy to supply more renewable electricity, a lever other cities have used. The city has reduced some of its carbon dioxide emissions, thanks to an 18-year-old contract to upgrade equipment and install more efficient lighting. And city staff talk with enthusiasm about emission-reduction projects they hope to do in coming years. But political and economic hurdles have torched previous reduction plans. And it remains unclear how effective the city’s greenhouse gas cuts have been. The city hasn’t measured its carbon footprint since 2010.
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Since the 1920s, sea levels here rose at a rate of about an inch every decade. Now the pace is roughly an inch every two years. A few inches may not seem like much, but the cumulative impact adds up: edges of marshes fray; tidal currents eat into the banks of beaches and inlets; higher tides push stormwater into streets. During the 1960s, Charleston saw a handful of nuisance tidal floods a year. In recent years, the city averaged 40 or more, with 2019 setting a record 89 — a coastal flood event every four days on average.
Amid these impacts, the city’s record on climate change issues has moved like those tides, with highs and lows. One high water mark came in 2007, when Charleston formed a Green Committee to craft a local climate change plan. Then-Mayor Joseph P. Riley Jr., said: “In the global effort to protect our environment, the first steps start at home.” About 800 volunteers participated and they met more than 140 times. The committee made strong recommendations to reduce CO2 emissions.
Then, instead of adopting the committee’s “Green Plan,” city council merely “received” the report — accepted it without approval, effectively defanging it. In 2010, the city adopted its Century V plan, its comprehensive plan for the future. That report didn’t mention the words “sea rise.” Now, after flooding tropical storms marched through South Carolina five years in a row, Charleston leaders are moving more aggressively to bolster the city’s defenses. Climate-related projects include a $64 million initiative to raise and rebuild a 4,800-foot seawall for the Low Battery in downtown Charleston’s historic district, an effort to buy frequently flooded homes in suburban West Ashley and $200 million worth of work to reduce flooding near the Septima Clark Expressway. Hundreds of millions of dollars more will be needed to protect other parts of the city.
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https://www.postandcourier.com/news/facing-dire-climate-threats-charleston-has-done-little-to-reduce/article_3caaf73e-1dcf-11ea-b93e-3fb9b68fa6c5.html
