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Thursday, June 3rd, 2021

A 20-Foot Sea Wall? Miami Faces the Hard Choices of Climate Change.

Author:     Patricia Mazzei
Source:     The New York Times
Publication Date:     June 2, 2021, 10:30 a.m. ET
 Link: A 20-Foot Sea Wall? Miami Faces the Hard Choices of Climate Change.
Stephan:   For years I have been warning people in coastal cities to do the research they need to do to understand how their city will be affected, and that this was urgent and important, particularly in cities like Miami, Virginia Beach, or Norfolk. (See SR archives, just search on sea rise). The maps on sea rise in the future are available, and if you live in one of those cities you should calculate how much time you have before real estate values collapse. Here is how extreme the thinking is in Miami.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers proposed building a seawall in Miami, part of which would run alongside the high rises of Brickell, the city’s financial district. Credit: Zack Wittman for The New York Times

MIAMI — Three years ago, not long after Hurricane Irma left parts of Miami underwater, the federal government embarked on a study to find a way to protect the vulnerable South Florida coast from deadly and destructive storm surge.

Already, no one likes the answer.

Build a wall, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers proposed in its first draft of the study, now under review. Six miles of it, in fact, mostly inland, running parallel to the coast through neighborhoods — except for a one-mile stretch right on Biscayne Bay, past the gleaming sky-rises of Brickell, the city’s financial district.

The dramatic, $6 billion proposal remains tentative and at least five years off. But the startling suggestion of a massive sea wall up to 20 feet high cutting across beautiful Biscayne Bay was enough to jolt some Miamians to attention: The hard choices that will be necessary […]

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