The Water’s Edge

By John M. Urban

Daylight savings time, Spring ahead. They are welcome words. Ironically, these signs of the changing season occurred only days after a winter storm left just under two feet of snow in communities west of Boston. That same snow is now melting almost as fast as it came down. Climate change? Global warming? It’s a discussion that is still politically charged.

Superstorm Sandy wreaked havoc on the coastline in New Jersey and New York. But even unnamed Nor’easters are toppling houses along the coast. The rate and extent of sea level change may be an unknown, but threatened homeowners aren’t bothering to debate whether or not change is underway.

(photo courtesy of the Boston Herald — one of several waterfront homes lost in recent days following a winter storm on Plum Island, Mass.)

So then, is it time to head inland? No, not for me. If Boston’s Back Bay, whole sections of New Jersey, and the greater part of Florida were created through the use of water drainage and landfill, who is to say we can’t bring in a few extra yards of soil and raise elevations a couple of feet. Okay, maybe lots of yards of landfill. Maybe even a few more.

And if that isn’t feasible, perhaps another alternative is elevating homes along the water by using pilings. Are you familiar with the Stiltsville fishing shacks located off Miami? Imagine half the state of Florida as one huge Stiltsville. An American Venice. Garages become boat houses, parking lots converted to marinas, that kind of thing.

(Stiltsville fishing cottage, Biscayne Bay, Florida)

Tongue-in-cheek solutions are okay for a blog post but they are less helpful or welcome if you are struggling to keep your beachfront home from an eroding shore. And ultimately we need to come to grips with the fact that homeowners who build and rebuild in risky environments need to absorb the costs associated in taking these risks. And any changes going forward need to be more thoughtful than the dredging and filling that tore at the Everglades or the Charles River and Hudson River estuaries.

But I, for one, am confident that we’ll be able to spring forward and figure this out, especially those of us who are drawn to the ocean’s edge…even if it is a changing water’s edge.

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