The Washington Post - 20.02.2020

a4 ez re the washington post.thursday, february 20 , 2020

Practical problems abound.

When the mBTA wanted to install

a temporary wall farther into the

mystic river to allow c onstruction

onshore, the agency discovered

that the soil in the area was made

of weak marine sediments. Next,

the engineers discovered two

large-capacity electric p ower lines

critical to keeping the region’s

lights on. The utility did not want

to move them.

Eventually, the mBTA laid

down a stone embankment to

hold up the existing wall. It is

5.4 inches higher than the city re-

quires, and grasses were planted

on top to improve its appearance

from the r iver and nearby bridge.

other agencies face daunting

challenges. T he Boston Water and

Sewer Commission designs storm

sewers to cope with as much as

4.8 inches of rain i n 24 h ours. T hat

capacity covers 90 percent of the

storms that occur in an average

year. But climate change is in-

creasing the size and intensity of

rainfalls, which by 2100 could

dump as m uch as 6 .65 i nches onto

the c ity in a 24-hour p eriod.

The neighborhood along the

edge of the fort Point Channel,

which feeds into Boston Harbor,

also shows gains as well as tasks

ahead.

General Electric has leased two

historic brick buildings in the

neighborhood that will become

the company’s slimmed-down

global headquarters. GE has ele-

vated t he first floor of t he building

at Necco Court, installed systems

to capture and reuse rainwater,

“abruptly” elevated risk of coastal

flooding when tides shift, the sci-

entists s aid.

for many cities, floods that

once occurred every 100 years are

expected to become annual events

— or even more frequent — by

205 0, said Princeton University’s

michael oppenheimer, a profes-

sor of geosciences and interna-

tional affairs.

“Enough is known to start for-

mulating policies to make the

coast more resilient and to adapt

to anticipated sea-level rise,” he

said.

Boston is one of 9 4 cities world-

wide sharing information about

how to deal with climate change.

In the end, oppenheimer

warned, retreat might be the only

option. “It is what a l ot of cities will

have to do because a lot of neigh-

borhoods are not defensible,” he

said. Sea levels will continue to

rise, no matter how h igh the c oast-

al barriers m ight be, he said.

“You either protect people or

you get them out of the way,” he

said. “There just isn’t a choice.”

the soggy shoreline

An mBTA bus depot in the

Charlestown neighborhood is one

potential trouble spot. The buses

there serve nearly 1 00,000 people,

but the depot stands on landfill

and is inundated during heavy

rain. With h igher sea levels, s evere

storms could cause enough flood-

ing to knock out bus service fre-

quently. And even if an existing

wall is raised, water could still

creep in f rom another s ide.

alarming. T he Boston city govern-

ment has a slide presentation with

a bar chart representing a 7-foot,

4-inch rise in sea levels by 2100 if

worldwide carbon emissions con-

tinue to climb. Next to the bar

stands a drawing of former Boston

Celtics basketball star Kevin Gar-

nett, who is a few inches short of

the 7-foot-4 mark.

The forecast numbers all have

substantial margins of error, but

even the smallest sea-level rise is

threatening.

rising sea levels have already

increased the frequency of flood-

ing during relatively normal tides

and r ainfalls. In 2 017, B oston e xpe-

rienced a record 22 days with

high-tide flooding, according to

the National oceanic and Atmo-

spheric Administration. The city

could also experience more “blue

sky” f looding, when seawater laps

onto streets during high tides on

sunny d ays.

for an academic paper on water

levels in Boston’s harbor, three

scientists ferreted out correspon-

dence and measurements made a s

early as 1825 by Loammi Baldwin

Jr., a civil engineer commissioned

to construct a dry dock at the

Charlestown Navy Yard.

They concluded that sea-level

rise in Boston began to pick up

speed o nly a fter 1940. one-third of

the 100 most extreme storm

events have t aken place in t he past

dozen years, including in 2018,

which saw some of the highest

water levels m easured s ince Euro-

pean colonization, they wrote. By

the 2030s, the city will face an

it is built on landfill, making it

“very, very v ulnerable,” Cook said.

So the c ity is looking at b uilding

a flood protection berm as high as

10 feet a long the s hore, raising t he

level of the park and installing

large chambers beneath the play-

ing fields to hold 5 million cubic

feet of storm water. The package

would include improved recre-

ation areas.

Similar plans have been drawn

up for ryan Playground in the

Charlestown neighborhood on the

mystic river.

These shoreline plans are flexi-

ble, an advantage in preparing for

widely different, still-uncertain

climate scenarios.

“What Boston and other com-

munities are doing is trying to be

proactive,” said Nasser Brahim,

the technical leader on v ulnerabil-

ity assessment and adaptation

planning at the consulting firm

Kleinfelder, which is advising the

city. “You never know when a di-

saster is going to hit.”

sea science

The rise in sea levels has two

main drivers: the melting of ice

sheets in Greenland and Antarcti-

ca; and “thermal expansion,”

meaning that warm water has

greater volume t han cool water.

The result will be a rise in global

sea levels of more than 10 inches by

2100 if the rise in global tempera-

tures stays within the two degrees

Celsius (3.6 degrees fahrenheit) t ar-

get set in the Paris accord, the inter-

national agreement signed in 2015.

other scenarios are more

and moved electrical equipment

to a platform several feet higher

than the basement f loor.

from the Harborwalk — a pe-

destrian path along the piers,

wharves and shoreline around

Boston Harbor — it is seven steps

up to the sidewalk that leads to

GE’s building at Necco Court.

When Brahim stands next to the

equipment platform, it starts at

the h eight of h is shoulder.

A short distance along the Har-

borwalk, the city turned the flat

lawn beside the Boston Children’s

museum into a tiny hillside play-

ground by installing benches and

mounds of earth with plants. The

museum had wanted to develop

the p arcel.

In many cases, the city can re-

quire tougher flood standards be-

cause developers are seeking zon-

ing changes to reclassify property

on South H arbor piers f rom indus-

trial to commercial or residential

use. And Cook n otes that the n ear-

ly 43-mile Harborwalk gives the

city easements i n most areas.

Ye t much r emains undone.

GE had planned on building a

12-story headquarters, but to ease

financial pressures, the a iling con-

glomerate sold the site, which re-

mains vacant. Brahim said it isn’t

clear what the new developer is

planning. And the electrical

equipment of a brick building next

door remains in a vulnerable spot

below the level of t he H arborwalk.

Nearby, some developers have

opted for other defensive mea-

sures. At 300 Pier 4 Blvd., a new

luxury apartment building on the

water’s e dge a short walk from t he

children’s museum, the building

manager k eeps in the basement 16

crates, each with 10 portable

“aqua fences” designed to block

water. If the weather forecast is

ominous, a Bobcat loader will car-

ry the roughly four-foot-high bar-

riers outside to be f astened to steel

anchor points installed in the

stone sidewalks. metal legs are

supposed to hold the barriers up-

right, and tubing will help to seal

them against the advancing wa-

ters.

The system must be tested an-

nually — or the building will lose

its i nsurance. This y ear, in the first

drill, it took 15 to 20 workers eight

hours to assemble the barrier.

“I think it will do what it was

designed for,” said Jeremy Di-

flaminies, t he general manager o f

300 P ier 4 Blvd.

the topography of poverty

There are no sea walls where

most of B oston’s p oorest r esidents

live.

“Your most vulnerable citizens

are more likely to bear the burden

of climate change disproportion-

ately, so if we don’t p rovide climate

adaptation plans, you’re doing

more of our people a disservice,”

Cook said.

In areas that are being redevel-

oped, such as East Boston, most

first floors of new buildings are

higher than is required by the

federal Emergency management

Agency or state codes, Brahim

said. But older residential build-

ings are occupied by lower-in-

come people, m ost of whom do not

have the money to a lter t he t opog-

raphy.

The new buildings “end up be-

ing islands of resilience,” Brahim

said. “If a building itself is being

raised, it could act as a barrier, but

only if the surrounding landscape

is being raised.”

for now, h e says, new standards

are being imposed on new con-

struction in the hope that eventu-

ally “as projects c ome on, t hey will

build up to something bigger.”

Cook drove a visitor along Joe

moakley Park i n South Boston, the

large flat area across from old

Harbor that would not offer much

of a defense for some subsidized

housing that is vulnerable to ris-

ing seas. He t alked about changing

the c ontours of t he expanse.

Then he drove through a t unnel

under the harbor to East Boston,

where newcomers are moving in

while others remain on the first

steps of the economic ladder. The

latter group are the people “who in

a climate emergency can’t evacu-

ate,” Cook said. “These aren’t peo-

ple who can relocate to the family

home in the mountains. These are

people in p ublic housing.”

Walsh, the mayor, is keenly

aware of the inequities linked to

climate change, and he has fo-

cused on areas where the city’s

poorest residents live.

Cook pulls his electric vehicle

into the parking lot of a Shaw’s

supermarket, the only big grocery

store in East Boston. Cook posi-

tions his car t o face a p ier lashed by

wintry weather and the 10-foot

tides of Boston Harbor. Below the

level of the parking lot is the

Shaw’s loading dock. Almost every

time there is a n exceptionally high

tide known as a king tide, the

loading dock floods.

“When we think of vital infra-

structure, we [need to] think of a

grocery store,” Cook said. “This is

the o pportunity right here.”

[email protected]

park across t he harbor. “Where do
we retreat t o?”
Though florida, Louisiana and
the Carolinas are frequently asso-
ciated with flooding, Boston was
ranked t he e ighth most vulnerable
to floods among 136 coastal cities
around the world in a 2013 study
produced by the organization for
Economic Cooperation and D evel-
opment.
The sea facing Boston crept up
nine inches in the 20 th century
and is advancing ever faster to-
ward the heart o f the city.
And as climate change acceler-
ates, the pace of sea-level rise in
Boston is expected to triple, add-
ing eight inches over 2000 levels
by 203 0, according to a report
commissioned by the city. The
ocean might climb as much as
three feet above 2013 levels by
207 0, the r eport said.
As much as or more than any
other coastal city in the country,
Boston is confronting this existen-
tial threat by taking steps now to
contain the problem — at a rela-
tively affordable price and within
a short timeline.
A surging sea could wreak hav-
oc in a place where half the city is
built on low-lying landfill. Among
the vulnerable spots are commer-
cial piers, Logan International
Airport, low-income neighbor-
hoods, the South End, the New
England Aquarium and pricey
apartment buildings in the newly
redeveloped Seaport area. The ef-
fects are evident a lready; seawater
at high tide has lapped up onto
some streets even on days when
the s un is s hining.
Even in a city that is trying to
grapple with the problem, the
challenge is enormous. Green-
house gases are global, but the
impact of c limate change is l ocal.
Boston’s low-income neighbor-
hoods, where p ublic housing proj-
ects were built on landfill, are
particularly vulnerable to flood-
ing. By the end of the century, a
large p art of the Dorchester neigh-
borhood, which on its own would
be the f ourth-largest city in massa-
chusetts, could be underwater.
“If there is a finite amount of
resources and a finite amount of
time, we have to be intentional
about protecting our m ost vulner-
able residents,” C ook s aid.
Boston has already discarded
the m ost expensive alternative.
The University of massachu-
setts at Boston and the Woods
Hole Group, an environmental
and scientific consulting firm, had
studied the possibility of building
a massive harbor barrier similar to
those in the low-lying Netherlands
or the one across the river
Thames in London. They estimat-
ed that construction w ould c ost as
much as $11.8 billion, not count-
ing miles of structures and berms
needed to prevent water f rom out-
flanking the barrier. And that
price would not include the costs
of interference with shipping and
ecological damage from dredging
and a ltered currents.
In New York City, the U.S. Army
Corps of Engineers is studying a
$119 billion barrier to protect
against rising seas and more-de-
structive storms, such as Hurri-
cane Sandy, the 2012 “super
storm” that flooded Lower man-
hattan, tunnels and subway lines
and cut off electricity. In January,
President Trump slammed the
idea in a tweet, calling it a “
Billion Dollar Sea Wall” that is
“costly, foolish [and an] environ-
mentally unfriendly idea that,
when needed, probably won’t
work anyway.”
“It will also look terrible,” he
added. “Sorry, you’ll just have to
get your m ops & b uckets ready!”
Boston’s projects are more
modest in scale b ut no less crucial.
In Charlestown, the city plans to
raise main Street by a bout t wo feet
at an estimated cost of as much as
$3 million. The higher structure
would block the main flood path-
way and protect more than 250
residences and 60 businesses.
The massachusetts Bay Trans-
portation Authority is spending
$22 million to build watertight
steel doors that can be closed at
the entrance of a rail tunnel near
fenway Park. And the mBTA also
plans to tear out a heavy glass-
brick cube protecting an under-
ground rail ventilation system
near its Aquarium stop and re-
place it with brick and steel-rein-
forced c oncrete.
Cook is scouring waterside
parks for places where changes in
elevation can be turned into natu-
ral barriers.
That’s why Joe moakley Park, a
60 -acre area in South Boston
across the street from a beach, is
important, Cook said. The park
floods regularly, forcing the can-
cellation of sporting events at its
playing fields. moreover, rising
sea l evels are turning the park i nto
a major flood pathway that in an-
other decade could contribute to
the inundation of nearby neigh-
borhoods, including two low-in-
come housing developments. And

boston from A

Climate solutions

Threatened by the very sea that helped it to flourish, Boston fights back

photos by adam glanzman For the Washington post

A pathway overlooks the s ea in boston’s seaport neighborhood. the sea penetrates deep into the city via multiple inlets and tidal rivers.

LEFt: A section of a portable flood barrier at a high-rise apartment building in boston’s seaport neighborhood. RIGHt: Climate risk and

resilience specialist nasser brahim of the consulting firm Kleinfelder p oints out details of a flood map of greater boston.

Sources: Climate Ready Boston datasets via Analyze Boston; OpenStreetMap

JOE FOX AND JOHN MUYSKENS/THE WASHINGTON POST

2030 2070

Seaport

District

BosBostonton

Charlestown

Cambridge

Charles R.

Mystic R.

East

Boston

South

End

Boston Logan

Int’l Airport

Boston Logan

Int’l Airport

Dorchester Bay

Boston

Harbor

Seaport

District

BosBostonton

Charlestown

Cambridge

Charles R.

Mystic R.

East

Boston

South

End

Boston Logan

Int’l Airport

Boston Logan

Int’l Airport

Dorchester Bay

Boston

Harbor

“Extreme flood risk” refers to a 100-year flood, or a flood with a 1 percent annual chance of occurring.

1 MILE

Facing rising seas

Boston is preparing for sea-level rise of as much as three feet above 2013 levels

by 2070. Under that scenario, much of Boston would be at risk of flooding.

Areas inundated at high tide Extreme flood risk zone