Cometh the Rise
(Yes, the Biblical-sounding title is deliberate.)
South Florida is a strange and beautiful place, caught between the land and the sea, the ocean encroaching on all sides and from below. I lived there for two years and I still miss it. Okay, I miss the climate; the constantly warm weather, the salt breeze, the parrots that lived in the tree in our front yard, plantains that sold ten for a dollar, and the bags of mangoes that got dropped on our front porch like bags of zucchinis get dropped off in other regions. I have zero nostalgia for the traffic and urban sprawl, nor for the high prices and gang activity that drove us to move before my ex-husband finished his graduate program. The gang members that took over our neighborhood killed the feral cat colony I had taken such good care of and even now they had better hope they never run into me on the street.
Anyway, it is a strange place. It is at the edge of the Gulf Stream where water is pushed against the coast, causing it to pile up and worsening sea-level rise over the global mean. Only 3% of Miami Dade county is more than 12 feet above sea level. Most of it is mere inches above the encroaching tide. The ground is created from porous limestone that allows seawater to infiltrate and rise up to the surface, sometimes miles from the sea. You can live in a subdivision miles from the beach and one day your backyard can suddenly flood during a downpour because a lens of seawater worked its way to the surface under your backyard.
In other words, it is ground zero for sea-level rise in America. Even the government of Miami-Dade county admits that sea level will rise between 12 and 17 inches in the next 19 years. By 2100, South Florida will have ceased to exist. While I was there A1A, the coastal highway that runs from New York to Miami, began to flood during king tides in downtown Fort Lauderdale. Now it happens regularly.
Where is this going? When I heard about the collapse of an oceanside building in South Florida, I immediately had two thoughts. First, was everyone I still know in South Florida okay? (Yes, thank goodness.) Second, did sea level rise have anything to do with it? Not only is the underlying ground created of porous limestone, but much of the area is built atop backfill on reclaimed wetlands that are slowly sinking.
Subsidence + sea-level rise = a prime environment for building foundations to be undermined
It turns out that I was not the only one to have the latter thought. Some building experts are also questioning if sea level rise played a role in the collapse. Others say of course not, because it is localized to one building. The latter experts are ignoring both that this is how saltwater lenses work and that, if the foundation was undermined, we don’t yet have a way to know if other buildings have been undermined as well.
This is an enormous, four-alarm siren wake-up call.
Even if -even if -sea-level rise had nothing to do with this collapse, in the next 19 years, it WILL cause the collapse of other buildings up and down the eastern seaboard and a general retreat from the coast. This is not a secret. Smart developers and the rich are moving inland in South Florida, evicting low-income residents from the higher ground they were consigned to decades ago to “redevelop” it, and sending them to live in coastal neighborhoods that constantly flood.
Sea level rise is already happening and is wreaking havoc underground in South Florida. Sometimes what’s happening out of sight breaks through to the surface, such as with the “sunny day flooding” that has become constant in many neighborhoods, or the king tides that have begun to interfere with daily life for three months out of the year. And perhaps, tragically, with the collapse of this condo building.
The ocean doesn’t have to lap at the doors of a building to make it unlivable. Most of the buildings in South Florida were not built with foundations designed to withstand saltwater corrosion because they were not expected to be subjected to it except possibly during a hurricane. Those conditions have now changed.
Every coastal building on the coast needs to be checked for foundation issues related to saltwater intrusion. This will cost billions of dollars, and no doubt building owners and county governments will balk at paying for it, at least until they get a call from an insurance company threatening to cancel their coverage unless they do.
Millions of people are going to be displaced from the coast in the next twenty years. This is not a prediction -it’s a fact, written into the land on which they live. By 2040, none of the barrier islands and most of the coastal communities in South Florida, at least on the eastern seaboard, will be uninhabitable. This is not something that is happening in the far future; it’s happening before our eyes. I will only be at the tail end of middle age in 2040. My daughter will just be entering true adulthood. This is not a crisis for the future.
Where are the people displaced by the sea going to go? This is going to create the largest refugee crisis in American history if we don’t plan for it. I have no optimism that we will.
Many people who are smart and affluent are already leaving Florida, or at least South Florida. They are moving to higher ground and other states. My adopted state of North Carolina is seeing a huge influx of them. Soon those further down the income scale will start to leave while they can preserve something of their assets. As the crisis accelerates, we will see more and more people leaving, many desperate, bringing whatever they can with them, until finally, we see people leaving with nothing but their clothes. This is how a refugee crisis always develops, from the smart and affluent leaving early with their wealth to the desperate walking out at the end with nothing but clothing and an empty stomach.
Even then, it will just be getting started.
The seas will keep rising until at least 2200.
References and further reading
https://www.miamidade.gov/global/economy/resilience/sea-level-rise-flooding.page
https://www.greenbiz.com/article/miami-keeps-building-rising-seas-deepen-its-social-divide
https://e360.yale.edu/features/as-miami-keeps-building-rising-seas-deepen-its-social-divide
