14 NATCHEZ ON THE WATERFRONT
Climate change - dealing with rising waters
By Dan Natchez*
T
here is no doubt that climate change and sea level rise are happening. The only real questions
are how fast and how high are the waters rising, and how bad and more frequent are the storms going to be? Unfortunately, many politicians do not want to deal with the reality and do not want to plan for it. Why? Well, it could be that it can seem frightening if one really looks hard at it, whether from a cost, which is also likely to include taxes, or from an emotional perspective. It has
now become a hyper-partisan issue in the US in the current national political environment – even as local politicians are increasingly faced with the realities of increasingly flooded ground. I can remember way back to my
youth seeing what was referred to as the ‘grassy knoll’ in the middle of our harbour. I think it was even mapped on the NOAA chart that way. In fact, it was a predominantly a ‘Spartina Alterniflora’ wetland area and at high tides only the tops of the grasses were visible. As I got older, the wetlands kept getting smaller
MARINA INDUSTRY • EURO-REPORT • DECEMBER 2019
to the point where they eventually disappeared altogether. The common thought was that pollution must have eliminated the grasses, but that did not make sense as other wetland areas in the harbour’s creeks were thriving. As I learned more about wetlands and their sensitivity to elevations, it became increasingly clear that sea level rise, although only a few inches, was the most likely culprit. I am sure there is no shortage of similar stories from pretty much anyone who has spent any significant time on the waterfront.
One of our local marina operators, who has quite literally spent his entire life on the harbour, has pegged the increase in sea level during his lifetime at about seven inches. While not at all scientific, it aligns pretty well with the overall NOAA estimates. Predicting the future rise and its timing is, of course, a much trickier business and there are countless variables to take into account, with more being discovered almost every year, but most projections seem to be in the range of a foot by 2050 and somewhere between two and
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