Increased storm surges, flooding and erosion are among the top challenges Massachusetts faces due to climate change. State and local leaders say they are ready to meet those growing challenges and remain committed to mitigating the risks for the state’s 78 coastal communities.
The comments came last week as the state launched its 50-year plan to ready the coastline to withstand rising seas and extreme weather. The announcement in Chelsea was timed to coincide with king tides, some of highest of the year and a common cause of coastal flooding.
“Being here by the water is a reminder of both what we’re protecting and what is at risk,” said Massachusetts Secretary for Energy and Environment Rebecca Tepper.
The plan, called the ResilientCoasts Initiative, uses a regional approach, outlining near- and long-term strategies that range from elevating roads and other infrastructure to restoring natural floodplains. Tepper said the goal is to support towns and cities — and their unique challenges — by providing state funding and other resources for these efforts.
Chelsea leaders praised the plan’s acknowledgement that some communities face greater risk than others due to differences in geography, land use and factors such as race and income.
Chelsea and East Boston are among several communities across the state designated as “environmental justice” communities, a term that refers to areas with a history of pollution and high percentages of low-income residents or people of color. Both are on the front lines of climate change, said Roseann Bongiovanni, executive director of the Chelsea nonprofit GreenRoots.
“Every community has needs,” Bongiovanni said. “But some areas are more vulnerable than others. Some areas are impacted more than others.”
Coastal areas in Chelsea are dense with businesses and shipping facilities, where floods threaten livelihoods and resources for the entire region, said John Lucero, general manager for the New England Produce Center. He said as a major regional produce distributor, the Chelsea facility processes enough fruits and vegetables to feed 9 million people every day.
“We’ve seen the projections in sea-level rise,” he said. “Interruption of service would be absolutely devastating to the region, our economy and the health of 9 million people.”
State Sen. Sal DiDomenico, a Democrat representing Cambridge, Charlestown, Chelsea and Everett, said the federal government has abandoned communities like Chelsea by rescinding critical funding for projects meant to make the area more resilient to the effects of climate change.
This spring, the Federal Emergency Management Agency canceled a $50 million grant to build a flood barrier in Chelsea. Federal officials called the program that provided the grant “wasteful.”
The new state plan proposes more collaboration between local governments and the private sector, including insurance companies, to fund coastal resilience projects. It’s a strength of the plan, according to Rebecca Herst, associate director for resilience with the Boston Green Ribbon Commission. But she said funding remains a concern as communities face other challenges, like shifting federal policies and rising costs for housing and health care.
“There’s so many needs right now. Prioritizing something for 2070 feels really hard when there are literal mouths to feed,” Herst told WBUR. “It’s really hard to balance all the different things that are necessary to keep our economy going.”
The state’s plan is a good blueprint, but needs to be paired with money and legislation, said Ali Hiple, a senior policy analyst at the nonprofit Conservation Law Foundation. She said she‘d like to see tougher limits on construction in flood-prone areas.
“We know flood risk and erosion risk in these areas pretty well, and we should be steering development into places that are comparatively safer,” she said.
Still, Hiple said she was pleased to see the state considering how coastal towns and property owners could voluntarily sell their land and relocate to safer ground, a strategy sometimes known as managed retreat.
“That’s something that Massachusetts is going to have to be thinking about,” she said. “We simply just can’t protect our way out of everything.”
This article was originally published on WBUR.org.
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