The limits of development in Alta, Utah -- population 370-- are defined by maps. In winter, the town, wedged in the Wasatch mountains, is threatened by avalanche paths. Over time, town planners have mapped out exactly where avalanches will fall. A small number of hotels and homes have been zoned, permitted and built, to avoid well-defined avalanche routes.
Property inside avalanche routes is unbuildable. How to use maps to predict where sea level rise will impact development in low-lying areas of Miami is not so much different. Yet we continue to zone and build in the path of sea level rise. Eyeonmiami has published a series of photos of downtown MIami condominiums whose street level regularly floods, now, on high seasonal tides. Efforts to elevate certain access routes and sewer drains have only pushed water into adjacent, neighboring areas.
You can't stop the impacts of sea level rise in Florida any more than you can prevent avalanches from destroying property in Alta, Utah. Sea walls won't work any more than walls would work in an avalanche path. In fact, the seepage from sea level rise will impact western suburbs, whose residents may imagine that they are protected by the distance from the coast. Untrue.
Miami Dade County, in cooperation with federal and state agencies, has developed accurate topographical maps using LIDAR imagery. The maps provide facts where sea level rise is most likely to wreck public infrastructure serving private property. The chief variable-- in contrast to avalanche routes that are well-defined by surface fluid dynamics--is the porous underlying geology in much of coastal Florida.
Still, the maps developed by the county ought to be incorporated in the comprehensive development master plan and used to define and guide where development is zoned and permitted. There's one problem: the Growth Machine doesn't want the maps released or used in a way that could restrict development. That is how it is with facts.
PS on Global Warming: in Utah, a conservative, red state that has grown rapidly in recent decades, global warming is as likely as not thought of as a government conspiracy. I have spent a small slice of winter here for nearly forty years and use this place in winter as a touchstone on the matter of climate change. As a subjective observation, the snowpack today is radically different than when I first came here in the early 1970's. It has more moisture. Because it is warmer and wetter most of the time, the snowflake geometry is also changed. Compacts far differently. The snow looks the same, of course, but it is different. The world around us changing. What is not changing is within us: the power of denial.
5 comments:
As a long time Alta visitor, and not the be a climate change denier, we all have to remember that the amount of economic development in the Salt Lake City (to the West) and Park City (to the East) areas is likely to have had a profound affect on something like the moisture content of the snow in the Little Cottonwood Canyon. Alta is sandwiched between these two areas. The point of my writing this is only to highlight that the modeling of climate change probably has more to do with micro ecological factors than macro ecological factors.
Yes Salt Lake City has massively expanded in four decades, but I wouldn't reach the same conclusion that micro ecological factors in Cottonwood Canyon or Park City are a more important influence than large weather patterns bringing snowfall from the Pacific storms and dumping snow with different moisture content on the Wasatch range. Over the years, you could easily observe the smog rising from the valley through the canyons to now cover much of the range. In itself that is impressive. But snowfall is a high altitude event combining with generally warmer winter temperatures. Of course it would be good to have a scientist weigh on this topic, too!
My kid lives in the Omni area. More than once she could not get to her condo due to water. Her condo has an amazing view; nothing between her and the skyline of Miami Beach besides the park, the Bay and of course, the flooded street.
I have visited her to see cars that have parked in the parallel spaces next to the curb to have water half way up the door. There had to be some upset folks returning to their damaged cars.
The city doesn't even post that the street floods unexpectedly; they just love to take the parking fees and ticket folks for expired parking. I am sure they don't want to pay for damages done by parking in their spaces.
This is a very disturbing and difficult news to deal with.The seepage is bad and must be causing hellish inconvenience.
Any chance of popping up a link to these maps?
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