Sea level rise could cost islands land, $$

Waterfront homes could take on a whole new look in the Lower Keys over the next three decades if projections about sea level rise come to pass.

The fact that sea levels are rising and encroaching on shorelines is not in dispute, claims Chris Bergh, Florida Keys program manager for The Nature Conservancy, a lading national environmental advocacy group.

Bergh has spent the better part of the last two years compiling a study of the environmental and economic impacts of sea level rise focused on Big Pine Key as the largest land mass in the Lower Keys and home to a multitude of endangered species, both flora and fauna.

According to projections, sea level could rise as little as three inches in the next 20 years or as much as nine inches. Neither bodes well for Big Pine.

A rise as slight as three inches changes coastal plant habitats, salt marsh areas and tidal basin ecologies, with nine inches doing more damage.

In longer range scenarios, Big Pine could face a sea level of rise of from seven to 51 inches, the latter leaving much of the island as we know it today under water. Waterfront ground-level homes would be flooded, forcing them to rise on stilts or be demolished, and inland homes currently well off the water could see tidal surges lapping at their front doors.

The average elevation of the Florida Keys is about four feet. However, the terrain is uneven with some inland areas actually below sea level.

In a report to the county commission last week, Bergh outlined modeled projections. In the best-case scenario, seas would rise seven inches in the next 90 years. About 40 percent of Big Pine would go under water, beginning with waterfront parcels and inland areas with little elevation.

Bergh estimates that level of inundation would result in lost property values of almost $40 million. In a worst-case scenario, more than 80 percent of the island would be inundated, with nearly $1 billion in lost property values.

Local environmental management groups have already begun to document the effects of slow, incremental sea level rise on the Lower Keys.

Anne Morkill, director of the Florida Keys National Wildlife Refuges, including the Key Deer Refuge on Big Pine and No Name Keys, said as much as a year ago that habitat managed by the refuge on Sugarloaf and Cudjoe Keys was showing signs of degradation due to sea level rise.

The refuge is experiencing a die-off of pines that are near the water as salt water begins to encroach on the root systems of plants that are somewhat salt-tolerant, but rely on fresh water for health.

She said the refuge is developing strategies to combat the effects of sea level rise, but she makes no promises as to their success.

County leaders admit that sea level rise will cause property value and environmental issues in the coming years, although there is no extreme sense of urgency as yet.

“This is an issue we will have to deal with in the next decades,” said Mayor George Neugent. “It won’t affect the current generation of leaders, but it will have an effect on the next generation.”

“We will have to start taking sea level rise into account as we plan the future of the Florida Keys,” he said.

Neugent said he would support a mitigation strategy for the long term.

Bergh says that combating the core issues connected to sea level rise; the burning of fossil fuels, deforestation and land-based glacial melt; will have to start immediately if mitigation strategies are to be successful. They will have to be undertaken on a global, regional and local scale.

Locally, Bergh suggests a more intense prescribed burn program for pine rockland areas, which exist only in the Lower Keys, southern Miami-Dade, the Bahamas and Caicos Islands.

Bergh says that pine rocklands are a fire-dependent forest community that combats its transition to a broadleaf hammock community by managed application of fire. He urges the refuge to step up its prescribed burn program as the only economically viable way to combat seal level rise in the pine rockland habitats, which are also primary homes for the endangered Key Deer.

Bergh also urges increasing local invasive-exotic removal efforts so that salt tolerant invasives won’t be fighting native plants for what promises to be an ever-dwindling fresh water supply.

Other speakers at the workshop painted a picture of flooded sewage lines, flooded underground storage tanks, compromise of near-shore waters by release of waste from landfills, and roads under water limiting access to usable upland.

Even under the most optimistic of projections for sea level rise on Big Pine, the inland portions of Koehn Subdivision and Pine Ridge could become waterfront property over the course of the next 90 years.

The difference in projections, says the report from Bergh, comes from uncertainty about how fast global climate change will occur. The faster it occurs, the more it feeds on itself and accelerates.

Neugent said he will ask that a group be formed to study potential mitigation strategies and ultimately suggest ways the county can begin the mitigation process in partnership with others.

2 Comments »

2 Responses to “Sea level rise could cost islands land, $$”

Comments

1. Sal Jul 07 2009 / 5am

   We’ll be ten toes up before this happens, lets focus on getting this planet out of the hands of the “sky is falling” gang and into the “let’s see if we can save us from government putting us in the poor house” gang. Which Mr. Bergh, of the Nature Conservancy and Janette Hobbs of the Audubon do not belong to. Bergh and Hobbs have both hands on the American taxpayers tit.
2. katie Jul 10 2009 / 11pm

   How in gods name can prescribed burning on Big Pine Key Slow sea level rise. I have never heard a more ridiculuos statement iin my life. Come on Nature Conservancy. Your all about the almighty dollar like everyone else. Funding ,Funding, Funding. What little healthy pineland left you will burn in the name of combating sea level rise and in truth you are just going to destroy for many years to come what little healthy forest BPK has left. You should be ashamed of yourselves. If mother nature wants BPK to burn she will burn it in her own good time. Why cant you leave well enough alone and quit meddeling like you know all the answers when most of the world hasnt even figured out what the questions are yet.