More Than Ever, Cape Towns Must Be Storm Ready Due To Climate Change, Coastal Development

CHATHAM – We’ve heard the message before: the Cape is overdue for a major hurricane. But with the sea level already having risen six inches since 2000, and with shoreline development still happening at a feverish pace, the consequences of the next major storm will be devastating.

 That’s the word a panel of county experts delivered to a gathering of the Cape’s civic leaders last week. Meeting at the Chatham Fire Headquarters Friday, the Cape and Islands Municipal Leaders’ Association heard about the importance of planning to mitigate the more frequent ocean flooding that the region is already experiencing.

 “It’s going to happen here. It has happened here,” County Administrator Michael Dutton said. The impact of sea level rise is “very real, and it’s going to be costly,” he said.

 Coastal storms already pose a significant concern, said Shannon Hulst, the deputy director of the Cape Cod Cooperative Extension and a floodplain specialist.

 “We are seeing them a little bit more often, and we’re getting more flooding,” she said. The Cape hasn’t really experienced a hurricane since Bob struck in 1991, and the hurricanes of 1954 are quickly fading from memory, with almost no people alive today who remember the storms of 1944 and 1938. “There was damage, and we need to remember that and understand why we’re regulating a certain way,” Hulst said. Many people don’t recognize the potential for their properties to be damaged by freshwater or ocean flooding.

 “They say, ‘I live one block back from the water, so I’m not going to have a problem,’” she quipped. Hulst showed a computer model for a Category 4 hurricane striking the Cape, inundating some areas miles away from the shoreline. She then showed a model based on a hurricane that struck the Cape in 1635, which would have caused catastrophic damage to today’s coastline.

 “It happened prior to climate change. It can happen again,” Hulst said. With warmer sea surface temperatures, hurricanes are becoming more powerful, they form more quickly, “and they can also come further north. So we have the potential now for some really significant storms.”

 She showed a pair of aerial images of a neighborhood off Bass River in West Dennis. One from 1952 showed a vast swath of undeveloped coastal floodplain. Today’s image shows houses crowded together in a large low-lying neighborhood directly on the water.

 “This is what keeps me up at night,” she said. 

Hulst said the goal of her presentation isn’t to frighten people, but to underscore the need for communities to plan properly to mitigate those risks as much as possible.

While the Cape Cod Commission has a regulatory role, the Cooperative Extension is a resource for towns when it comes to managing coastal development, Hulst said. “We serve as an unbiased science-based resource” when it comes to evaluating coastal projects or interpreting the relevant codes. Building coastal resiliency has financial benefits for towns, from the Community Rating System that helps homeowners save on flood insurance premiums to the stronger bond ratings towns can receive by demonstrating climate change planning efforts.

Cooperative Extension Coastal Resilience Specialist Brian McCormack said he works closely with town conservation agents to provide an unbiased review of projects; his colleague, Shelly McComb, helps communicate these efforts to the public and to civic leaders. McCormack encouraged towns to work with their neighbors on best practices like sharing equipment.

 “The coastline is all the way around us,” he said. “If you’re just sticking within town boundaries, it can come back as a problem,” he said.

 County Commissioner Ron Bergstrom of Chatham said he was around for the big storms in 1978 and 1987. “The big issue for public officials at the time was the conflict between the regulatory environment and the desire for people to protect their houses at all costs,” he said. Towns need clear regulatory direction from the state to identify their authority in cases when coastal properties are threatened, he said.

 Hulst said the Cape Cod Commission is working on model regulations, but zoning bylaws that control coastal development would need to go to town meeting in every municipality. The state has been promising comprehensive regulations since 1993, she added.

 Provincetown Select Board Member Leslie Sandberg said there’s no time to wait.

 “There is something that you can do in the short term, and that is to ask your DPW what they need, and maybe give them some discretionary funds,” she said. Provincetown recently purchased a portable flood barrier that was deployed in a storm last week, Sandberg noted.

 Hulst said towns considering similar solutions should be certain that those flood barriers don’t accidentally direct floodwaters onto private property. And Chatham Natural Resources Director Greg Berman said that kind of device wouldn’t work everywhere.

 “In other towns, the water may come with a wide swath or from different directions,” he said. In Chatham, some areas are prone to flooding from two different directions, and water may come from areas that have never flooded before, he added. That point is underscored by the findings of the Cape Cod Commission’s Low Lying Roads project, which is already showing how challenging it can be to protect some areas.

 “These are going to be large projects. It’s not going to be blocking one or two spots, at least in Chatham,” he said.

 While comprehensive regulations are needed and there are some legal risks with some flood mitigation strategies, Sandberg said something needs to be done immediately.

 “We can go back and forth on all these legal things. The water is coming,” she said.