Coastal Services Center

While a United Nations panel of scientists and government officials is predicting that oceans will rise up to 2 feet by 2100, coastal resource managers in Rhode Island are preparing for the sea to rise 3 to 5 feet. And that estimate is considered conservative.

"It's a big issue—a major issue—for us," says Grover Fugate, executive director of the Rhode Island Coastal Resources Management Council. "We're already starting to see issues in terms of our waterfront and water level impacts."

Sea level rise along Rhode Island's coast is contributing to increased coastal flooding and erosion, and has the potential to damage infrastructure and property.

When it became clear that sea level rise resulting from climate change would accentuate the impacts of future storms on coastal resources, the coastal council and Rhode Island Sea Grant worked with the legislature to amend the state building code to explicitly address sea level rise and climate change. They then began developing related coastal regulations, which were adopted in January.

These regulations not only explain the science of Rhode Island's sea level rise and provide historical data, but they also will help the coastal council and others in the state better manage development and related concerns.

"Considering sea level rise when assessing appropriately placed development will be a vital tool for the coastal council, as well as municipalities, their planners, and developers," says Fugate. "Having these regulations in place will allow us to determine which areas would be most susceptible to flooding, and to plan accordingly for the future."

Another result of the regulatory creation process is a summary of sea level rise initiatives of coastal programs across the nation.

Rising Tides

Sea level rise refers to the change in mean sea level over time in response to global climate and local changes. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) projected last year that the world's oceans would rise from 7 to 23 inches in the coming century. Since 1990, sea level has been rising faster than the rate predicted by models used to generate earlier IPCC estimates.

Future sea level rise is not expected to be globally uniform or linear, notes Pam Rubinoff, coastal management extension specialist for Rhode Island Sea Grant. As a result of ice flow dynamics or local subsidence, some regions will experience higher water levels than the global average, and others will be less impacted.

In addition to rising global sea levels, the land surface in Rhode Island is subsiding at a rate of approximately 6 inches per century, according to a coastal council science report. "The combination of these two effects is evident from the long-term trend recorded by the Newport tide gauge, which indicates a rate of 10.1 inches (plus or minus 1.2 inches) of relative sea level rise over the last century."

Fugate notes, "The acceleration data is lining up on our worst case scenario line, which has us very concerned."

Looking for Proof

Rhode Island began to suspect impacts from sea level rise after reports of regular flooding of a waterfront park in the City of Providence. "The city is using its hurricane gates 19 days of the year when there are high tides and wind," Rubinoff explains. "When you start having that happen, you begin to ask the question."

The flooding was particularly troublesome to the state's coastal managers because there is $4 billion in development on the waterfronts in Providence, East Providence, and Pawtucket.

"There was a heightened sense that we need to look at this and see what the implications were for us," Fugate says. "We knew that all this development would be susceptible to storm damage, and we wanted to get ahead of the curve on that before we were dealing with an after-the-fact issue."

As part of the development of a Special Area Management Plan (SAMP) in 2006, the coastal council, Sea Grant, and others began to look into the causes of the flooding.

The tide charts showing an increase of almost a foot since 1929 seemed to be the proof that sea level rise was the culprit. Other incriminating evidence included erosion rates that doubled from 1990 to 2006 in certain areas, wetlands that were transitioning to salt marsh, and a three-degree rise in water temperature since 1970.

Feeling Vulnerable

This evidence was not welcome news. In addition to the potential of making recreation areas, public spaces, and coastal wetlands more vulnerable to flooding, storm damage, and erosion, sea level rise is projected globally to make residential and commercial structures, roads, and bridges more vulnerable, and to reduce the effectiveness and integrity of existing seawalls and revetments that were designed for historically lower water levels.

Drinking water may be compromised from salt intruding into aquifers. Higher water levels could compromise wastewater treatment facilities, and future increases in relative sea level could displace coastal populations.

There are also concerns about species changes. In Rhode Island, there are projections that the lobster fishery could disappear over the next two decades, and there are already declines in winter flounder populations, which may not be due to overfishing, Fugate says.

Policy Window

Coastal hazards—including sea level rise—were being addressed by the SAMP planning group, which was working to update the Metro Bay SAMP that was originally created in 1983, says Rubinoff.

At the same time, a state legislative committee was looking at insurance issues related to hurricanes.

"We don't get hurricanes that often, but this was post-Katrina and post-tsunami," Rubinoff says. "The whole state of Rhode Island is in the coastal zone, so we looked at this as a potential policy window."

The sea level rise data were presented to senate policy staff members, who were looking at the concerns of the insurance companies regarding building codes.

In December 2006, the Rhode Island legislature passed a law authorizing the council to "develop and adopt policies and regulations necessary to manage the coastal resources of the state and protect life and property from coastal hazards resulting from projected sea level rise and probable increased frequency and intensity of coastal storms due to climate change." The council was also authorized to collaborate with the state building commissioner to adopt freeboard calculations, or the elevation of structures above the flood zone.

Examining the Issues

In order to incorporate sea level rise and other climate change considerations into siting, building standards criteria, and enforceable policies, the coastal council and Sea Grant first focused on the science.

Scientists from the University of Rhode Island "looked into the science of what sea level rise is and what the existing science says," explains Rubinoff. In addition, the coastal council and Sea Grant "looked at existing development issues, identified key priorities, and looked at the impacts on buildings, the shoreline, and habitat."

A series of public meetings were held. Fugate says visualizations created by Sea Grant showing popular coastal locations with three feet of sea level rise "really got people's attention and helped people understand the issues."

The Big Picture

Sea Grant also looked at what other states were doing, working with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Office of Ocean and Coastal Resource Management to create a summary of sea level rise initiatives of coastal programs across the nation. (This can be viewed at http://seagrant.gso.uri.edu/ccd/slr/SLR_policies_summary_Mar6_final.pdf.)

"We found out that several states aren't doing anything," Rubinoff says. "Others are coming at it very differently, through outreach, research, established commissions, or general policy. There's not a lot of consistency."

New Policy

The resulting policy information was presented during a workshop with the science panel and policy makers in the coastal council, state building commission, and senate policy office.

The group's consensus was that the rate of sea level rise that should be planned for is 3 to 5 feet, but that the coastal council should review these figures frequently and adjust them as necessary.

This is the rate that will be used for future permitting, giving the state building commission the guidance needed to incorporate additional building elevations, or freeboard, into the state building code.

Fugate says this is just a start in the council's efforts to address issues resulting from climate change. "Right now we have more questions than answers. This is a skeleton that still needs to be fleshed out."

Fleshing Out

The Metro Bay SAMP planning group is helping to put some meat on the regulatory bones by creating specific polices for sea level rise in the Providence area that will also be recommended for state implementation.

"Looking at a specific area through the SAMP process really helped us identify real issues," Rubinoff says. "We're a small state, so it's easy for us to take some of these issues from one place and adapt it statewide."

Among the SAMP's recommendations are more stringent building standards, flood ordinances, permitting processes, and best practices in coastal flood zones to reduce vulnerabilities to existing and future infrastructure. Also included are building setbacks and elevations, monitoring, and requirements for stricter flood-zone standards.

The SAMP also recommends incorporating climate change considerations into low impact design standards for stormwater management.

No Easy Answers

While Rhode Island coastal managers are proud of the progress they have made in addressing sea level rise and climate change, the challenge before them is daunting.

"The hardest thing that we have had to come to grips with is that there aren't a lot of hard and fast answers out there," Fugate says. "We're going to have to learn to live with that for the time being."

He adds, "We've made the choice to go forward now and try to adapt rather than wait for more information. If you wait for all the answers, you're really placing your coastal population at risk."

To view the draft chapter on natural hazards in the Metro Bay Special Area Management Plan (SAMP), the science report prepared for the Rhode Island Coastal Resources Management Council, the summary of other state coastal program initiatives to address sea level rise, and the coastal council's new sea level rise policy, point your browser to http://seagrant.gso.uri.edu/ccd/haz.html. For additional information, contact Grover Fugate at (401) 783-7112, or gfugate@crmc.ri.gov, or Pam Rubinoff at (401) 874-6135, or rubi@crc.uri.edu.