Dozens of Conn. Sites Could Flood Monthly in the Future

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(TNS) – A new analysis of coastal resilience by the Union of Concerned Scientists identifies specific locations along Connecticut’s coastline that can expect up to 12 floods a year by 2030.

By 2050, even more will be threatened, including a New Haven fire station and public housing in Stratford .

“This is really the first effort that looks expansively at what is a pretty under- the-radar risk to critical infrastructure in coastal communities,” said Erika Spanger, director of strategic climate analytics in the union’s Climate and Energy Program.

“And it names the specific assets that will experience this chronic flooding in practical timeframes if we fail to act,” she said. “This is really sound science, really accessible data and information. And what it says to us is that our leaders face deadlines that we have to meet for building coastal resilience. Or coastal communities and really the nation as a whole is going to pay a very heavy price.”

The analysis shows 33 of Connecticut’s “critical infrastructure assets” would risk being flooded twice a year by 2050 and 15 would risk flooding every other week. The numbers rise to 127 and 98 by 2100.

Sixteen communities face such flooding risk in 2050, according to the data, but the number increases to 44 by 2100.

The locations include seven brownfield sites in Bridgeport, including Mount Trashmore, AGI Rubber and Chrome Engineering. They include the Raymond Baldwin public housing and three affordable-housing locations in Stratford, Devon Station power plant in Milford and Engine Company 16 fire station on Lighthouse Road in New Haven.

Several wastewater-treatment plants are on the list as well.

Nationally, nearly 1,100 critical infrastructure assets would flood an average of once a month by 2050, with the number jumping to 5,300 by 2100, the union said.

“Our society depends on infrastructure like subsidized housing, wastewater treatment facilities, power plants, and hospitals reliably providing services,” said Kristina Dahl, the lead report author and a principal climate scientist at the union. “If these facilities are flooded even just once, it can be incredibly disruptive or even paralyzing to daily life.”

“To some people: twice a year, no big deal,” Spanger said. “It’s no big deal if it’s a parking lot. It’s no big deal if it’s a poorly traveled road. But if we’re talking about an emergency service center … We see lots of fire stations, police stations pop up in these results. And that is a big deal.

“Critical infrastructure is just that. It’s critical. It’s the kind of infrastructure that communities rely on for life to flow, for people to stay safe or urgent services to be delivered. And we simply can’t let those be disrupted,” she said.

Spanger said it was a surprise that so much housing turned up in the charts. “We didn’t expect to see so much public housing and affordable housing to pop out of the results but it is the single most exposed critical infrastructure type,” she said.

Also, using a tool from the Council on Environmental Quality, “we found that communities that are identified as disadvantaged have twice as much critical infrastructure at risk per capita through this 2050 timeframe we’re looking at compared to communities that aren’t designated disadvantaged,” Spanger said.

“And there also tends to be more than one type of essential infrastructure and risk in disadvantaged communities,” she said.

Federal and state policies are going to have to change to make sure housing is planned to incorporate protections against sea level rise, Spanger said.

“Housing is one of the most important sectors that’s going to need to incorporate these changes,” she said. “We’re going to need to scale up funding for the protection of housing that can be protected in place, and we’re going to need to marshal resources, really significant resources, for creating safe, affordable climate-resilient, public and affordable housing elsewhere.

“And for communities that may be forced to consider relocation because of really acute weather risks, we’re going to need resources and institutional support to really provide a pathway out of that risk, and the agency to make choices about where to go.”

Chadwick Schroeder , sustainability manager for the city of Bridgeport , said redevelopment proposals for the sites listed in the report include “nature-based solutions wherever feasible and possible to implement. So things like living shorelines, reducing the stormwater-generated impacts from a site through green infrastructure,” incorporating native plants where possible.

Schroeder said the city is working on mitigating the effects of sea level rise in general.

“We got funding from DEEP to conduct a comprehensive climate vulnerability assessment for the city, where we’re basically going to be modeling out climate impacts to 2075, overlaying that with social demographic data, sitting down with our community organizations and mapping existing vulnerabilities or flooding issues or climate-related issues that already exists within the city and developing priority areas for resiliency interventions, with an intentional focus on building with community instead of for,” he said.

The city is consciously bringing in youth and workforce development programs in its resiliency efforts as well, he said.

Mount Trashmore is “going to involve a living shoreline, restore waterfront access for predominantly the Black community that’s long been excluded from access to their waterfront,” Schroeder said. “They’re now turning it into Mount Growmore hydroponics grow farm and wellness campus to help end the food desert in the East End, increase food chain resiliency and also address workforce development needs.”

Another project is the Ash Creek urban tidal estuary. “We’re working with Save the Sound right now and the Ash Creek Conservation Association to look at if we can place basically clean fill on the marshland at a rate to allow it to migrate out of the floodplain before the water overtops it and causes it to wash away.”

There’s also a plan to implement a living shoreline at Seaside Park, which was hit hard by Superstorm Sandy.

In Stratford, Larry Ciccarelli is both director of public safety and of emergency management.

He said the Raymond Baldwin public housing buildings, while on the Union of Concerned Scientists’ list, are listed as a lower priority based on their location in town.

“We make lists based on three things,” he said. “One is areas that flood all the time, areas that potentially could flood in any given year, and then those ones that have a longer-term risk like within 100-year flood zones.”

The Baldwin properties fall into the third category, he said.

“The Baldwin facilities on Birch, that third category, they really haven’t had much exposure,” he said. “Because they’re in a 100-year category does not mean we’re not looking at those. So we have priority projects going every five years to make sure we mitigate the first two as quickly as possible, then the third on more of a long-term plan.”

Ciccarelli said the town’s flood threshold is 12 feet and the Baldwin property is only 6 or 8 feet, “but they’ve been very fortunate.”

“If a Baldwin area was flooding every year, that would be a different story,” he said. “But fortunately they haven’t. But they’re on the list to be mitigated. They just don’t have the priority of some other areas that get impacted all the time.”

Ed Stannard can be reached at estannard@courant.com.