New Florida Legislation Will Help the State Brace for Rising Sea Levels, but Doesn’t Address Its Underlying Cause

ORLANDO, Fla.—Florida will craft a first-ever plan for addressing the rising menace of flooding and sea stage rise, in an effort to be overseen by a newly established Statewide Office of Resilience, underneath laws Gov. Ron DeSantis lately signed into regulation.

The measure builds upon laws authorized final yr that put aside thousands and thousands of {dollars} for infrastructure initiatives and referred to as on the state Department of Environmental Protection to compile flood and sea stage rise information for a vulnerability evaluation, amongst different issues. 

The new measure goes additional, codifying into regulation the place now held by Chief Resilience Officer Wesley Brooks and situating the place inside the Executive Office of the Governor. It additionally specifies the resilience plan, due in 2023, should embody a rating of initiatives submitted by native governments and a story of how the plan was developed. The state Department of Transportation additionally should produce a resilience plan for Florida’s roadways.

Together the two measures signify the first time in a couple of decade that prime leaders of this uniquely climate-change inclined state are taking cost on nearly any facet of the world drawback. Previously, native governments and regional teams like the Southeast Florida Regional Climate Change Compact have proven the most management on points like flooding and sea stage rise, hotter temperatures and extra damaging hurricanes, mentioned Beth Alvi, director of coverage at Audubon Florida. 

“Coordination is the name of the game … to effectively increase Florida’s resiliency and to help ensure that actions that we’re taking individually by cities and communities are additive rather than competitive,” she mentioned. “Rather than just draining flood-prone areas upstream, which could aggravate flooding downstream, let’s look at it comprehensively. And that’s where the state and DEP have a role, and Wes Brooks, our resiliency officer.”

But the environmental teams level out that whilst DeSantis, a Republican, goals to strengthen infrastructure on this peninsula state in opposition to sea stage rise, he has failed to point out a lot motion on what’s inflicting local weather change and handle the state’s reliance on fossil fuels.

DeSantis, thought-about a possible front-runner for the GOP nomination in the 2024 presidential race, has strived to make the surroundings a precedence of his administration, placing thousands and thousands of {dollars} towards the Everglades and the state’s different treasured and troubled waterways. But he has confronted criticism on Florida’s greatest environmental drawback: local weather change. The governor has described himself as “not a global warming person,” whilst his personal administration predicts some $26 billion in residential property statewide will face continual flooding by 2045.

State Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried, a Democrat working in opposition to DeSantis on this yr’s governor’s race, proposed objectives earlier this spring for transitioning towards cleaner power sources, but it’s unclear how efficient the objectives can be. Her division lacks the authority to implement the objectives. Utilities must submit progress experiences to her division, which might evaluate the experiences and supply them to the Public Service Commission. 

The fee, which oversees the utilities, has tended to simply accept their resistance to renewable power and power effectivity. The objectives nonetheless face a proper approval course of. 

Fried isn’t alone in pushing for extra clear power in Florida. State Rep. Anna Eskamani (D-Orlando), was amongst 30 representatives to signal onto an Earth Day letter calling on the governor to declare a local weather state of emergency in Florida.

“There is an emphasis on resilience, which is important, but nothing on actual mitigation or helping to combat our carbon production and the human actions that are causing sea level rise,” mentioned Eskamani, who sponsored laws this spring that may have put the state on a path towards one hundred pc clear power by midcentury. The measure by no means gained a committee listening to. 

“The reality is that we’re going to be spending money now to deal with the rising cost of sea level rise, but it’s going to be even more expensive if we don’t do anything to deal with the cause of this problem,” Eskamani mentioned. 

Thomas Ruppert, coastal planning specialist for Florida Sea Grant, an training and analysis group centered on coastal sources at the University of Florida, mentioned that collectively this yr’s and final yr’s laws signify a short-term repair but truly may make Florida extra susceptible in the future, as they make means for extra growth in flood-prone areas.

“The current approach focuses really on reducing vulnerability today and maybe for tomorrow,” he mentioned. “But this can actually encourage a sense of safety and further investment in areas that may not, over the longer-term, be very safe. So then when an event comes that exceeds the design parameters of the infrastructure, something bigger than, say, the 100-year storm event, we realize that our vulnerability to that event may be even greater than had we not both … literally and figuratively dug ourselves into a hole.”