Elevating historic homes - to protect them from sea level rise

“What they don’t want is a peninsula filled with homes on stilts.”

It is no secret that the current federal government in the United States is essentially ignoring climate change and its predicted calamitous effects. But at least state and local governments as well as non-profit organizations are stepping up to lead. As noted in previous posts (see below), some historic coastal cities in the US have developed an annual conference and planning effort called “Keeping History Above Water,” which so far has been hosted by and held in Newport, Rhode Island, Annapolis, Maryland, Palo Alto, California, and—coming in May 2019—St. Augustine, Florida. And recently, the governors of two mid-Atlantic states—Virginia and Maryland, which have already been working together to clean up the Chesapeake Bay—announced their intentions to harness the power of their state governments in tandem to address sea level rise on their coastal communities. And now in Charleston, South Carolina, preservation planners are developing guidelines to assist property owners who want to elevate their houses without damaging the architectural integrity of this historic city.

Charleston was first settled by Europeans in the 1670s, when a small group of British settlers came to the mainland from the island of Bermuda. The city quickly became prosperous as the coastal environment was found to be particularly suitable for a variety of crops, such as rice and cotton. Charleston today reflects this historical prosperity for its European planters and merchants in the form of extravagant architecture that lines the bay of this peninsular city and the roads and streets in between.

See

New guidelines in development for elevating historic Charleston buildings

By Alissa Holmes

Live5News.com

January 23, 2019

ALSO SEE PREVIOUS POSTS -

Keeping History Above Water—"the increasing and varied risks posed by sea level rise to historic coastal communities, their built environments and traditional ways of life"

UPDATE: Just over a decade ago, former US Vice President All Gore premiered his film documentary “An Inconvenient Truth” about his efforts to learn about climate change and to try to forge global attention on the development of public policy to deal with the predicted effects. The “inconvenient” part was the role of fossil fuels in driving climate change, which has met with hard-charging rebuttal or downright omission in the view of right-wing politicians in the United States.

The political backlash in the United States reached a crescendo with the recent presidential election, culminating (so far, at least) with the US withdrawal from the global climate accord reached in 2015 by Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change—known as the Paris Agreement. The agreement recognizes that “sustainable lifestyles and sustainable patterns of consumption and production, with developed country Parties taking the lead, play an important role in addressing climate change….”

Since then, the US government has announced its withdrawal from the Paris accord and US agencies, such as the National Park Service, have reversed President Obama-era policies promoting climate change research and the effects on US lands and resources. The issue of climate change has been heavily politicized by the right, to the extent that even the words “climate change” have been deleted from some federal agency websites. This “head-in-the-sand” approach is not only detrimental to agencies and departments like the Bureau of Land Management, the US Forest Service, and the US National Park Service, which manage and administer federal lands across the United States and its territories, but also to the Department of Defense. The cost of fossil fuel for its operations is one of the major categories driving DoD spending, and moving to renewable fuels could be a boon to national security. Furthermore, the US Navy and other branches of the military have extensive operations in coastal regions that are subject to dramatic impacts from rising sea levels. Yet they are largely forced to ignore the issue of climate change while preparing for a future that will be dramatically impacted by climate change.

In light of the federal government’s lack of policy development and action (and in contrast to the anti-environmental policies regarding oil and gas drilling on public lands), both local and state governments have rushed in to fill the void. In 2016, Newport, Rhode Island hosted the first international symposium entitled “Keeping History Above Water.” The success of this conference led to annual meetings in Annapolis, Maryland (2017), and Palo Alto, California (2018), with the next conference scheduled for St. Augustine, Florida in 2019. This conference stemmed from alarm over the particularly devastating impacts to cultural heritage sites in coastal regions.

Closer to the seat of federal power in Washington, DC, the governors of Maryland and Virginia co-authored a recent op-ed in the Washington Post outlining their commitment to addressing climate change through coordinated state action, which supplements work being taken on at the local level in places like Norfolk, Virginia, Miami, Florida, Charleston, South Carolina, and elsewhere in the United States

See

States Can Lead the Way on Climate Change. Let’s Get to Work.

By Larry Hogan and Ralph Northam

The Washington Post

December 11, 2018

ORIGINAL POST (November 13, 2017) - Canaries in the Coal Mine: Cultural heritage and climate change: The Boston Harbor Islands off the coast of eastern Massachusetts were once drumlins—glacially formed hills—in the landscape of the mainland. Frequented by early humans primarily because of their access to coastal food resources, the drumlins subsequently were flooded due to sea level rise as the last Ice Age ended some 10,000 years ago. Thus, the drumlins became islands and many coastal prehistoric sites from the earliest periods of human occupation of the region were inundated. Today, the Boston Harbor Islands form a national and state park.

Many archaeologists find the current political climate in which contemporary climate change is being buffeted of great bafflement. Researchers previously have studied the effects of thousands of years of fluctuating climate change for years without political interference. As the climate warms, sea levels rise, with a resulting effect on coastal regions. The same coastal regions in which many historic cities and towns were established during times of global maritime travel and trade. The only difference is the contribution of significant human activity to the pace of global climate change currently underway. Looking to the past to help deal with the future is one of the primary contributions of archaeologists, historians, and others to contemporary society.

In Annapolis, Maryland, an international group of researchers, historians, and city planners among others are recently convened the conference Keeping History Above Water, focusing on historic coastal communities on the front line of sea level rise. The conference, co-founded by the Newport Restoration Foundation and the City of Annapolis, began last year in Newport, Rhode Island, a historic colonial seaport that later became a favorite summer spot for those with Gilded Age fortunes and currently a contemporary popular tourist attraction and summer resort. (The 2016 photo above of the Newport waterfront by chensiyuan is shared here under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License).

The impetus for the conference stemmed from increased threats to the historic Christopher Townsend House (built 1728) at 74 Bridge Street in Newport’s Point neighborhood. Faced with increased flooding of this historic site, the Newport Restoration Foundation used the historic house as a pilot study to look at ways to make such threatened historic sites more resilient in the face of increased threats due to the climate change-related rise in sea level. The case study led to the first Keeping History Above Water conference in 2016. The second edition is being held in November 2017 in Annapolis, Maryland.

Historic sites such as Newport’s Townsend House serve as early warning markers—canaries in the coal mine, if you will—of the potential and likely disastrous effects of sea level rise to coastal communities. Unlike new construction laid out in flood-prone areas, Newport’s colonial waterfront developed over several centuries beginning with the town’s founding in 1639 before the modern rise in sea level began. Such historic coastal communities are not only early warning signs; they are also excellent laboratories for measuring the effects of sea level rise and determining appropriate measures to ameliorate the impending damage.

At the international level, UNESCO has compiled a number of studies highlighting the potential for damage to World Heritage Sites, including as many as one in four natural sites on the World Heritage List. In fact, UNESCO identifies climate change as one of its major themes, pulling together the work of 30 programmes in science, education, and culture to foster research and education on climate change. Recently, UNESCO Director-General Irina Bokova released a statement for 2017 emphasizing the role of STI—science, technology, and innovation—in building peace and bolstering sustainable development, both of which are at the heart of the Paris agreement. (Note: Ms. Bokova’s term ended with November 10, 2017 with the confirmation of France’s former culture minister, Audrey Azoulay, to Director General).

Although the US currently is on track to withdraw from the Paris climate agreement, a group of US congressman, senators, governors, and mayors hosted a “rogue” pavilion at the COP23 summit in Bonn, Germany. The pavilion was intended to highlight the determination of many in the United States to continue to work toward policies that will ameliorate the negative effects of climate change, despite the current US administration’s position. This group includes a small contingent highlighting the potential role of cultural heritage in the development of climate change policies. Contemporary policy makers would be wise to look to the cultural heritage community for innovative research and policies related to climate change.

Read

Keeping History Above Water: Annapolis at Center of Sea Level Rise Warnings

Chesapeake Bay Magazine

November 1, 2017