This document discusses the challenges of rising sea levels, extreme storms, and aging infrastructure threatening US national security, homeland security, and economic security. It proposes 3 goals: 1) changing the national policy from respond and repair to plan and invest, 2) establishing single agency federal leadership, and 3) creating new dedicated federal funding. The current policy of responding after disasters is wasteful and unsustainable. Investing in resilient infrastructure upfront, as the Dutch have done, can protect coastal communities and economies. Achieving these goals requires building political will among coastal communities, businesses, policymakers, and the general public.

1. 2014 BSCE
Bertram Berger Seminar
May 21, 2014
NICHIusa.org

2. The Triple Threat
Rising Sea Levels, Extreme Storms, Aging Infrastructure
The Challenge
• Threat to our National Security
• Threat to our Home Land Security
• Threat to our National Economic
Security

3. 1. Change National Policy from Respond
and Repair to Plan and Invest
2. Establish Single Agency Federal
Leadership
3. New Federal Funding with Dedicated
Revenues
The Response
The National Institute’s Three Goals

4. A New National Policy
for Coastal Infrastructure Investment
• Current National Policy is to ‘Respond
and Repair’
• It’s Wasteful, Unsustainable and
Counterproductive

5. Our Current National
Disaster Relief Policy
is also Unsustainable
Disaster Relief Policy

6. The Unfunded Resiliency Gap
$ 4.7 trillion -- Social Security
(Government Accountability Office)
$ 1.1 - 5.4 trillion -- Unfunded federal disaster
(Cummins 2010 / Updated 2013)
$3 trillion -- Current US state
National Catastrophe Insurance Coverage Fund
(Government Accountability Office)
75 year horizon / 2008 dollars

7. Weather Related Losses Rising

8. Our National Policy
is Counterproductive
• The result is a weaker not stronger coastal
infrastructure
• The policy rewards bad behavior
–Bad behavior gets the money and the
new toys
• FEMA flood insurance
• Disaster Relief Funds

9. The Alternative
• Have the Dutch Found the Answer?
–The evidence
• They have kept their feet dry and
maintained a strong national
economy for over 600 years
• They have not had to retreat from the
sea into Germany

10. The Alternative (2)
• The Dutch Solution
–Understand the Threat and a
Accept the Challenge
–The Delta Commission
–Learning to live with water

11. A Sea Change in Washington?
• The President’s New Focus on Resiliency
– President’s Executive Order
– President’s Task Force
– The Third National Climate Assessment
– Biggert Waters
– Programs at NOAA, HUD, FEMA,
• A Resistant Congress
– Where’s the Leadership
• Forty Different Programs
• Response to Biggert Waters
– Where’s the Money
– Where’s the Political Will

12. Creating Political Will
to Respond to the Triple Threat and to
Seize the Opportunity to Build the Future
• National Political Will is Essential to Achieving NICHI’s
Three Goals
– A Change in National Policy
– Single Federal Agency Leadership
– New Dedicating Funding on an order of magnitude equal to
the Federal Interstate Highway System
• NICHI’s Plan Will Build Build Political Will by Focusing
on Four Critical Constituencies
– Coastal Communities
– Business
– Beltway Policy Makers
– General Public

13. It’s time to Re-Imagine our Coasts
• To Protect our Coastal Communities
• To Protect, Preserve and Nurture on
Natural Coastal Environment
• To Invest in the Globally Competitive
Economic Future of the 22nd Century

14. We are Equal to the Challenge
“Together, we can build our coastal
infrastructure to be as strong as
our people.”
NICHIusa.org