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Helping people, economies & the environment thrive
- 1. Sustainable Approaches to Coastal Design and Adaption to Sea Level Rise Shannon E. Cunniff, Director, Coastal Resilience WCEL Workshop 2 February 2017 Helping People, Economies and the Environment Thrive
- 2. Building on the Louisiana Experience • Economic Growth • Coastal Community Protection • Coastal Restoration 2
- 3. Coastal Defenses • Integrate natural and manmade defenses • Multiple Lines of Defense Strategy 3 Shellfish & coral reefs = low breakwaters. Vegetated dunes better withstand waves & provide attractive habitat Maritime forests reduce wave & wind energy, capture debris; wetlands can attenuate waves. Drainage, elevation, retention systems, relocation 1: USACE, 2015 1
- 4. Important Questions Part I • What are nature-based solutions? – a.k.a. Natural Infrastructure, Green Shores, Living Shorelines, Eco- Based Disaster Risk Reduction, et al. • Where and how do they work? Part II • Why would a community choose natural-based solutions? Part III • Lessons on creating comprehensive solutions for your community’s needs
- 5. Shore Re-nourishment Credit: Ecoshape Credit: Woods Hole Group • Manage sediment as a resource • Take advantage of littoral processes • Keep vegetation & washed up algae Credit: Dr. Brett Milligan
- 6. Dune Restoration Reduce coastal erosion Reduce nuisance floods Reduce force & height of waves Stop or reduce storm surge beach builders & wave chew toys
- 7. Wetlands Restoration Credit : Delaware NERC Credit: Norfolk, VA Slow inland water transfer Reduce force & height of waves (<2’ – 5’ ) Can reduce impact of storm surge Improve water quality Credit: CRCL
- 8. Re-establishing lost connections & processes 8
- 9. Oyster Reefs Reduce coastal erosion Reduce force & Height of short waves (<2’) Improve water quality Speed bumps
- 10. Greener Gray Solutions • Breakwaters – Concrete & forms • Tidepool, Fish, Oyster Habitats Photo credit: Econcrete • Seawalls – 3 design features: Light, shallow habitat w gravel, wall texture • Salmonid migration, habitat for marine inverts Credit: City of Seattle
- 11. “Hybrid” Solutions • Living Shorelines: sills & wetlands – East Coast Bays • VA, MD, DE, NC, SC, AL, etc. – Riparian areas • NY, NJ
- 13. Part I • What are nature-based solutions? – a.k.a. Natural Infrastructure, Green Shores, Living Shorelines, Eco- Based Disaster Risk Reduction, etc. • Where and how do they work? Part II • Why would a community choose nature-based solutions? Part III • Lessons on creating comprehensive solutions for your community’s needs Important Questions
- 14. Lower Cost 14 • Oyster reef breakwaters ~ $1M/mile Standard rock breakwaters cost1: $1.5-3M/mile • Wetlands w/ sills: $50 - 500/ft Bulkheads/riprap2: ~$500 - 1,200/ft Community hybrid soft shore − 3 scenarios: ranged between 30 – 70% less costly than traditional hard approach seawall3 1: Dow et al., 2013; 2. CBF, 2007; 3: Lamont et al., 2014
- 16. Sustainable • Keep pace with sea level rise – Dunes & oyster reefs can grow • More effective with age – Surface and root densities – Overall width and height 16
- 17. Important Questions Part I • What are Nature-Based Solutions? – a.k.a. Natural Infrastructure, Green Shores, Living Shorelines, Eco- Based Disaster Risk Reduction, etc. • Where and how do they work? Part II • Why would a community choose nature-based solutions? Part III • Lessons on creating comprehensive solutions for your community’s needs
- 18. Comprehensive Planning 18 Reactive • Scramble to spend • Power competition • Impulse to return to what was familiar Deliberative • Time to think through community goals and build consensus pre- disaster • Maximize opportunities next recovery affords • Greater potential for innovative funding • Pilots to prove concepts
- 19. Adaptive Governance • Unite coastal protection & restoration under a single agency with co-equal goals – Articulate clearly the priorities necessary to achieve comprehensive coastal protection – Develop, implement, and enforce a comprehensive coastal protection and restoration master plan. 19Credit: LA CPRA
- 20. Yields a Comprehensive Plan for the Mississippi Delta
- 21. Generating Big Ideas – The Art of Inspiring • Changing Course – EDF – Design teams from around the world created innovative visions for how to achieve a more sustainable Lower Mississippi River Delta • Structures of Coastal Resilience – Rockefeller Foundation, after Super Storm Sandy – Universities: Design; Architecture; Science • Sediment diversions higher in the delta • New navigation inlet • Need to address migration of people • Amphibious suburb • Fingers of High Ground
- 22. Generating Vision & Buy In • Room for the River – Netherlands’ Rhine, Meuse & Scheldt Rivers Delta Nijmegen • Rebuild by Design – Designs underway using similar principle of public collaboration
- 23. Generating Vision & Buy In • Participatory Design • Deliberative Democracy • Crowd Co-Design • “Dutch Dialogues” Common elements: • Multiple disciplines • Bring experts & citizens together • Two-way education • Time investment • Infusion of capital
- 24. 24
- 25. PLANNING TEAM 252017 Coastal Master Plan SUPPORTED BY:
- 26. TECHNICAL TEAM COLLABORATIVE TEAM OF OVER 70 EXPERTS 262017 Coastal Master Plan
- 27. FRAMEWORK DEVELOPMENT TEAM 272017 Coastal Master Plan
Editor's Notes
- EDF’s work, largely in Louisiana and the Mississippi River Delta is about building protection and resiliency in the most cost-effective and sustainable ways. Through our experiences building understanding of the linkages between coastal restoration, coastal community protection and economic growth, we are persuaded that a multiple lines of defense approach that fully incorporates natural defenses can be quite successful and cost effective ways to address challenges of land subsidence and sea level rise, habitat loss, and protection of vital coastal economies. Emphasize this is a densely populated area, disturbed with lots of environmental values…
- We can “organize the coast” to reduce storm damage and improve the environment. In essence here is what that could look like – but keep in mind this is a schematic to squish all the ideas together. To orient you for this slide, as you view it, the ocean is on the right, and moving to the left is moving inland. This schematic, produced by the US Army Corps of Engineers, shows that combinations of natural infrastructure and manmade defenses can work together in an approach called multiple lines of defense -- reducing the impact of waves and lessening storm surge’s reach to complement inshore based efforts (retention ponds, elevated buildings, evacuation plans, and even relocation and resettlement. This integration is intended to result in better protection, and more resilient and sustainable defenses over time while retaining many of the qualities that attract us to the shore. Its this kind of thinking that we are working to grow and build upon. It is also, in our judgment, going to be essential to a livable coastal future. We need to be in the process of re-imagining and reorganizing our coastal living and working patterns, and these are the kinds of tools and approaches that will be a part of that.
- Beach nourishment – placing sand from offshore locations or ship channels isn’t a new strategy. But what is newer are policies that result in better and more aggressive management of sand as a resource. For example, communities and state agencies around the San Francisco Bay have developed strategic sediment plans to strategically capture sediment as well move sediment from places with excess sediment to places needing sediment rather than shipping bay sediment to an offshore disposal site. Another strategy is to use nature’s water and wind as the energy sources to move sediment around. In The Netherlands, the Zandmotor or Sand Engine was designed to last 20 years, spreading sand along a 5 km stretch of coast – widening the beach and increasing the height of dunes. Right now projections is that the sand will last longer. [Deeper background: Rijkswaterstaat and the provincial authority of Zuid-Holland created the hook-shaped peninsula in 2011 w 21.5 million cubic metres of sand. It extends 1 km into the sea and is 2 km wide where it joins the shore. In the first 4 years, almost a million cubic metres of sand was moved to the south and about 1.5 million cubic metres has been moved to the north. Dunes in the coastal area near the Sand Motor have grown less quickly than expected mainly because the sand has to cover a relatively large distance before reaching the dunes.
- Restoring natural defenses, such as vegetated dunes, will be a first line of defense again the impacts of sea level rise and storms. These natural levees can be restored on both protected & high energy sandy beaches – best where dunes once existed. Sometimes all it requires is planting a few plants, such as these dunes on the near the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay. It’s actually not clear to me that these dunes existed before the dune grass was planted, so there may be areas where changed sedimentation patterns, loss of forested habitat may allow for conditions for dune creation At Galveston Island, the community is now embracing seaweed at a resource – using sargassum, a brown alga, that washes up on the shores to create bales, that are placed on the beach to start and nourish dunes. They’ve also ceased regular raking of the beach so that seaweeds and other drifting materials, slow ground wind speed and trap more sediment on the island. One project on its way is that of Prime Hook National Wildlife Refuge on the southern Delaware shore implemented a $38 million project to stop flooding of important wildlife habitat while building it up against future sea-level rise. The project was funded after Hurricane Sandy opened up breaches in the decayed dunes. The project, among the biggest and most ambitious of its kind in the country, aims to return the 10,000-acre refuge to its original purpose of harboring migrating birds, while preventing coastal flooding that has bedeviled nearby homeowners and farmers for over a decade. The long-term goal is to create conditions that allow the dunes and the salt marshes behind them to repair themselves to become resilient to the higher ocean levels that are forecast in coming years. And as you can see in this picture, the community expressed their thanks after a bad January 2016 storm -- dunes worked to hold back ocean water and avoid flooding.
- Sediment that aren’t compatible with placement on beaches can be good for wetlands. New methods – such as thin-layer applications are being tried, this one at Prime Hook, NWF in Delaware Bay. Edge wetlands have been recreated along the Chesapeake bay – using community labor for planting reduces costs and builds buy in for these solutions.. In Louisiana landscape scale restoration by reconnecting the Mississippi’s water and sediment to this delta is being pursued. In this picture, you can see wetlands that have formed after 4-5 years as a result of the Caernarvon Fresh water diversion. Now multiple sediment diversions are being designed to restore and sustainably maintain wetlands – using the power and resources of the Mississippi to once again grow wetlands and stave off the effects of subsidence and sea level rise. ter 4-5 years. Segway to sediment diversions…..add new slide on this….w map. And mentioned tech basis, and add in back up slides all the groups.
- Sediment diversion projects mimic nature’s historic land-building by using the power of the river to move sediment and fresh water into nearby basins.
- Bays on US coasts…from San Francisco Bay…to Louisiana…. to Delaware and Chesapeake Bays are actively using oyster reefs. Initially pursued for purposes of improving diminished stocks and improving water quality, they are now also being deployed for erosion control and wave height reduction. Grand Isle & St. Bernard Marsh – TNC Restored 3.4 miles of oyster reefs off the coast of Louisiana that border some 350 acres of marshland. Oyster reefs decrease salt marsh erosion rates by 40%.1 and function as low-crested submerged breakwaters (esp. for low to moderate energy events).2 Oyster reefs are capable of adapting to keep pace with sea-level rise. 3
- Speaking of oyster reefs, let’s pivot to a sort of “hybrid solution” because sometimes you have to go hard. New techniques emerging that are environmentally friendlier twists on breakwaters and bulkheads and sea walls. New York City has designed a oyster friendly breakwater for the South Shore of Staten Island , and has already deployed some of the techniques at bridge rebuttments as seen here, The city of Seattle’s updated sea wall reflects more fish friendly features: enhanced fish migratory corridor in four primary ways: 1. Provide more light: Light penetrating surfaces in the cantilevered sidewalk will allow light to pass through to the water below. 2. Create shallower habitat: Habitat benches will provide a shallow water habitat with gravel surfaces to act as hiding and foraging places for aquatic life. 3. Incorporate more texture: The face of the new seawall has cobbled surfaces and shelves to promote growth of vegetation and marine invertebrates.
- Another hybrid solution is the combination of rock sills and wetland stabilization. Top picture is from Durant’s Point, NC -- back side of Cape Hatteras -- Since its initial construction in 2011 the sill has weathered three hurricanes, a summer of drought, and countless tropical storms. The sill has held up remarkably well, and photos show how the plants are filling in to create habitat for fish, crabs, shrimp and other juvenile organisms. Newer designs use less continuous rock, incorporate more use of native shell and oyster and coir mats and wooden stakes that slowly decay while the marsh is recovering.
- Thinking back to the concepts I started with: organizing our coasts to create multiple lines of defense, here’s the very creative San Francisco Bay Horizontal Levee which serves as a barrier for coastal storm surge. Rather an a huge seawall hugging the coast, its set back and habitat restoration is an integral element of the plan.
- Two big reasons beyond they fact that the look nicer:
- Data on costs continues to be generated. But so far, we are seeing many cases where nature-based defenses can provide the same protection at lower costs, and the can provide sustainable ecosystems and other benefits beyond that protection. Canada funded a study done by …. That looked at 3 soft shore scenarios and considered each approaches’ life cycle costs including initial capital cost, maintenance cost and long-term replacement costs, and found a range of 30 – 70% less cost Natural defenses can reduce costs of hardened or “gray” infrastructure and enhance its performance. Carefully designed mix of soft and hard infrastructure can reduce the height and cost of seawalls. Lower recovery costs where vulnerability to risk kept low (Even the National Inst. for Building Sciences, Report to Congress, 2013, stated, in 2013, that the height of a seawall or dune can be reduced by one to two feet for every mile of wetland.) 1: TNC Data on Shell from (Dow et al., 2013). Shell Global Solutions International compared costs for protecting on- or near- shore oil and gas pipelines: Oyster reef breakwaters cost ~ $1M per mile while standard rock breakwaters cost $1.5 to $3.0M Shell is promoting the use of oyster reef breakwaters 2: The Chesapeake Bay Foundation (for living shorelines vs gray costs): http://www.cbf.org/Document.Doc?id=60 3. Canada Report: Green Shores Initiative – has some site specific analysis – on costs.
- I’ve touched on some of the benefits of nature based solutions: Such as enhanced fisheries productivity of wetlands and oyster beds, and improved water quality, or greater and nice space for recreation. Don’t worry about reading this chart – here’s the take away for the standard list (on the left) of 16 Ecosystem services used by the UN and many organizations on across the top types of nature based or “green solutions” for shore protection and gray solutions. From the number of filled dots you can see the greater potential of providing a lot more services. [Grabowski et al. 2012 estimate the economic value of oyster reef services (for wave attenuation, water quality improvement, etc. but excluding oyster harvesting, as between $5500 and $99,000 per hectare per year. Noting that reefs recover their median restoration costs in 2–14 years. ]
- So, lower cost, multiple benefits, and a higher degree of sustainability - a very good combination. The bottom line is that the outcome of restoring and maintaining naturally defensive habitats is improved resilience of economic, ecologic, and social systems
- In the wake of a disaster, tor both individuals and communities, there is a scramble to spend incoming disaster funds and put those funds to work. Too often due to an impulse is to return to what was familiar - even when a community is fraught with social justice, economic challenges, and high risks and the result is minimalistic restoration and/or traditional gray or engineered infrastructure solutions. In Louisiana we’ve found that having a plan for coastal protection and restoration, that has been publically vetted and enjoys clear political commitment, helps to efficiently capture, and direct spending of post disaster dollars and helps ensure that post disaster funds are applied to the region’s priority projects. If communities shift toward more deliberative processes where planning occurs in advance of disaster to implement projects, they can reduce risk from hazards before disasters strike. Have time to think, plan, and build essential consensus; and Be in a position to maximize the opportunities afforded by recovery dollars when another disaster happens. And, perhaps more important having solid, agreed upon plans increases the chances of finding funding to move projects ahead of a recovery – so that the projects can help before the next storm. Pilots to prove concepts.
- Louisiana formed the Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority – CPRA – following Hurricanes Katrina and Rita as the single state entity with the authority to articulate a clear statement of priorities to achieve comprehensive coastal protection for Louisiana. CPRA’s mandate is to develop, implement, and enforce a comprehensive protection and restoration Coastal Master Plan.
- Rebuild by Design: It represents a new process for collaboratively researching, developing, and implementing ideas for a more resilient future and constitutes a new model for how government can partner with philanthropy, academia, the nonprofit and private sectors, and the design world to bring impacted communities into the heart of the design process. RBD: “Talent, research, design Implementaton” where “Storm Surge meets Groundswell” Common elements – bridge storng regional experise w innovative ideas --
- Vision > buyin > alignment > funding What can we learn from the Dutch for whom living with water and because 25% of which exists below sea level, the spector of potentially disasterous flooding that poses an existential threat for their country -- The whole nation being only about 20% larger than Vancouver Island. [16040 mi2 vs 12,407 mi2] ? The Netherlands’ Room for the River Program was an aggressive plan to address inland flooding from rivers – involved controversial buyouts and relocations. But its approach of intense public outreach and involvement – where public was involved in identifying what it wanted to improve their communities, and individuals were offered many choices and enough money and support to facilitate relocations move. They moved from concept in 2006 to construction in less than 10 years. RBD - convenes a mix of sectors created in the Wake of Hurricane Sandy – was a competition and so much more. It’s a new model for how government can partner with philanthropy, academia, the nonprofit and private sectors, and the design world to bring impacted communities into the heart of the design process. It’s core premise was/is that through collaboration communities can grow stronger and better prepared stand up to whatever challenges tomorrow brings. It brought together government, business, non-profit, and community organizations - to gain a better understanding of how overlapping environmental and human-made vulnerabilities leave cities and regions at risk. RBD uses processes collaborative researching, developing, and implementing ideas.
- Vision > buyin > alignment > funding There are many names for what I see as nuances around the same theme. Bringing a diversity of talents for different disciplines together to ID problems and explore solutions that address more than one problem at a time. Bringing researchers and citizens together to roll up their sleeves and learn from each other to understand future conditions & community desires & and explore ideas.; Dutch Dialogues: Now I believe a trademarked name. Workshops that combine the Dutch approach to integrated water management – acquired over centuries of living with water – with American expertise to address water problems in U.S. cities such as flooding, poor water quality, sea level rise, and subsidence. Initially held in New Orleans, now used in Norfolk, New York, Bridgeport, St. Louis, Tampa Bay, and Los Angeles. The Dutch Dialogues strives to integrate flood risk mitigation, engineering, spatial planning, urban design, environmental restoration, community amenities, and economic development. While such integration is challenging, it provides an incredible opportunity for innovative approaches to improve the quality of life and economies of waterfront communities.
- Still need a conclusion/crescendo.
- While the Coastal Master Plan is the state’s plan, the legislature has directed CPRA to lead the development and implementation. The Coastal Master Plan team is led by individuals from CPRA, and supported by The Water Institute of the Gulf, The RAND Corporation, Arcadis, and Emergent Method.
- When all is said and done, this is a Louisiana plan for Louisiana people. That’s why the primary data gathering and modeling efforts are being led by those who know the coast firsthand. They know exactly how urgently we need solutions for our coast because they see the land loss and live with the flooding and hurricanes that affect us all. The technical team includes 70 experts from a wide range of organizations who have developed and revised models and provided technical guidance to support the 2017 Coastal Master Plan. Andd TECHNICAL ADVISORY COMMITTEES too
- The Framework Development Team is made up of individuals representing a variety of key stakeholder groups. This group was part of the 2012 effort, and it will continue to be utilized as CPRA seeks input for the 2017 Coastal Master Plan. This team includes representation from local parishes, state and federal agencies, academia, and non-profits, as well as industry. This is a group CPRA works with to make sure that a wide variety of viewpoints are heard and incorporated into the ideas and recommendations that will influence the 2017 Coastal Master Plan. The FDT also functions as a communications conduit by allowing representatives to share what we’re working on with their stakeholders, and then share stakeholder thoughts back with CPRA as well. This process has been very beneficial in thinking through a lot of issues that may not have been on CPRA’s radar before. You can visit CPRA’s website for a complete list of FDT members, as well as members of all of the groups involved throughout the 2017 Coastal Master Plan effort.