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| The deck of the Ocean Mist,
one of the most vulnerable local businesses to coastal erosion. (Photo by Bob Plain) |
By Ray Huling on August 6, 2012
The
Journal ran a story Sunday on Rhode Island’s new efforts to deal with
coastal erosion. It’s a decent piece, but it understresses a couple
of important points and misses a few more.
First, the problem of shore erosion has been and will
continue to be intensified by sea level rises pushed by global warming, which,
yes, is caused by people.
In fact, we might do well to skip the middle man and just
say that climate change, like Soylent Green, is people. People are accelerating
the erosion of Rhode Island’s shore.
That approach would be perhaps uncomfortably blunt, but
the ProJo is suspiciously tactful on the matter. Their article mentions rising
sea levels and worsening storms as if these phenomena are happening for no
reason at all.
Second, it’s important to note that the problem of shore
erosion requires collective action. We’re talking about a threat to common
property–property no one in Rhode Island can own privately.
Sure, private property is in danger, too, but the site of
the first damage and of the bulwarks against further damage will be the
commonly-owned shore.
Towards the end, the article has an interesting thing to
say about the different incentives posed by slow erosion and big emergencies,
such as hurricanes, but it leaves understated the importance of the property
status of Rhode Island’s shore.
Then there a couple of things left entirely unsaid. Most
important among them is a question: what does Rhode Island want to do with its
life?
The impetus for the ProJo piece are the actions being
taken by RI’s Coastal Resources Management Council to combat shore erosion,
mainly a $1.3 million study that will lead to a Special Area Management Plan.
Much of the article focuses on the technical solutions to
shore erosion the study may discover, but more important are the values the
study will bring to the fore–the values of the people who live around
Narragansett Bay. What do they actually want out of the Bay? What do they want
it to do?
Other people, in other places, have expressed quite clear
values in their approach to caring for their shores. Last month, North Carolina
infamously, madly, risibly drafted a bill that would require the state to
ignore accelerated sea level rise in its shore management planning.
When this brand of stupidity makes it to the level of a
state legislature and becomes formalized in actual legislation, it transforms
into something more than stupidity: it’s now a value. North Carolinians prefer
posturing against anthropogenic climate change to having a beautiful, healthy
shore. It’s a choice.
We’ll see what choices Rhode Islanders make as the CRMC
study develops.
The other thing–a very important thing–the ProJo article
misses is the strong evidence that SAMPs can work. After the 2003 fish kill in
Greenwich Bay, CRMC convened some big meetings to figure out what could be done
to prevent such calamities. One of the outcomes was the Greenwich Bay Special
Area Management Plan.
This plan called for, among other things, sewer tie-ins
for homes by the shore. The problem that needed to be addressed was that
nitrates from septic tanks leech into the Bay where they feed huge algae
blooms, which, after they blossom, die and decompose.
The bacteria that feed on the decomposing algae suck up
massive amounts of oxygen, and this process can cause hypoxia, low-oxygen
events that asphyxiate fish.
There is evidence that the Greenwich Bay SAMP has cleaned
up the Bay. Warwick delivered lots of sewer tie-ins, and, in 2010, DEM and the
Department of Health found that a large patch of water in front of Apponaug
Cove, a patch of water closed for almost two decades on account of bad fecal
coliform bacteria counts, had become clean enough to open for shellfishing.
That’s serious. The bacterial standard for shellfishing
is more stringent than that for drinking water. So, by caring for the poor
menhaden who died in 2003, the people who live around Narragansett Bay made a
thick bed of quahaugs available for commercial harvest in 2010. In mid-December
of that year, several hundred guys crammed into the water in front of Apponaug
Cove to make a day’s pay digging quahaugs.
The Bay is interconnected. It’s complex. But it can be
managed properly. It can be well-kept. The important thing to recognize is, not
only can Rhode Islanders’ values be reflected in the actions they take with
regard to the Bay, but these values will be reflected, no matter what.
