Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse chose the
flood-prone Island Park section of Portsmouth as the backdrop to introduce the
National Oceans and Coastal Security Fund. With local business, government
leaders, and NGOs looking on, Whitehouse announced that the fund received its
first $30 million appropriation in last month’s omnibus spending bill.
Whitehouse began by showing the two
dozen attendees at the Thriving Tree Coffee House a map of Island Park with
multiple levels of potential sea level rise, pointing out the location where
they sat, amid swaths of color indicating the land around them that could be
underwater by the end of the century.
“Businesses like this, communities
like Island Park, municipalities like Portsmouth need resources,” said
Whitehouse. “It is not baked into their budget to be able to do the things that
need to be done: to redo the FEMA mapping which isn’t any good, to take a look
at what’s happening to beaches. We have a beach SAMP going on run by Coastal
Resources Management Council (CRMC), but it’s starved for resources.”
The fund, which grew out of legislation Whitehouse first introduced in 2015, would provide a dedicated funding stream for grants to local governments, states, universities, NGOs, and public-private partnerships. Applications include hardening coastal infrastructure, building community resiliency, investing in restoration, and supporting ocean and coastal research.
“For the first time we finally have
an appropriation lined up and NOAA and the National Fish and Wildlife
Foundation will administer the first round of 30 million dollars in grants,”
said Whitehouse.
“I view this as a really important foothold, but that number frankly ought to be ten times that big. It perhaps even ought to be 100 times that big when you consider what so many coastal communities around our country are facing. We’re not quite yet at the stage of Alaska where they’re having to get special appropriations to move entire towns out of the way of sea level rise, but that gives a sense of how serious this can become if we don’t get ahead of it.”
“I view this as a really important foothold, but that number frankly ought to be ten times that big. It perhaps even ought to be 100 times that big when you consider what so many coastal communities around our country are facing. We’re not quite yet at the stage of Alaska where they’re having to get special appropriations to move entire towns out of the way of sea level rise, but that gives a sense of how serious this can become if we don’t get ahead of it.”
The Island Park section of
Portsmouth was once home to Cashman’s Amusement Park and the second-largest
roller coaster in New England, before it was decimated by the Hurricane of
1938. It features hundreds of densely packed homes less than 15 feet above mean
high tide all accessed from a main road — Park Avenue — which runs along
the shore of the Sakonnet River. Town Planner Gary Crosby explained the unique
threat this poses.
“Park Avenue is a state road where storm water
is captured in a series of catch basins,” said Crosby, “And the water goes
underneath the seawall out to discharge out on the beach.” Crosby recalled how
in 2016, during the highest, “king” tides, sea water backed up level with the
grates of the catch basins.
“In 2016, it occurred on three days of the year. By 2040, a 4.0 tide would be exactly what we are seeing with one foot of sea level rise, happening 122 days out of the year. That roadway is going to be flooded a third of the days out of the year, it’s going to render this neighborhood dysfunctional.”
“In 2016, it occurred on three days of the year. By 2040, a 4.0 tide would be exactly what we are seeing with one foot of sea level rise, happening 122 days out of the year. That roadway is going to be flooded a third of the days out of the year, it’s going to render this neighborhood dysfunctional.”
Local business owner Brandon Kidd,
who has run Portsmouth’s Pirate Cove Marina for 50 years, talked about the
changes his business had to make over that time, including installing higher
and higher pilings to address rising sea levels.
“The business community of Island Park is dependent on the ability of our patrons to reach us, regardless of the weather or the height of the tide,” said Kidd. “The collective clientele we all serve come from communities far and wide and Senator Whitehouse’s work will help our commerce to continue for future generations.”
“The business community of Island Park is dependent on the ability of our patrons to reach us, regardless of the weather or the height of the tide,” said Kidd. “The collective clientele we all serve come from communities far and wide and Senator Whitehouse’s work will help our commerce to continue for future generations.”
Save The Bay Executive Director
Jonathan Stone called attendees’ attention to a fish tank in the corner of the
room. “There’s a good example of what the Bay is going to look like soon,” said
Stone.
“Save The Bay operates a small aquarium at First Beach in Newport, and we have an exhibit called “The Bay of the Future.” It’s filled, Stone said, with tropical fish that are commercial by-catch. “We call them the strays, but they’re actually here more and more of the year. It’s angelfish and boxfish and other species — that’s another window into the Bay of the future.”
“Save The Bay operates a small aquarium at First Beach in Newport, and we have an exhibit called “The Bay of the Future.” It’s filled, Stone said, with tropical fish that are commercial by-catch. “We call them the strays, but they’re actually here more and more of the year. It’s angelfish and boxfish and other species — that’s another window into the Bay of the future.”
Stone praised Whitehouse’s
successful efforts to build bipartisan support for the ocean fund, and put in a
plug for Gov. Raimondo’s $5M green economy and clean water bond. “This funds
various important investments in public infrastructure,” said Stone. “And for
the first time ever the governor included a tranch of money for coastal
resiliency. I urge you please call your state rep or your state Senator and
urge them to support putting this bond before the voters.”
He noted the relevance of the bond for the ocean fund, “The federal funding comes with a match. This state money would be usable as a match to federal grants. It’s not a huge sum of money, but it is a step down the road of providing communities with state and federal resources.”
He noted the relevance of the bond for the ocean fund, “The federal funding comes with a match. This state money would be usable as a match to federal grants. It’s not a huge sum of money, but it is a step down the road of providing communities with state and federal resources.”
Whitehouse explained to a reporter
how he was able to get the funding for the initiative through the current
Congress. “A couple of things broke our way,” he said. “First of all I’ve been
working on this for a long time and around the Senate, people appreciate
persistence. And so even people who didn’t like it had kind of come around.”
He also had words of thanks for several colleagues, including Sen. Richard Shelby (AL), head of the Appropriations Subcommittee “whose staff helped come up with a solution that made this possible,” and Sen. John Kennedy (LA). “He has traditional communities that are actually already in retreat and they are having to abandon the place that they’ve lived for hundreds of years. So it’s a very real thing for him.”
He also had words of thanks for several colleagues, including Sen. Richard Shelby (AL), head of the Appropriations Subcommittee “whose staff helped come up with a solution that made this possible,” and Sen. John Kennedy (LA). “He has traditional communities that are actually already in retreat and they are having to abandon the place that they’ve lived for hundreds of years. So it’s a very real thing for him.”
Portsmouth Town Council president
Keith Hamilton expressed cautious optimism. “My hope is just that there is
funding available for Portsmouth,” he said. “I hope that [Whitehouse] being
here Portsmouth is a harbinger of good things to come and that there is funding
available for us here to help the town planner.”
Rhode Island’s chief
resilience officer Shaun O’Rourke was on hand and explained the
significance of the fund to a reporter. “There’s no way we’re going to solve
all these problems with one source of funding,” he said. “This takes multiple
sources, from multiple different areas, And one of them is federal, one of them
a state, and one of them is local. The way we’re going to start to move the
needle on these projects is by stacking and stretching these limited resources.”