Boston Harbor Flood Protection Projects

[bigeman312]

Why not have it be used as a walking path like around Pleasure Bay in Southie?

 

[Scott]

This project is as dead as Columbus Center but there is action being taken.

Preparing for climate change

Boston residents are already affected by extreme heat, rain, snow and flooding. These trends will only continue. The City launched Climate Ready Boston to help Boston plan for the impacts of climate change and build a resilient future. Climate Ready Boston is an ongoing initiative. We work with...

www.boston.gov

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

I fully support a sea wall in Boston and have detailed above how I’d like to see it done.

That being said, it’s important to note that New Bedford’s geography lends itself more readily to a functional seawall. For example, if a seawall were constructed to protect Boston’s inner harbor (from Seaport to Eastie/Logan), it would only be effective to five feet above MHHW. After that, we’d have inundation via the Chelsea Creek from Constitution Beach, Belle Isle Marsh, and Revere Beach.

So, an effective seawall in Boston needs to be a much more involved undertaking than New Bedford, just because of our geography.

https://commonwealthmagazine.org/environment/rising-sea-levels-challenging-new-bedford-hurricane-barrier/

New Bedford's wall may not be so functional after all.

 

[dhawkins]

Harbor barrier options as seen on reddit. Interesting, only two comments.

level 1
StoJa9
·7 min. ago

For....??



level 1
Saucy__B
·8 min. ago

Fuck it, just build one from P-Town to Gloucester

 

[JeffDowntown]

If you don't build barriers further north than Winthrop, don't you just get back-door flooding from the area around Beachmont and Wonderland back to the Chelsea Creek and hence the Inner Harbor?

Hydrologically, I think you have to go at least as far north as Nahant and maybe further to actually protect Boston's core.

 

[stellarfun]

......new resiliency plan, commissioned by the nonprofit Wharf District Council, that outlines $1.2 billion worth of upgrades to the city’s waterfront, from Christopher Columbus Park to the Fort Point Channel and back up to Quincy Market.

The long-awaited plan aims to protect about $3.9 billion in crucial downtown infrastructure, including the Central Artery Tunnel and its entrance, the Harborwalk, tunnels for the MBTA’s Silver and Blue lines and the Aquarium Station, the Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway, historic buildings, and the city’s electric grid.

Representatives from Wu’s office and the Boston Planning & Development Agency declined to discuss the Wharf District Council plan or its potential impact on the downtown waterfront, e-mailing a statement that said: “The resilience plan is separate from and doesn’t require an update to the Municipal Harbor Plan.”

A likely next step, the city spokesperson said in an e-mail, is to “review this plan through the City’s partnership with the Army Corps of Engineers,” which is studying resiliency efforts across the city — including a potential storm surge barrier underneath a future Northern Avenue Bridge.

New decks and docks would elevate a mile and a half of Boston’s waterfront, protecting downtown from devastating floods. Flood-storage tanks would be built underneath buildings that sit atop pilings, to gather runoff during storms. Sloped shorelines would double as park space — allowing the public continued access even as the city takes steps to protect itself from sea-level rise.

One key player, the New England Aquarium, called the council plan a “pioneering effort” that requires bringing together multiple stakeholders.

“We’ve been really hyper-invested in this,.." [<Rick Musiol, the aquarium’s vice president of external relations ].
...
The collaboration can be a model for other municipalities’ resiliency plans, said Duna Chiofaro, vice president of The Chiofaro Co., the real estate firm behind the proposed tower at the Harbor Garage.

“It’s a necessary step, certainly for this neighborhood, to get on the same page,” he said.

‘This is Boston’s big challenge’: A new plan to defend downtown against sea-level rise - The Boston Globe

A long-awaited resiliency plan for Boston’s Wharf District outlines $1.2 billion worth of upgrades to protect the waterfront from flooding.

www.bostonglobe.com

 

[stefal]

Interested to learn how they arrive at the $3.9 billion figure... I would have figured it'd be higher than that..

 

[stick n move]

Also instead of telling chiofaro to gfy wouldnt it make more sense to get concessions from him to help build some of the mitigation measures while redeveloping the site at the same time? Kill 2 birds with one stone. He had already planned on redeveloping the waterfront anyways, they could just make him have to align the development to whatever standard they set for storm mitigation. Makes more sense than paying for it all with taxpayer funds or bonds or whatever. Or are we really going to spend billions on the waterfront and still have the garage at the end? Should be a no brainer.

 

[stellarfun]

Also instead of telling chiofaro to gfy wouldnt it make more sense to get concessions from him to help build some of the mitigation measures while redeveloping the site at the same time? Kill 2 birds with one stone. He had already planned on redeveloping the waterfront anyways, they could just make him have to align the development to whatever standard they set for storm mitigation. Makes more sense than paying for it all with taxpayer funds or bonds or whatever. Or are we really going to spend billions on the waterfront and still have the garage at the end? Should be a no brainer.

Chiofaro's plan for the Pinnacle was/is to elevate the base of the building by x feet above Boston City Base. ( I can't remember the exact elevation but recall that one would have up to walk up a flight of steps, or a long ramp to access the ground floor from the Greenway.) The new underground garage would be protected by a moveable barrier. In essence, the Pinnacle would appear like an island as the waters of Boston harbor inundated the surrounding street grid and lapped at the base of other buildings.

The Globe article mentions that the city is spending $8 million to address the recurring flooding of Long Wharf during king tides. No specifics as to what that entails.

 

[stick n move]

Heres the report by the wharf district council complete with renders of what the raised structures could look like.

https://d84708cf-4e09-46d6-b646-d74...d/c2d761_9be14d2bd2814cc7bf9e88ea4bcab5db.pdf

 

[BeyondRevenue]

Another too little too late band-aid.
Fort Point does a Fort Point solution.
Wharf District does a Wharf District solution. It’s all self-interested, shortsighted dike fingering.

We should build a sea wall from Deer Island to Hull to serve the needs of the ENTIRE harbor. And yes we can make it Panamax passable at low tide as extra high tides become the norm.
in less than a decade, Thwaite’s Glacier will break off and throw everyone’s tide estimates into the shredder.

 

[bigeman312]

Another too little too late band-aid.
Fort Point does a Fort Point solution.
Wharf District does a Wharf District solution. It’s all self-interested, shortsighted dike fingering.

We should build a sea wall from Deer Island to Hull to serve the needs of the ENTIRE harbor. And yes we can make it Panamax passable at low tide as extra high tides become the norm.
in less than a decade, Thwaite’s Glacier will break off and throw everyone’s tide estimates into the shredder.

I agree with the sentiment and would have agreed with every word of this comment as recently as a year ago, but as I’ve learned more about Thwaites, it appears that it’s predicted to have a long duration collapse (watch this comment be a jinx and the entire thing collapses overnight leading to 10 feet of sea level rise globally.)

As far as I understand, based on the current state of scientific understanding, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) estimates a worst-case scenario of up to 1.1 meters (about 3.6 feet) of sea level rise by 2100.

This estimate includes contributions from all sources, not just Thwaites Glacier. If Thwaites were to collapse entirely, it's generally agreed that the process would likely take several centuries to a millennium due to the sheer volume of ice involved.

Rapid action to mitigate and adapt to climate change is still very important.

 

[BeyondRevenue]

I agree with the sentiment and would have agreed with every word of this comment as recently as a year ago, but as I’ve learned more about Thwaites, it appears that it’s predicted to have a long duration collapse (watch this comment be jinx and the entire thing collapses overnight leaded to 10 feet of sea level rise globally.)

As far as I understand, based on the current state of scientific understanding, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) estimates a worst-case scenario of up to 1.1 meters (about 3.6 feet) of sea level rise by 2100.

This estimate includes contributions from all sources, not just Thwaites Glacier. If Thwaites were to collapse entirely, it's generally agreed that the process would likely take several centuries to a millennium due to the sheer volume of ice involved.

Rapid action to mitigate and adapt to climate change is still very important.

The initial T break off will probably bring king tides 4 or 5 times a year and raise global tides by .6 meters - which doesn’t sound like much, but the lobby of Battery Wharf and every basement on Commercial Street in the North End will flood with 0.3 + king tide + small storm.
To your point, the slow motion cascade of everything behind Thwaites starting to slide and melt will be devastating, but not immediately.
We’ll all suffocate from jumping methane levels by then… so no worries.
Wheeeeeeeee!

 

[Equilibria]

@BeeLine, perhaps change the thread title to something more general... maybe "Boston Harbor Flood Protection Projects"?

Keeping Boston Harbor from reclaiming much of the downtown waterfront could require raising the Harborwalk, installing new pumps, pipes and tanks, report says

A report released by the Wharf District Council, which covers the downtown waterfront between the North End and Fort Point Channel, says the area is going to need extensive work to keep it from turning into an extension of Boston Harbor as sea levels continue to rise. Read more.

www.universalhub.com

From the report:

 

[bigpicture7]

@BeeLine, perhaps change the thread title to something more general... maybe "Boston Harbor Flood Protection Projects"?

Better yet, create a new thread for Boston Land-Based Flood Resiliency Measures (beginning with Stellarfun's June 2nd post) and separate it from the Harbor Flood Barrier initiative. These really are distinct things. I share the view that the large scale ocean barrier is commensurate with the monumental task at hand, but we should be able to discuss local measures too. It's analagous to a condo owner purchasing a unit insurance policy while the condo association also owns a master policy. I am 100% for my association spending on a robust master policy, despite my concurrent investment in a unit policy.

EDIT: further, for those of us excited about the prospect for progress on a large scale ocean barrier, it is disheartening to see this thread bumped every time someone provides an update (or sh!ts on) some local berm or flood storage tank project update. Bumping the ocean barrier thread should be for when there's an actual update on that project.
EDIT EDIT: and I know (and respect) that some are inclined to critique the shortfalls and false confidence of local measures, yet feel such critiques would be best placed in a thread about such measures (the measures toward which the critiques are aimed, rather than in the thread for which they are not aimed).

 

[stellarfun]

Time is already running out with respect to near-term measures. Unless resiliency measures are taken and put in place in the next 10-20 years, buildings could become uninsurable.

From the NY Times.

This month, the largest homeowner insurance company in California, State Farm, announced that it would stop selling coverage to homeowners. That’s not just in wildfire zones, but everywhere in the state.

Insurance companies, tired of losing money, are raising rates, restricting coverage or pulling out of some areas altogether — making it more expensive for people to live in their homes.

In Louisiana, the top insurance official says the market is in crisis, and is offering millions of dollars in subsidies to try to draw insurers to the state.

And in much of Florida, homeowners are increasingly struggling to buy storm coverage. Most big insurers have pulled out of the state already, sending homeowners to smaller private companies that are straining to stay in business.

California’s woes resemble a slow-motion version of what Florida experienced after Hurricane Andrew devastated Miami in 1992. The losses bankrupted some insurers and caused most national carriers to pull out of the state.

In response, Florida established a complicated system: a market based on small insurance companies, backed up by Citizens Property Insurance Corporation, a state-mandated company that would provide windstorm coverage for homeowners who couldn’t find private insurance.

For a while, it mostly worked. Then came Hurricane Irma.

The 2017 hurricane, which made landfall in the Florida Keys as a Category 4 storm before moving up the coast, didn’t cause a particularly great amount of damage. But it was the first in a series of storms, culminating in Hurricane Ian last October, that broke the model insurers had relied on: One bad year of claims, followed by a few quiet years to build back their reserves.

Since Irma, almost every year has been bad.

Private insurers began to struggle to pay their claims; some went out of business. Those that survived increased their rates significantly.

More people have left the private market for Citizens, which recently became the state’s largest insurance provider, according to Michael Peltier, a spokesman. But Citizens won’t cover homes with a replacement cost of more than $700,000, or $1 million in Miami-Dade County and the Florida Keys.

That leaves those homeowners with no choice but private coverage — and in parts of the state, that coverage is getting harder to find, Mr. Peltier said.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/31/...te=1&user_id=da580a4cd1e82ea0128214184976a2ac

“You can’t just build in high-risk areas indefinitely, and expect it to be insurable at an affordable rate,” said Zac J. Taylor, a professor at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands who focuses on the impact of climate change on insurance and real estate, and who grew up in Florida.

Ian’s aftermath shows how climate change is increasingly eroding the financial underpinnings of modern American life. Without insurance, banks won’t issue a mortgage; without a mortgage, most prospective homeowners can’t buy a home. With fewer buyers, home prices fall, and new development can slow or even come to a stop.

“You need a private insurance market to have a mortgage market,” Dr. Taylor said. “Will working- and middle-class homeownership remain viable in Florida in the long term?”

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/13/...tion=click&module=RelatedLinks&pgtype=Article

^^^ Not that different than what happens if the FAA declares a 700 foot tower would be a hazard to aircraft. You can still build that 700 foot tower, but it is uninsurable. Florida has no state income tax, but casualty insurance premiums for homeowners are more than making up for it, and that's if you can find the insurance in the first place.

equilibria, thanx for grabbing a few of the images from the report. The list of consulting engineers who helped prepare the report was of first-rate firms..
------------------
June 5 update.

On June 4,

Allstate, the state’s fourth-largest property and casualty insurance provider, has stopped selling new home, condominium or commercial insurance policies in California, the company said in an emailed statement. It is the latest insurance giant to say it will no longer offer coverage, citing worsening climate and higher building costs that have made it harder to do business in the nation’s most-populous state.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/04/business/allstate-insurance-california.html?campaign_id=49&emc=edit_ca_20230605&instance_id=94243&nl=california-today&regi_id=10059472&segment_id=134711&te=1&user_id=da580a4cd1e82ea0128214184976a2ac

 

[stick n move]

$12 million plan seeks to promote recreation and climate resilience in Dorchester waterfront

“Tenean Beach would be transformed into a shield against rising sea levels under a plan laid out last Thursday by Boston Planning and Development Agency officials.

The proposal includes new and expanded basketball and tennis courts, a lawn ideal for small events and shady picnic areas — all of which would join an existing playground. It also seeks to connect the new beachscape to an open space network, including the Harborwalk and the Neponset Greenway trail.

Two community workshops have already been held to gather input, and the BPDA has hired SCAPE Landscape Architecture to work up solution possibilities given the area — in particular the beach and nearby Conley Street, which runs under I-93 — is expected to face increased flooding in the future.

The agency’s project team worked with the Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation (DCR) and other state and city agencies during the proposal’s design process.

If left untouched, the beach will continue to flood, and eventually affect the MBTA’s Red Line extension to Braintree, which runs through the area, as does I-93. Morrissey Boulevard, another key roadway, is also nearby, and tidewaters and storm waters regularly flood its lanes near the entrance to the UMass Boston campus.”

https://www.wbur.org/news/2023/08/02/tenean-beach-flood-risk-sea-level-development

 

[stick n move]

More images

SCAPE’s coastal resiliency plan for Boston moves ahead

“A portion of SCAPE’s coastal resiliency plan for the city of Boston may be implemented soon. On July 27, the Boston Planning and Development Agency (BPDA) announced plans to fortify Tenean Beach, a public beach in the city’s Dorchester neighborhood, using designs by SCAPE Landscape Architecture and Woods Hole Group, an engineering firm based in Cape Cod, Massachusetts. BPDA’s goal is to protect Dorchester, I-93, and the MBTA Red Line from rising sea levels while providing greater access to nature and public space in an underserved community.


The $12 million project combines recreation and climate resilience. While simultaneously functioning as a land berm to insulate vital transportation infrastructure, SCAPE’s design will offer new and improved basketball and tennis courts, shaded picnic areas, and an upgraded playground. The new landscaping will connect Tenean Beach via pathways for pedestrians and cyclists to Boston’s Harborwalkand the Neponset Greenway Trail, an 8-mile linear park that hugs Boston’s shore.”

Link

 

[Scott]

Also this is the extension of the Harborwalk that most Dot residents advocated for as opposed to the current extension being built now that runs behind buildings

 

[cburns]

Also this is the extension of the Harborwalk that most Dot residents advocated for as opposed to the current extension being built now that runs behind buildings

It would have been nicer to be along the eastern berm for 93, sure, but I don't think this will be terrible, nor is it unprecedented on this trail.

The stretch between Neponset Park and Hallet St is quite similar to this orientation flanked by the Keystone Building (image below). I think when vegetation grows in it on the new stretch between Conley St and Victory Rd will be fine and will pragmatically become a safer means to traverse from one scenic area to the next on a faster time scale and smaller budget than the originally proposed alignment.