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FourAM t1_j5mk8h6 wrote

Doesn’t this happen semi-regularly at Long Wharf?

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Elfich47 t1_j5mnuth wrote

The warning was there over five years ago when FEMA updated their flood maps.

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PuritanSettler1620 t1_j5mpmjx wrote

Mayor Wu really needs to start building Sea walls. To fit with the "big dig" naming convention I reckon we should call it the "tall wall" and get 100 billion in federal funding.

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Ordie100 t1_j5mz0dq wrote

We see these pictures every time there's a storm, and I've heard of approximately 18,000 waterfront planning studies, but does the city have any real, funded capital plan to fix long wharf? Like it clearly needs it's elevation raising a few feet, ideally it needed it about 50 years ago, so why haven't we done anything? If we can't fix things that already regularly flood what hope do we have for the future?

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Commercial_Board6680 t1_j5n28l3 wrote

I'm surprised by the lack of flooding in my area of Eastie considering its built on landfill.

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huyzee t1_j5n3eey wrote

I’ve hypothesized that in the future, there will be demand for engineers that update buildings and make them taller to accommodate for rising sea levels.

Boston will probably resemble Venice in many neighborhoods

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ahecht t1_j5n6jaz wrote

Replying to huyzee (#1,462,398)

> Boston will probably resemble Venice in many neighborhood

Slowly sinking while all the residents get priced out of housing and no one who works there can actually afford to live there?

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theblinkenlights t1_j5n8926 wrote

If there’s cars parked on Long Wharf, it’s not submerged yet.

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Curious_Buffalo_1206 t1_j5n9zf8 wrote

Replying to scottieducati (#1,462,597)

By capital, do you mean Beacon Hill? We’ll all be long dead before Beacon Hill is underwater. The Seaport will be an early casualty of managed retreat, and nothing of value will be lost. Most of Boston can be saved on a reasonable timeframe.

I mean, unless by long term, you mean when all the glaciers melt and Concord, NH is also underwater. But even in the most doomer scenario imaginable, that’s not going to happen for centuries.

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swap_catz t1_j5nfgj0 wrote

Replying to Ordie100 (#1,461,993)

Not sure what happened to it but we need to lock the bay. There was a proposal to lock the harbor islands using dredged sand from the bay and expand the main shopping channel to also allow modern cargo ships. The problem is the Dredging Act currently prevents this and requires congress or executive order to repeal it.

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[deleted] t1_j5nhqq1 wrote

Replying to Ordie100 (#1,463,159)

10 feet is the worst case prediction, assuming continued CO2 pollution at 2020 levels. In that case, Boston is a goner.

All it will take is the end of the Thwaites glacier, which is collapsing at a rate about 15x faster than expected.

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guisar t1_j5nncxt wrote

Replying to [deleted] (#1,463,689)

It's like the Midwest, instead of recognizing our existential threats, we ignore them until our irrelevance leaves us feeling like we're not missing anything anyway.

People are just waiting until (and after, look at FL) insurance isn't available to cover them. Then there will be a HUGE and subsidized movement to higher ground. We are, overall, neither that smart nor comfortable with change, no matter how inevitable.

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NomNomDePlume t1_j5non9z wrote

Beacon Hill won't act on it because they want the statehouse to be a beach house.

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-Reddititis t1_j5nyb3k wrote

This looks like a rich-people problem.

−1

brufleth t1_j5o247x wrote

Replying to FourAM (#1,460,707)

Yes. A little larger than average high tide (which are cyclical) with a little surge and you get this. It gets a little worse over time, but it is routine.

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parrano357 t1_j5odjrn wrote

classic reddit city subreddit jizzing their pants over a storm surge. theres a reason celebrities and politicians are still buying up all the coastline properties in LA, palm beach, hamptons and nantucket/vineyard and its not because they are afraid of global warming

−4

Professional_Win_332 t1_j5ofvwl wrote

Replying to Elfich47 (#1,465,840)

Simple, they adjust the flood maps so more people have to get flood insurance, and those who have it have to pay more. They don’t adjust them because they think there will be more flooding, they are adjusted to make more money.

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itsonlyastrongbuzz t1_j5ohf8u wrote

Replying to Curious_Buffalo_1206 (#1,463,011)

Ahhh yes.

All of our subways, highways, and low lying neighborhoods will be flooded, underground utilities like gas, sewer, and water mains will be submerged at high tide and unable to be accessed/repaired, but as long as the literal steps to the State House are dry, “everything is fine.”

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Elfich47 t1_j5oiz1q wrote

Replying to Professional_Win_332 (#1,466,275)

FEMA doesn’t make money like that. They are a government agency and their funding is set by congress. And no, they don’t get kickback from insurance companies either. If that was tried people would go to prison.

And it is just amazing how the areas that FEMA warns “this is a flood risk” are the areas that end up getting flooded. I’m sure it’s just a coincidence.

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McFlyParadox t1_j5oj0df wrote

Replying to swap_catz (#1,463,508)

The main issue with this is that it would severely impede water changes in the bay. It would effectively be a sewer in fairly short order, if you tried to build sea walls between the harbor islands. You could maybe build a lock system between Castle Island and the Airport, and that would be small enough that you could submerge the whole system except during storms (like the Thames River, and the Venice Lagoon) and it would protect the waterfront in downtown, but you couldn't do that to the entire bay.

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Professional_Win_332 t1_j5ojker wrote

Replying to Elfich47 (#1,466,630)

It’s cute that you think that people in government and politicians don’t get kick backs. All you have to do is see how much money all these people make while they are in office. They get it in a lot of ways, for doing favors for big business. One hand hand greases the other. And there are so many places on the FEMA flood maps that have never flooded in history. They are taken peoples unreasonable fears of climate change and exploiting them for tons of money. If you honestly don’t believe that, then you need to pay attention more.

−1

Professional_Win_332 t1_j5okcra wrote

Replying to Elfich47 (#1,466,749)

That is a simple thing for you to say. I have to buy flood insurance. Through private company, it costs $3300 a year. Through FEMA, it’s over $8000. Any explanation you would like to share why there is such a difference?

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Professional_Win_332 t1_j5olanw wrote

Replying to Elfich47 (#1,466,800)

There are a lot of ways around regulations, you should be so naive. When programs like this are set up, they are taken advantage of and people exploit money off of them. For every study saying there is going to be 4 feet of sea level rise over the next 30 years, there are others that say it will be negligible. Seeing that sea level rise has been negligible for the last 100 years, I believe what I see. But you believe what you want. Just funny that you believe politicians are honest and they earn their money fair and square. Haha

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Elfich47 t1_j5olgse wrote

Replying to Professional_Win_332 (#1,466,776)

Because I would bet FEMA is the insurer of last resort and they have to take a much wider band of applicants - and they have to balance their books according to federal regulations. So FEMA ends up with a lot of people who can;t get flood insurance anywhere else because the regular insurers have pulled out of the market.

I expect if you read through their financials you would see exactly how much they took in in premiums and how much they paid out. All,of that is publicly record and available for review if you want to review it.

Florida has this problem right now where the state insurer of last resort is caught having to many applicants and having to cover much more than it had ever anticipated. And this is because the normal insurance companies are either pulling off the coast of Florida or out of the state entirely.

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DiMarcoTheGawd t1_j5olmbk wrote

What does this do to the first floors of all these buildings? Cannot be good for their longevity (assuming they’re around in another 50 years).

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informal_bukkake t1_j5oopdq wrote

WE SHOULD DIG A MOAT! (I’ll give you gold if you can guess what I’m referencing)

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AgitatedEggplant t1_j5opj8h wrote

I wonder when Boston will roll out kayak rentals like those Bluebikes

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Elfich47 t1_j5opyw5 wrote

Replying to Professional_Win_332 (#1,466,865)

The amount of sea level rise (last hundred years according to NASA) has been 6-8 inches. That is not negligible. It is slow though; if you are not taking very careful measurements it is easy to overlook.

And there are not many (if any) credible reports talking about four feet of sea level rise.

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Commercial_Board6680 t1_j5ot9po wrote

Replying to jimjimbo111 (#1,462,389)

Not that far from where I used to live before a condo developer took over the block.

Yes, the developers are scoundrels taking the money and leaving town afterwards, but who approved their work? Developers can't do shit without city approval. All this concern and anger should be directed at the planning boards/committees, because these are the assholes approving our city's destruction.

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swap_catz t1_j5othpq wrote

Replying to McFlyParadox (#1,466,634)

Not exactly. The Nederlands is mostly locked and without it, Amsterdam would be underwater. Humans have done this before and it's not a huge issue. No one is swimming in Boston Bay anyways. Note this proposal was supposed to be for Long Island to Deer Island, then Deer to Moon if I'm not mistaken. It could've been all the way to Hull too. The body of water would be so large it would likely be fine.

Also, the alternative is we just let South Boston, Charlestown, and chunks of downtown sink over the next 30 years. As much as I totally think most of South Boston is a scam and just yuppie fast luxury homes for dumb transplants that dont know any better, I doubt we'll just let it become an intertidal zone. We're between a rock and a hard place here. Keep in mind this has been done before the Dredging Act. Back Bay was a Bay. We've rerouted and moved large bodies of water with no issues just making them artificial lakes.

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swap_catz t1_j5ovfxt wrote

Replying to BasilExposition75 (#1,467,756)

It's a Congress issue. The Dredging Act of 1906 means modern Dredging Ships can't even operate in the US. Its a weird catch 22 because you needed deeper channels to make the modern ships, but you need modern ships to make deeper channels. European ships have been dredging deep for 50 years and would easily just come over and do projects, but because of a weird law, the ships must be built and operated in the US. Right now, there are only 2 real dredging ships that are mostly designed for rivers, and they're already booked and overworked trying to deepen the Mississippi, which is currently so low ships are getting stuck every season. I definitely predict Biden and this congress has to repeal it within the next few years because its an obvious bottleneck in shipping capacity thats just dumb. On the East Coast, Manhattan also need locks yesterday. Word on the street is the Navy frequently works in knee deep water down south there. It would also open up more jobs modernizing Boston and Philadephia's shipping lanes and allowing modern ships to dock there. More shipping equals more work and less dependence on inefficient trucks shipping from Bayonne, NJ or Savanna, GA.

Thanks Teddy Roosevelt for ruining this for us.

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Mickey_Malthus t1_j5oygk0 wrote

Replying to thewhaler (#1,466,609)

Thanks for spurring me to finally look up the origin of King Tide. -- It was coined in 2009 in order to describe the boring dystopia of being slowly swallowed by the rising ocean as a "nuisance."

" a king tide is an exceptionally high and naturally occurring tide that causes nuisance flooding (also known as, 'sunny day tidal flooding')"

https://bioone.org/journals/journal-of-coastal-research/volume-34/issue-4/JCOASTRES-D-18A-00001.1/The-King-Tide-Conundrum/10.2112/JCOASTRES-D-18A-00001.1.full#:~:text=Over%20the%20last%20decade%20the,tides%20in%20almost%2020%20years.

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swap_catz t1_j5piny3 wrote

Replying to McFlyParadox (#1,466,634)

Just found it. So they wanted to do the whole bay, with gated sea walls. Look I know you believe it would be gross but this has been done before. The Dutch seriously do this all the time. We're kind of at the point where if we don't we'll be almost assured the yuppie folks in South Boston waterfront will be taking water taxis to work.

https://www.reddit.com/r/boston/comments/p7rg01/175mile_seawall_sea_gates_proposed_to_protect/

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jro10 t1_j5q4f3b wrote

The ocean is coming for us. Why we sunk billions and billions into developing Seaport when it’ll just be underwater in a few decades is beyond me.

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swap_catz t1_j5r82l7 wrote

Replying to lucida (#1,476,329)

As one of those Libertarian types, I not only believe humans involvement in climate change is real, but I also believe we're past the point of no return and probably need to make some unwanted adjustments to save lower socio-economic classes from a social upheaval weather event that will only affect poor people. Many of the already low lying land is practically a ghetto (East Boston, Southie, Dorchester, Quincy). Remember what happened when the levies broke in Louisiana? I'm not even going to discuss how gas energy is extremely efficient and rug-pulling poor people who's next gallon of gas is getting them to the grocery store or picking up their kids from school. Imagine telling India their poor people can't have their first gas scooter and stunting their growth.

Look we're going to have to do a few dirty things to make things better for everyone.

If we really cared about the environment we would rapidly move to nuclear energy to stop carbon emissions, since that has the most effect. I kind of hate the issue with arguing over small change when the big issues are right there, and I'm willing to compromise to make that 80% cleanup while sacrificing 20%. Some crabs may have to be sacrificed here.

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swap_catz t1_j5ra8be wrote

Replying to lucida (#1,476,771)

It's a loose statement. I know our ghettos are miles ahead of ghettos in every place in the world and even in this country. I also know if there's a hurricane event like Ira or Sandy that hits Boston, you're going to have a lot of Black and Brown people displaced or underwater with no ability or finances to move without waiting for FEMA for years, and a humanitarian crisis in the short term.

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wickedblight t1_j5rii5c wrote

Replying to Yanksuck73 (#1,470,355)

How many Katrina level "surge incidents" will it take before living on the coast is no longer viable?

Or are you defining "Boston gone" to mean if one hill survived then the city preservers?

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justvisiting7744 t1_j5s1hs3 wrote

holy shit, I’ve never seen or heard anything like this. it makes more sense in hindsight tho, I remember standing there in the hot july sun for one of the ptown ferries

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swap_catz t1_j5ytrki wrote

Replying to FrankySobotka (#1,502,771)

The unwanted adjustments are these seawall and levie structures, and the fact that were going to have to do geoengineering at this point, or otherwise the cities will sink within our lifetimes.

Technolibertarian also. Classical libertarianism is wildly useless at this point. We cant simply go live in the mountains anymore in a globalized high tech society. You just wouldn't have things like MRNA vaccines, bone mesh, and sushi. I'm somewhere between corpo-libertarian and digital democracy. https://www.radicalxchange.org/media/blog/political-ideologies-for-the-21st-century/

A good example of this is this exact situation where I think if the government doesn't step in here and remove this stupid law, the cities will sink and the government will continue to lose what little credibility they have. I'm giving them a chance here at least.

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