In the days shortly after World War II, writes Gilbert M. Gaul in The Geography of Risk, Morris Shapiro and his family were busy building their own version of Levittown, the famed suburban tract housing development of Long Island, on a barrier island in southern New Jersey known as Long Beach Island. The place had largely been the preserve of fishing villages in earlier years, but Shapiro had a vision, one he passed along to his son, Herbert, in due time.
Shapiro drained and built on what we now call wetlands, but
in the 1940s, environmental values were a weak reed for resisting the onslaught
of developers who believed in the next big real estate trend and the
willingness of small villages to grow with them. And so, Morris persuaded Herbert
to buy land around Barnegat
Bay, and the few hunters and watermen who understood the value of salt marsh
in preserving wildlife habitat were pushed aside. The suburbanization of the
Jersey Shore soon took hold.
Nature heals its own wounds when the landscape is healthy,
but damage to the built environment can be another matter altogether. Gaul details
the impacts of the Ash
Wednesday storm that struck the New Jersey coast in the spring of 1962,
providing the nation with its first television-era glimpse of disasters yet to come
and the high costs of having compromised the protective dunes and wetlands and
installed thousands of bungalows on a narrow, highly vulnerable strip of land
along the sea. “Nearly all the 5,361 homes on Long Beach Island . . . were damaged,”
Gaul tells us, “including 1,000 that were severely impaired and 600 that were
destroyed.”
As always, the immediate focus was on rebuilding, with urgent
reminders from legislators and others of the economic value of shoreline
development (but not its costs). In the face of that Category 5 juggernaut, Gov.
Richard Hughes bravely proposed a six-month moratorium on new development, supported
by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers,
and a ban on rebuilding along a 100-foot buffer along the beach. Looking back,
it seems visionary for its time in anticipating the problems that would otherwise
follow, and it attracted precisely the blowback we have come to expect. Federal
support for rebuilding came from the Kennedy administration, and the long drift
toward increased federal responsibility for recovery was underway.
Gaul goes on to detail the long tale of Jim
Mancini, both developer and mayor of Long Beach Island, and cheerleader in
chief for the coastal towns and what they saw as their inevitable growth. Still,
governors and environmental officials in New Jersey were periodically game for
a new try at restraining a situation where local officials controlled building
and zoning while state taxpayers provided millions of dollars to repair storm damage
and infrastructure. Gov.
Brendan Byrne was next in 1979, starting with a conference on the future of
the New Jersey shore, followed by initiatives from the state Department of Environmental Protection
and the introduction of the Dune and Shorefront Protection Act in the legislature.
Predictably, the mayors rebelled, led by Mancini, who organized
1,500 protesters to attend a July 1980 hearing at the St. Francis Community Center in
Brant Beach. Robert
Hollenbeck, chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, essentially
presided over an ambush in which he was repeatedly shouted down by angry
homeowners. Once again, the opportunity to take a creative regulatory approach
to controlling shoreline damage was driven into wholesale political retreat. By
the time Superstorm
Sandy delivered its legendary hit in October 2012, it was all over but the
shouting. The administration of Gov. Chris Christie was
not about to seriously challenge the home rule prerogatives that dominate the
politically fragmented landscape of New Jersey township government. The tough questions
would have to wait.
What Gaul outlines in New Jersey, of course, has occurred in
other forms in other places from the Carolinas to Florida to Texas over the subsequent
decades. Gaul takes us to all these locations as the book progresses. What we
have seen, time and again, are the costly consequences of a pattern of coastal development
that has placed increasing quantities of homes and properties in harm’s way,
then begged or even demanded that states and the federal government rescue the storm-damaged
communities even as they fight bitterly against regulatory measures aimed at
reducing future costs by restricting unwise development.
Of course, by now there are many residents caught in the middle.
But surely, it is not impossible to sympathize with their plight and be willing
to assist those who seek alternatives, while refusing to continue subsidizing
unwise new development or bailing out those who refuse to accept the reality of
the risks they have assumed. What is clear is that tough decisions await, and
the public does not have endless resources. Wiser development and rebuilding decisions
are imperative.
Not surprisingly, Gaul, a veteran Pulitzer Prize-winning
author and reporter, is a New Jersey native. But he is also an astute historian
and researcher who writes with a well-informed passion that brings us, in the
end, to the fateful season of 2017—the year of Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria—and then 2018,
when all looked calm on the meteorological front until Florence took its
toll in North Carolina, followed by Category 5 Michael in the
Florida Panhandle. Climate change, inducing hurricanes that become slow-moving
rain bombs that flood cities like Houston, is still “not a thing” in the Trump
White House. Neither, for the most part, are buyouts of repetitively flooded
homes, even as the nation desperately needs to find ways to live more
resiliently in the face of the risks it has embedded on its coastal landscapes.
But the costs keep climbing, and it is not impossible to
imagine a serious political reckoning under a different administration with a
more realistic handle on the stakes involved, which run into the trillions of
dollars. It is not impossible, for instance, to imagine a $250 billion disaster
if a catastrophic hurricane took direct aim at one of Florida’s major cities. For
that reason alone, Gaul’s book may be worth a read. We need to improve the quality
and depth of the conversation around issues with such drastic fiscal impact.
The most important feature of this post is simply the link. Clicking here will lead you to a newly published podcast about the recovery struggles of Puerto Rico following Hurricane Maria in the fall of 2017. The recording–an interview between me and Professor Ivis Garcia, of the University of Utah, lasts just over an hour, so set aside some time. What you learn will make that investment worth it.
The podcast is the seventh in a series called Resilience Roundtable, produced by the American Planning Association and hosted by the APA Hazard Mitigation and Disaster Recovery Planning Division. As of this fall, I have assumed the duties of moderator and interviewer, and this interview is my first. I hope you will find it worthwhile and a great learning experience. I won’t say more because I am confident the podcast speaks for itself.
That headline is a quote from Mayor Tommy Muska of the town of West, Texas, in the Dallas Morning News of November 21, regarding the Trump administration’s rescission of U.S. Environmental Protection Agency standards for disaster prevention in chemical facilities, issued that day.
Aerial photo of the west explosion site taken several days after blast (4/22/2013). By Shane.torgerson – Aerial photo taken from my plane Previously published: Facebook and Flickr, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=25727808
So much news passes under the bridge in one month these days
that readers can be forgiven if they do not immediately recall what happened in
West on April 17, 2013, but my guess is that many do. Or they may if I nudge
them by noting that the West
Fertilizer Company suffered an explosion in a storage facility at the edge
of this small city of 2,880. The explosion resulted from the combustion of
ammonium nitrate, a common ingredient in fertilizer, which is notorious for its
chemical instability. Still, the facility had been there since the 1960s, but
West had over the years allowed a middle school, an apartment building (which
was destroyed), a nursing home, and other structures to be built nearby. When
the explosion occurred, 160 people were injured, 14 first responders (mostly
firefighters) were killed, and one elderly man died of a heart attack as the
nursing home was evacuated. All that triggered a bit of soul searching about loose
regulations at all levels of government regarding the operation of such facilities,
their disproportionate environmental impact on vulnerable populations, and how
better to prevent future disasters.
One year later, in May 2014, I
wrote in this blog about West following my own involvement on an expert
panel for the federal Chemical Safety Board,
which held a hearing in West on the anniversary of the disaster. I raised some
pertinent questions about Texas chemical and fire safety regulation that were
of interest to the board.
In the meantime, however, moves were afoot in the Obama
administration to respond to the larger questions of chemical facility accidents.
According to Earthjustice,
an environmental advocacy group, in the decade up to the West accident the U.S.
had experienced 2,200 chemical accidents at hazardous facilities, two-thirds of
which caused reported harm, including 59 deaths and more than 17,000 people
injured, hospitalized, or seeking medical care. As a result, President Obama
signed on August 1, 2013, Executive
Order 13650, “Improving Chemical Facility Safety and Security,” which set
in motion a
rule-making procedure at the U.S. EPA. By July 31, 2013, EPA issued a Risk
Management Program request for information in the Federal Register, proposed
new rules on March 14, 2016, and finalized the new rule, known for short as the
Chemical
Disaster Rule, on January 13, 2017, with one week remaining before
President Trump took office.
The final rule is a bit complex, using 112 pages of the Federal
Register, but among other items specifically required a “root cause
analysis” as part of an incident investigation to determine what “could have reasonably
resulted in a catastrophic release.” It would also require compliance audits
after reported incidents and required all facilities with certain processes to
conduct annual notification exercises to ensure that emergency contact information
was complete. The overall idea was to improve effective coordination with local
emergency responders. One problem that caused fatalities in West was a lack of
firefighter awareness of the precise contents and dangers of the facility that
exploded. Thus, the requirements in the rule for field and tabletop exercises.
Finally, the rule aimed to enhance the availability of information about chemical
hazards in these facilities including sharing such information with local
emergency planning committees.
The rest is almost entirely predictable. With little grasp
of public policy but considerable animus toward anything with Obama’s name on
it, Trump put his appointees to work undoing his legacy. That included action
by then EPA Administrator
Scott Pruitt on March 16, 2017, in response to an industry-sponsored
petition, to announce a 90-day stay of the Obama-era rules, followed by an
extension to 20 months shortly thereafter. In the meantime, Louisiana and 10
other states, including Texas, petitioned for reconsideration of the Obama
rules. The delay would last until February 19, 2019. However, the U.S. Court of
Appeals for the District of Columbia, responding to a petition from environmental
groups, vacated
the Trump rulemaking. But now we have a final rule from the Trump EPA
officially rescinding the Chemical Disaster Rule.
The public information aspect of the rule became a target, with the Trump administration claiming it was responding to homeland security and emergency management experts who feared that such information would become a target for terrorists. However, it would seem to me that far more people have been affected by routine chemical accidents than by any terrorist incidents at such facilities. The U.S. EPA also noted that the rules would not have prevented the accident at West because it was ultimately determined to have been caused by arson. It is worth noting, however, that most of the first responder fatalities in that incident were more credibly the result of a lack of training and information on the potential explosiveness of the materials involved, which might have prompted greater caution and different tactics by firefighters. And none of this answers the questions I raised in my 2014 blog post about land-use practices and limitations on fire safety codes in Texas.
So, back to Mayor Muska, who is reportedly disappointed with
the outcome, and for good reason. His town has to live with the results of the
2013 explosion, which decimated the volunteer firefighter staff and obliterated
a local business (and employer). Muska was mayor when the disaster happened and
is now serving his fifth term. I think it is worth sharing the comments he made
in the final two paragraphs of the Dallas Morning News story:
“The American people and
American politicians, they have a short memory,” Muska said. “They’re going to
say everything is fine, and every few years something like this is going to
happen again, and ‘Oh, yeah, we need to look at this again.’
“We’re yesterday’s news. It’s not on anybody’s minds
as it was in ’13 and ’14.”
Wilmington, a charming city of just over 100,000 on the far southern edge of the North Carolina coast, has taken some hits from coastal storms in recent years, most notably Hurricane Florence in 2018. Hurricane Dorian this year posed a minor threat but mostly left a trail of 14 identified tornadoes in its wake, a phenomenon familiar in the Southeast, though their association with hurricanes may be less well known elsewhere.
Wilmington Planning Director Glenn Harbeck, who I was told was one of the most knowledgeable people in town for the purpose, on October 8 took me on a boat tour of much of the city’s interior waterfront to let me see and photograph the area along Hewletts Creek, a stream feeding into the Atlantic Ocean behind the barrier island that includes the Masonboro Island Estuarine Reserve. Glenn and his wife have lived in Wilmington for 40 years, during which, he says, they have experienced a succession of hurricanes: Diana (1984), Bertha (1996), Fran (1996), Bonnie (1998), Floyd (1999), Matthew (2016), Florence (2018), and Dorian (2019).
Why it has taken me this long to write about it is another matter related entirely to my own obligations and distractions. At the time, however, I was in Wilmington as the invited keynote speaker for the annual conference of the North Carolina chapter of the American Planning Association. That event was at the city’s convention center, which sits along the Cape Fear River, which basically serves as the city’s western edge, with suburban or unincorporated New Hanover County on the other side. Along with the adjoining Embassy Suites, the complex boasts a boardwalk that allows people to walk to restaurants and other venues in more historic quarters of the city. I joined a party of a dozen at a nearby seafood restaurant, The George on the River, and got to see much of it. Some of the boardwalk appears to need work, but I was not clear on whether that was due to hurricane damage of work in progress. But I can give The George five stars. The food was wonderful and a credit to southern coastal cuisine. (I enjoyed crab-topped salmon with garlic mashed potatoes and spicy collards. I gladly recommend it.) Added appeal derived from the outdoor seating that made for a pleasant evening setting.
But all that followed the boat tour, which came in the late
afternoon after a delayed arrival in Wilmington following a long layover in Atlanta
on the way from Chicago. The weather had been uncertain, and Glenn was a bit
concerned about concluding the trip before it turned rainy or inhospitable,
although it never did. It was simply a bit chilly, but my photos have that overcast,
gray-sky look as a result.
Compared to some prior tours I have taken of disaster sites,
this one was relatively brief with modest expectations. Nonetheless, there are
always learning opportunities, and I had never visited Wilmington before. Touring
by boat allowed a different perspective than by land. Certain factors became
readily apparent, with Glenn supplying ample explanation.
One, to be expected, was that, despite the clear dangers and mitigation challenges associated with a waterfront near the ocean in a region frequently affected by coastal storms and hurricanes, housing along Hewletts Creek remains attractive to its owners and has gained value as a result. These are people who love their boats and their access to the water, and the storms are simply part of the environment, much like a snowstorm in Chicago. Whether everyone takes all the appropriate precautions to protect those properties may be another matter, but most are at least aware of the challenges they face when hurricanes move toward North Carolina.
Because access to the water is a prized asset, most properties include piers, although shared piers are becoming more common, according to Glenn, presumably because of reduced costs and environmental impact. Those piers, however, have typically taken a beating in big storms, and Hurricane Florence contained some solid punches. One problem, he informed me, is that the buoyancy of the wood is the enemy of the piers’ survival because, as the storm surge rises and the piers rise with it, they are bent and twisted and collapse. In other words, the buoyancy of wood works against them. The photos provide ample evidence, but Glenn also told me that some had been repaired in recent months; if I had come three months earlier, the destruction would have been more evident. Past adaptation in some places was to rebuild the piers higher than before to move them above likely wave levels, but frequent storms and high storm surges have sometimes obviated the effectiveness of this approach. Instead, some pier owners are adapting with the use of Titan decking, which uses polypropylene plastic to stabilize the piers during future storms.
There were also, a year after Florence, remaining indications of the damages suffered to the boats themselves, which can easily be tossed about by winds and waves. We encountered one of those (below) toward the end of the tour.
It should be noted that, although it is inside Wilmington, Hewletts
Creek has a much more rural or suburban feel than the Cape Fear River
waterfront, which is near the urban heart of the city and its downtown. The
riverfront is not primarily residential but encompasses a variety of commercial
uses, including hotels and a large marina. In contrast, the waterfront along Hewletts
Creek consisted predominantly of private residential property.
I do not wish to leave the impression from this glimpse of Hewletts
Creek that what happened there is the extent of the impact of Florence. Although
I did not have time on this trip to get a thorough tour of the city, I did
receive other information from Glenn and from Christine
Hughes, a senior planner with the city for Comprehensive Planning, Design,
and Community Engagement. From her, I learned that Wilmington’s working and
low-income populations sustained a large hit on their affordable housing stock
with the loss of approximately 1,200 apartment units. In September, the
Wilmington City Council approved $27 million worth of bond issuances for the Wilmington Housing Authority. A big part of that
involved the closure of Market
North Apartments on Darlington Avenue, which will be rebuilt. That closure
forced evacuation by more than 1,000 residents. Wilmington will be recovering
from Florence for some time to come. The cost and numbers of people affected in
this housing redevelopment underscore the solemn fact that often low-income and
minority populations suffer the greatest impacts of natural disasters. Our
communities are not whole unless and until we give them high priority in recovery
planning.
It is also worth knowing that the quest for coastal
resilience is not new to Wilmington, which has engaged with federal and state
agencies for some time, as illustrated in a 2013 report on a
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency pilot project on community resilience.
Glenn Harbeck has been in his current position for more than seven years after
a long period of consulting and knows well the direction the city needs to take,
but it is a long road. Residents can learn a great deal about the progress of infrastructure
recovery projects from the city’s
online map tracking such efforts, which include street and sidewalk repairs
and stormwater management. Recovery is a complex process, as Wilmington knows
well, and future storms, climate change, and sea level rise will all surely add
to the challenges that lie ahead.
It is possible to live in a city as large as Chicago and be
blissfully unaware of some wonderful things. Chicago, after all, includes 2.7
million people spread over 227 square miles. My wife and I have lived here since
1986, but we do not spend much of our time traversing unfamiliar neighborhoods.
Like most people, we have well-worn paths, and at times we visit new areas
where we know people and learn from them. Also, like most people with cars, we
drive by certain areas without taking time to really see all that they contain,
as one might on foot. Because I walk through my own neighborhood, I know a great
deal about what is happening. But there are others where I have not a clue.
Chicago is nothing, however, if not full of pleasant surprises. Never mind unpleasant headlines or presidential tweets about crime rates. There are reasons why millions of people still live here. I discovered one this Labor Day weekend through sheer serendipity. I participated in a small workshop at a home on North Virginia Avenue, a street I had never visited before. I looked it up on Google maps and discovered that the homes on the west side of the street border a great park along the North Channel of the North Branch of the Chicago River, a drainage canal built more than a century ago. This channel extends straight north from where it joins the North Branch around Carmen St., just south of Foster Avenue, a major east-west artery that extends from Lake Michigan through Chicago’s North Side into the northwestern suburbs.
Entrance to Legion Park from Ardmore St.
What I saw on the map invited me to explore after I left the event, a little more than half a mile north of Foster, several miles from downtown. I soon realized what a gorgeous asset this neighborhood has just beyond its western edge, and what a gorgeous day I had chosen for my short walk. As at other corners along N. Virginia Avenue, Ardmore terminates on a short stub that opens onto a trail inside Legion Park.
A couple of asphalt paths provide walking, jogging, and bicycle trails with a very modest amount of traffic behind an area largely composed of single-family homes. Between the paths stand a variety of well-maintained deciduous trees whose shade both quiets and cools the park space. As I walked south toward Bryn Mawr Avenue, a major street with a bridge over the channel, the Legion Park Playground, a small haven for children needing adventure and exercise, loomed ahead. A mother and two daughters were using the merry-go-round. In the distance, on the far trail, came bicyclists who never noticed my small camera and did not need to. It was past 1 p.m. on a Sunday afternoon, and it was all so peaceful I could have sat and communed with nature for hours, undisturbed. Someday I may return for that purpose, but today I wanted to explore.
Exploration led me to a follow a cross-path to the North Shore Channel trail closer to the water, which, for the most part, lay hidden behind a screen of forest and uncut grasses, but the trail now led closer to the water by passing under the street above, leading me to a brick wall topped by wrought-iron fencing. Inside the tunnel I found the concrete support system for the road above, the sort of infrastructure that reminds you of what is necessary to allow a road to cross the waterway with minimal disturbance. If it was quiet in the park, it was even quieter down here. The water may not have been especially clean, but in its stillness, it provided a vivid reflection of both the steel girders and the verdant growth above it.
And then, just a few feet away, the waterway emerged in full daylight, with all the foliage that grew above its banks, all the way down to the riprap at the water’s edge. In a matter of seconds, I found myself south of Bryn Mawr, with a whole new section of the park emerging with its own paths, its own playground, and its own softball diamond. I quickly realized that the park was the backdrop to North Side Preparatory High School, which fronts on Kedzie Avenue, but enjoys a remarkable backyard view for those with the wisdom to take it all in.
All this took me perhaps 20 minutes of a slow stroll, with time
to shoot photographs. I am aware from the map, and from the sight lines of the
channel, that the park extends much farther both south and north from what I
saw. But it reminded me, with my own knowledge of the urban landscape as a planner,
that cities sometimes, accidentally or intentionally, remember that the best
use of a floodplain often is open space, not development, and that the result
can be a beautiful asset for the areas around it that are above the water. In
Legion Park, even with what to my knowledge is a minimal history of flooding,
there is ample room for the water to overflow its banks while harming nothing.
The natural environment responds to the freedom we have allowed it and provides
us with solitude, and beauty, and an abundance of ecological services. The city
can co-exist with its riparian corridors, which afford habitat and recreation
in the same space.
Chicago, in recent years, has been discovering that the
sacred community space it has preserved so doggedly along its lakefront can and
should include its riverfronts as well. The city has cleaned up and improved
its Riverwalk along the main channel of the Chicago River downtown, a development
I profiled on this blog about three years ago. In
this morning’s Chicago Tribune, I read of new kiosk vendors doing business
in a new covered space below Wacker Drive along the Riverwalk. But the Chicago
River and its tributaries extend much farther into the heart of the city,
and they can all serve a purpose in making the city more livable. In fact, in
these less populated, less densely developed areas, the very openness and the greater
stillness can inspire a spirituality that is harder to achieve in the downtown
canyons that linger below skyscrapers and honking traffic. In Legion Park, I
could not even hear the traffic. I could only see it in the distance—or witness
it on two wheels as someone bicycled past me. What a magnificent gift. We
should appreciate such treasures for all they are worth.
What astounds me about what I am about to say is that the
last time I posted to this blog was July 24, more than a month ago. There are
reasons for that, but in the meantime, despite the lack of new articles, this
blog continued to find new subscribers—and their numbers just yesterday crossed
the 20,000 mark. Already, the numbers have exceeded that threshold by a few dozen.
I would have expected the increase to decrease until I wrote something new. I
can only assume that past writings have continued to propel interest despite my
lack of activity. That fact is profoundly humbling.
I wrote twice in July. The other post occurred on the July 4
holiday. It detailed my cataract surgery in June and offered some medical
history concerning the procedure. What followed, in addition to two trips to
Colorado and one to Washington, D.C., between mid-July and early August, was a
mad rush connected to a fall semester course I teach for the University of Iowa’s
School of Urban and Regional Planning,
as an adjunct assistant professor. But this year, the decision was made to move
my class online, which meant a great deal of added work to make that change
possible. And just to complicate matters, in mid-August, my laptop suffered a
hard drive failure that delayed my timeline. I then worked to restore course-related
files, an odyssey I will not detail here. It would be an overdose of minutiae.
I have been teaching in Iowa City since 2008. After the massive floods that
struck much of eastern Iowa and some neighboring states in June of that year,
the planning program began an urgent search for a way to add curriculum related
to natural hazards and to make itself more relevant and useful to communities
in Iowa needing assistance with flood recovery. It was easier to import such
expertise than to develop it among existing faculty, apparently, because they
soon made an offer for me to teach beginning that fall. I am an alumnus of the
program, and they knew me well. At the time, I was already co-instructing such
a course at the University of Illinois-Chicago
with colleague Richard Roths, although that ended after the spring 2009 class
the following year. But the arrangement with the University of Iowa has
continued. The course has grown and evolved over time, naturally, just as the
subject matter for “Planning for Disaster Mitigation and Recovery” has also
changed. Every year is a new adventure and an exercise in updating teaching
materials. As I like to say, it is hardly like teaching Shakespeare. The script
is rewritten with each new major disaster. Recent years have added multiple exclamation
points to that statement.
Thus, while the subscriber count was climbing yesterday, I
was preparing for and then presiding over the first online class session for
URP:6280 last night, with eleven students in attendance. I still have work to
do in reformatting PowerPoint files from past years and recording lecture
videos that used to be presented in a classroom. But I discovered yet again that,
from the first class to the last, my students are inquisitive and thoughtful
and have very good reasons for choosing this course as an elective in pursuit
of their Master of Arts in Urban and Regional Planning. As before, some make
clear that they see this as possibly the most important class they will take.
Some past students are now in leadership roles in the field of hazard
mitigation and disaster recovery planning. They are not deluded about the
challenges that communities will face under the influence of climate change,
demographic shifts, and other factors. They want to do the planning that matters.
Although I have not written much for this blog lately, that
will change very soon. I had to keep my priorities straight, however; my
students had to have their materials ready on the course website by Monday,
August 26, as classes started, and it was my obligation to make that happen. After
Labor Day, I can gradually shift some of my attention elsewhere. My recent travels,
to San Francisco in April, Manitoba and Cleveland in May, and to Colorado and
Washington in July and August have supplied me with excellent subject matter
for at least several future posts. I relish the prospect of making up for lost
time with subscribers both new and old. Thanks to everyone for their support
and interest.
Kristin Hoskin had been on my list for these tributes, but I thought it wise to let the dust settle after the Christchurch terrorist attack before saluting her in Gratitude on Parade. Most certainly, however, her gracious reaction to my blog post about the incident two weeks ago confirmed the very reason for including her here. She reaffirmed the New Zealand commitment to human decency.
I met Kristin in late 2007 after speaking on a panel in Reno, Nevada, at a conference of the International Association of Emergency Managers. Her question was whether I might entertain an invitation to New Zealand as a Visiting Fellow of the Centre for Advanced Engineering in New Zealand (CAENZ) at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch. Over subsequent months, arrangements were worked out between CAENZ and the American Planning Association, and my three-week absence in July and August 2008 was approved by Paul Farmer, APA’s CEO at the time. The reason for choosing me for this annual honor was my expertise in land use related to natural hazards. CAENZ wanted to inject that element into the national debate in New Zealand on natural hazards policy making.
Kristin
was assigned to escort me around the country as I conducted seven workshops and
seminars in both North and South Island cities, ending with a few days in
Christchurch crafting a white paper before I returned home. She was a gracious
host, and from her I learned a great deal about her country even as I shared
detailed knowledge with New Zealand planners, emergency managers, and others
about how we address those issues in the considerably more complex U.S.
For me, it was a wonderfully educational exchange of insights and information that I will never forget. It was what mutual learning should be. I would happily return to New Zealand, but life has included more than a few other adventures in the meantime. And I was at least able to include what I learned–and more–in the long article I published in January in the hOxford Research Encyclopedia of Natural Hazard Science, on “Planning Systems for Natural Hazard Risk Reduction.”
Kristin
Hoskin, this tribute is for you. Bask and enjoy.
Photo taken during our fun visit to the Stansborough wool factory north of Wellington, which manufactured costumes for the Lord of the Rings movies.
I got off track with these tributes in large part because of the amount of planning work I was doing including work with or for APA, including the APA Division – Hazard Mitigation/Disaster Recovery Planning Division.
One person who would have approved is someone who passed away on
February 22, which unfortunately means I did not write this soon enough for him
to enjoy his own tribute. I learned of Frank So’s untimely death just recently. I was able to obtain a photo from APA just today.
Frank
spent many years as either the deputy director or the executive director of the
American Planning Association before retiring in 2001, in large part because of
his wife’s declining health at that time. Frank was the kind of person who put
first things first, and his wife came first.
Frank also put people first in his career. I had numerous
conversations with him during my time at APA. In one of those, he was
questioning another organization’s move to another city and asked, “Do
they really think their assets are in the physical facilities instead of their
people?” Frank was always encouraging the best in the people who worked
for him and knew that the only real asset APA had was its staff.
My most memorable conversation involved a turning point in my career. I was curious about the process by which he was choosing a new research director, but I was at that point in the Publications Department. As we talked, he must have sensed something in my questions; he was brilliant at that. “Are you thinking about leaving?” he asked. Stunned, I confessed that it did seem time for me to do something new. Reluctant to see me leave APA, he arranged my transfer to a new senior research associate position in the Research Department even before hiring his new research director. To Frank, retaining me was more important than waiting for that process to take its course. Frank was like that–people came first. Always.
Hillsborough
County is a dense metropolitan area, anchored by the city of Tampa. Tampa and nearby
St. Petersburg, in
Pinellas County, sit on opposite
shores of Tampa Bay, a 400-square-mile
expanse of water connected to the Gulf of Mexico. Across
that gap sits the Sunshine
Skyway Bridge, a magnificent and scenic section of I-275. On a sunny day,
it displays coastal Florida in all its glory.
Eugene
Henry, like anyone else, enjoys those sunny days, but he also worries about
what may happen when the region suffers inclement weather. As Hillsborough
County’s Hazard Mitigation Program Manager, it is his job to think about how
well the area will fare under the impact of natural and other disasters, which
can include hurricanes, floods, tornadoes, sinkholes, and wildfires. At least
the first two are complicated by sea level rise, and one can easily argue that
climate change in a broader sense may well influence the damage from wildfires.
For those uninitiated in the particulars of Florida’s natural environment,
wildfires are a recurring feature. In what is ordinarily such a lush
environment fostered by rain and abundant sunshine, it takes only one drought
year amid high heat to turn dense vegetation into a tinderbox. It has happened
before, repeatedly.
But the biggest concern, by far, is the arrival of the Big
One, the high-intensity hurricane that the county readily admits it has escaped
in recent decades. In its Post-Disaster
Redevelopment Plan (PDRP), the county states forthrightly that this is
merely a matter of good fortune and that planners fully understand that the day
will surely come—and that they had best be ready for it. Disaster resilience in
the face of hurricanes is not a matter to be taken lightly with 158 miles of
shoreline along Tampa Bay, numerous rivers and streams, and numerous
vulnerable, low-lying areas. Absent serious attention to mitigation, damages
from a Category 4 or 5 hurricane, or one like Harvey that stalls and dumps
voluminous rain on an urban area, could become catastrophic.
But Tampa and Hillsborough County have been very fortunate.
The last Category 3 hurricane struck the area in 1921. What may have been a Category
4 struck in 1848, though wind speed measurements were primitive at the time,
and the U.S. had no official records yet. According to the county’s Local
Mitigation Strategy, that storm “reshaped parts of the coast and destroyed
much of what few human works and habitation were then in the Tampa Bay area.”
Tides rose 14 feet. Tampa was still a small city then, and Gene Henry wonders
about the staggering losses that might occur with a comparable event today.
I had long wanted to visit the area to see in person how
these issues are being addressed. I have known Gene for a long time, and I have
read the county’s PDRP, an extensive document laying out the county’s
preparations for recovery from disasters. But I had never been to Tampa. As the
result, however, of a personal invitation from a high school classmate, David Taylor, who now
lives in Sarasota,
my wife and I flew to Tampa February 20 and stayed with Dave and his wife,
Linda, for five days. Sarasota is about one hour’s drive south of Tampa. As
part of the trip, I arranged to meet with Gene the day after we arrived and
tour the county to see the hazard mitigation projects underway there. I also
delivered a one-hour lecture the following afternoon in West Palm Beach,
on behalf of Florida Atlantic University, as part
of a two-hour program that included a panel discussion following my talk on
“Recovery and Resilience: Facing the Disasters of the Future.” Not one to skip
a learning opportunity, Gene drove four hours from Tampa to attend the program.
But back to Hillsborough. My wife and I met Gene at the
county’s Emergency
Operations Center (EOC) around mid-morning, hopped in his county truck, and
took off. Our first stop was the Florida Center
for Design + Research, housed in the School of Architecture + Design at the
University of South Florida (USF),
Gene’s graduate alma mater. The school features an urban planning program where
he wanted us to meet Professor
Brian Cook. Planning students often take studio classes, which involve
design or research work on real-life community problems. Students learn to
define a community design or policy issue, work with clients, and try to
produce solutions that will be of some practical value to the community they
are serving. They typically work in teams. In this case, students were applying
geographic information system (GIS), or mapping, skills to determine areas of
high vulnerability to flooding and sea level rise in less affluent
neighborhoods. Gene’s county office collaborates with USF instructors to
identify areas of practical concern for the students’ work. The photos show
some of the design work the students have done, the best of which is often
displayed in poster sessions at state and national professional planning conferences.
Posters (above and below) from the USF design studio
The most encouraging aspect of that visit was, for me, the mere fact that the students are engaging with such a pressing problem. I have researched the issue of hazards and climate change in the planning curriculum for both undergraduate and graduate degree programs in urban planning, and most such programs are lacking in this respect, a situation that is disserving the planners of tomorrow who must be well trained to come to grips with these challenges in whatever communities they end up serving. But a growing number of students are getting such training—I have myself been teaching such a course at the University of Iowa since 2008—and southern Florida is as good a laboratory as they could wish for. To see collaboration between a county agency and USF graduate students and faculty is a most welcome note.
But Gene had other places to take us in the afternoon,
besides, that is, the Cuban-themed La Teresita restaurant
where we ate lunch—a place I am willing to recommend if you ever visit Tampa.
First up in the afternoon was the University
Mall area north of downtown Tampa and just east of I-275. This involves a
stormwater management and flood-mitigation project in an area subject to a
certain amount of repetitive loss, meaning that the same properties continue to
suffer periodic flood losses. The project removed structures while creating
additional areas for stormwater storage and reshaping a natural area known as
Duck Pond, thus creating a system for stormwater conveyance. This includes a
large stormwater pump that transfers slow-moving stormwater to areas further
downstream and, in due course, to a reservoir owned by the City of Tampa.
Before this project was initiated, storms used to inundate multifamily
apartment buildings, Gene says, as well as a nearby assisted living facility.
How does the county pay for all this? He credits a combination of local funds,
which is certainly not unusual, and federal money in the form of Hazard Mitigation
Grant Program (HMGP) funds. The latter are available as part of an overall
recovery package after a Presidential Disaster
Declaration, but require that purchased properties, once cleared, remain in
perpetual open space. The point is to ensure that a vulnerable area is not
redeveloped, thus perpetuating the problem.
At 132nd Street, also in Tampa, another flood-mitigation
and stormwater management project presents a very different appearance. This
too was subject to repetitive loss and required protection from urban flooding,
which is typically the result of poor stormwater drainage in developed areas. The
problems can include poor water conveyance from one area to the next—the nearby
highway provided an impediment to drainage—and high levels of impervious
surface, meaning coverage with concrete and structures that limit percolation
of water into the soil. In this case, a small subdivision suffered repetitive
flooding even with small storms. Here also, the county acquired homes with HMGP
funds, which are dispensed by the Federal
Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). The streets were removed, and
stormwater ponds were added.
This was a location where the county’s partnership with USF
paid dividends. Researchers analyzed which plants were best at removing
nitrogen and other chemicals common in stormwater runoff in order to clean up
the water before it reaches Tampa Bay. Henry says this project was made
possible through a combination of local and HMGP funds in combination with
federal Community
Development Block Grant entitlement money.
I included the chain link in my photo to show that the solution may not be complete. After all, chain link fences are intended to limit access. What consideration, I asked, had been given to eventually converting this cleared area to some sort of public park and thus facilitating a public benefit? There can be challenges in part because of pollution cleanup and other public safety factors. Gene readily admitted he would love that solution, but it may take time. The adjoining neighborhood must be comfortable with that use, which can involve solving various site-related problems. A nearby church might be a potential ally, serving as a patron and watchdog, but reaching agreement about solutions and responsibilities, including ongoing maintenance and supervision, takes time. And only time will tell whether such a solution materializes with the support of local public officials.
Some projects assist a single homeowner with a stubborn
problem. This is often the case with homes that are elevated, a common site in
parts of the Southeast, where coastal and riverine flooding can wreak havoc
with homes in vulnerable locations that do not necessarily require buyouts and
relocation. That was the case near Rocky Creek,
where a homeowner rebuilt a structure elevated three feet above base flood
elevation (BFE) using a combination of private funds and a Flood
Mitigation Assistance (FMA) grant from FEMA. The result is living space
that is better protected when flood waters surround the lower level.
The same story occurred at a home near the Alafia River, where
another homeowner was elevated three feet above BFE, using the same combination
of funds.
Gene also shared with us an interesting strategy at a
frequently flooded and highly vulnerable modular home park, where an area had
been cleared of its former homes to allow repopulation with recreational
vehicles (RVs). The logic is that, when flood warnings arrive, RV owners will
be able, unlike those with more stationary modular homes, to simply drive off
the site to safer areas until the emergency subsides. The initiative, Gene
says, was taken by the park’s new owner (which owns other parks nationwide), which
identified no more permanent structures in the floodway as part of its
compliance strategy after the most recent flooding event in the area.
This area is slated for RV occupancy only.
Finally, we returned to learn a little about the EOC. We
visited what is often known in such centers as the “war room,” where designated
officials meet to discuss and establish strategies for dealing with an
emergency of any sort that activates the emergency operations plan. In the
photo, each chair is designated for a specific official, with groups of people
with related tasks seated in color-coded sections of the room. Many such EOCs
are much smaller, but Hillsborough County is very urban and populated, and the
needs are complex and interrelated. It is expected that those involved will
arrive with authority to respond to the disaster, to indicate what they are and
are not capable of doing as part of the overall response to disaster. It is not
a place where one expresses a need to go back to another office and “find out.”
Hillsborough County Emergency Operations Center “war room”
Ready to relax and enjoy a drink and a snack, we followed
Gene down the highway to the Sunset
Grill at Little Harbor, which has a beautiful view of the bay. At dusk,
numerous people followed a daily ritual of photographing the sunset over the
water. Tourist attraction it may be, as well as a local watering hole, but the
surrounding area has a significant mangrove forest and salt-bed areas that were
preserved as open space using Environmental Land Acquisition Funds from what
Gene describes as a “locally instigated preservation program.”
Hillsborough County’s Hazard Mitigation Program Manager, Eugene Henry, at rest at Sunset Grill at the end of our day-long tour.
And so, with the sun declining in the west, we sat at an
outdoor table and hashed over the world’s problems, and sometimes our own. One
point that seems clear to me is that Hillsborough County has a great deal to
offer to other jurisdictions, just as it has undoubtedly learned a great deal
as well—one reason both he and a resident scholar and Japanese graduate student
from the University of Illinois, Kensuke Otsuyama,
planned to drive to West Palm Beach the next day to hear my presentation. Although
there is sometimes a tendency for local governments to become more insular, to
allow fewer opportunities for employees like Gene to share and exchange
information in professional forums and conferences, this, I think, is always a
mistake. The growth in the value of what someone like Gene does lies in this
fruitful sharing of experience and perspectives that such opportunities allow,
and I hope that will continue, for certainly Gene made my day by sharing his
time to allow me to learn and to share with the growing readership that follows
this blog.
Supplemental Comment:
Although the hearing was held today, making live streaming a
moot point, significant written and recorded testimony on hazard mitigation and
climate resilience issues occurred before the U.S. House Appropriations
Subcommittee on Transportation, Housing, and Urban Development. Yesterday, the
following link was made available from several sources including the American Planning
Association (APA) to provide access to this testimony and information:
Representatives from APA, PEW, Houston Public Works,
Rutgers University, and the Town of Arlington, MA are delivering testimony to
the Transportation and Housing and Urban Development (THUD) congressional
subcommittee tomorrow, March 13th at 10:00 a.m. EST. THUD, a part of
the House Committee on Appropriations, writes laws that fund the federal
government’s important responsibilities. The testimony is available for
streaming here:
The size of the American Planning Association‘s loss when Stuart Meck departed can be measured easily by the size of Rutgers University‘s gain when he joined their staff, a fact immortalized by the Rutgers decision to name a lecture series after him. Marya Morris, who probably worked most closely with him at APA, got the opportunity recently to present the eulogy at the opening of that series. She shared some memorable stories, including his near death in the early 2000s when he was struck with an intestinal infection while they both were in Prague. It seems the Czech government felt it could learn a great deal about planning law reform by having Stuart Meck lead a 12-session workshop on the subject for high government officials. Pretty heady stuff.
I also worked with Stuart, though not as much as Marya. But we teamed up on hazard mitigation content for his pet project, funded by seven federal agencies and a few foundations, on statutory reform of state planning laws, known as Growing Smart. We also teamed up on a PAS Report, Planning for Wildfires. That may have been more in my wheelhouse, but trust me, Stuart was no slouch in mastering new topics and contributed very substantially to the final product.
Between all these major efforts, he found time incessantly to mentor the younger research staff at APA and was an indefatigable cheerleader for his profession. Did I mention he also co-authored a tome on Ohio Planning and Zoning Law? His productivity was a miracle to behold, as was his willingness to defend what he believed in. He died sooner than most of us who knew him would have liked, but he still deserves his day in the sun. The photos below, of various phases of his life, were provided by his daughter, Lindsay Meck. Thanks, Lindsay, for your help in this regard.
Stuart was also a jazz fan.
Posted to Facebook 2/10/2019
GRATITUDE ON PARADE #gratitudeonparade It’s been a couple of weeks, and I’ve been busy, but I have a great one today. I visited with Eugene Henry last Thursday and Friday while in Florida. On Friday, February 22, Gene’s dedication drove him across the state to West Palm Beach to hear my lecture for Florida Atlantic University on “Recovery and Resilience,” followed by a panel discussion and reception. Mind you, it’s a four-hour drive from Tampa.
But the day before, he hosted my wife and me on a personal day-long tour of Hillsborough County to show me the work they have done on hazard mitigation to reduce risks from hurricanes and floods. In a day or two, I plan to post a blog article on this subject, but Gene for some time has been the hazard mitigation program manager for Hillsborough County, a large urban area that includes Tampa. Gene is, as my friend Lincoln Walther, one of the panelists in West Palm Beach, said, “one of the best.” He has pushed the program forward, and he was a force behind the development of a very progressive Post-Disaster Redevelopment Plan that Hillsborough County pioneered several years ago. Gene is looking forward to retirement in a few years, but his contributions have been outstanding and deserve serious recognition. He is a true leader in the mitigation field. Let this tribute be a beginning, followed by the upcoming blog post.
Posted to Facebook 2/26/2019
GRATITUDE ON PARADE #gratitudeonparade Today, I’d like to thank my long-time friend and high school classmate, David Taylor, and his wife, Linda, for their hospitality in sharing their home and time with us during our recent visit to Florida. David is the person who spurred me to come to Sarasota in the first place. He is also a photographer who used his resources, time, and energy, to film the entire two-hour program that I keynoted in West Palm Beach for Florida Atlantic University on February 22.
A Purple Heart Vietnam veteran, Dave is passionate about some subjects, including respect for veterans, and shared his stories with me and others about fighting his way back from serious injuries. He’s generous to the core but wise in his years. He was the emcee for our 50-year reunion last June in Brecksville, Ohio, for the Class of 1968. There is a lot I can say. He is currently taking film and history classes at State College of Florida with both students and professors younger than us, and enjoying it thoroughly because he has so much to share.
Most importantly, perhaps, he has gotten so
excited about what he heard from listening to me that he wants to take all that
talent and use it to help document disasters photographically, even as he
gorges his brain on all that I have produced. Here’s to a good friend still
finding his energy and a new mission in life as he nears 70.
The photo below? I cropped it to show him and Linda more closely, but the larger version, well, they’re standing under the Kissing Sailor statue in downtown Sarasota, which replicates that iconic photo from the end of WWII.
Posted to Facebook 2/27/2019
GRATITUDE ON PARADE #gratitudeonparade In the year after Hurricane Katrina, I met a young professor at University of New Orleans who was teaching transportation planning–John Renne. Soon, he had invited me to provide a closing keynote at a conference with a distinct theme: Carless Evacuation. Using a federal DOT grant, John was focusing attention on the central question of emergency management in the Big Easy: How do we move those people to safety who are the most vulnerable and lack independent transportation to just get out of town?
John has continued to raise vital questions like that ever since, even after moving in recent years to Florida Atlantic University. Florida faces plenty of its own questions concerning hurricane safety, and at 44, it would seem we can expect his contributions to keep coming. Recently, he and FAU hosted me to keynote a program on “Resilience and Recovery: Facing Disasters of the Future,” and I appreciated the chance to interact with planning professionals on what is known in Florida as the Treasure Coast. Bringing a hazards focus to transportation planning has been John’s unique and valuable asset not only regionally but nationally. FAU should be, and probably is, glad to have him.
In the photo below: Hank Savitch, Alka Sapat, myself, Lincoln Walther, John Renne. Hank, Alka, and Link joined me on the discussion panel that followed my talk in West Palm Beach a week ago. John was the moderator.
