The City of Olympia Plans for Sea Level Rise

author : Mike Coday topic : City Planning | Development in Olympia | Climate Change

by Mike Coday

Olympia City Manager Steve Hall and Public Works Director Mike Mucha were interviewed by Christopher Swope for an article title "A Rising Tide" that was published in the US GSA magazine Governing.com in December 2007.

http://www.governing.com/articles/0712warmqa1.htm

In the interview Steve Hall says the Olympia community is "pretty engaged around the whole climate change issue" and says that Olympia has met the Kyoto protocol standards.

The interview focuses on the impact of rising sea level in Olympia. The City's planning is set around sea level rises of one foot, two feet and three feet. Public Works Director Mike Mucha notes that planning for sea level rise in Puget Sound is not simply looking at global sea level rise, the planning has to take into account tides that can cause regular 20 foot sea level fluctuations. Mucha also notes that the rising sea level is magnified in Olympia because of Olympia's position at the Southern end of Puget Sound and notes that the problem of rising sea level is not going to be felt as a gently lapping body of water that creeps slowly higher, it's going to be increased flooding that occurs during specific events when high winds, heavy rains and high tides coincide and that when these three coincide we will experience increased flooding.

Mucha is an engineer and notes that sea level rise is not simply the result of glacial and icecap melt, it is also an effect of thermal expansion of the oceans as sea water temperature rises. Mucha says the West Coast also faces an increased challenge of changing wind patterns with prevailing winds pushing more water against our coast. Mucha also notes that the South Sound will be sinking about a tenth of a foot in the next 50 to 100 years and says "So we have land going down, we have the water getting bigger, we have snow melt, and we have winds pushing the water around the globe in different ways. So it's a very complicated thing. And so when people ask how much are seas going to rise and I say three feet, it's based on a lot of assumptions and a lot of dynamics. Does anyone know? No. These are best guesses at this point."

Steve Hall states in the interview, "It's interesting, because when we talk about sea-level rise, we get two reactions from the policy level. One is that we can't understand it--we can't know exactly how much it's going to rise, so we can't react to it. It's just too overwhelming, there's just too many factors of wind and subsidence of land and global warming, and maybe Greenland will melt and what do we do? So we do nothing."

Hall says, so what do we do? We take a reasonable approach and pick some number and start planning. "We said, let's talk about two to three feet of sea-level rise over the next 50 to 100 years. What does that mean for our community? What does it mean for our utility infrastructure downtown? What does it mean for our roadway systems? And what does it mean for investment in our public and private facilities?"

Some current questions that naturally arise:

● How does development and building fit in the planning for a sea level rise of one, two, or three feet?

● Should developers include sea wall planning and flooding mitigation in projects currently on the drawing table or will we simply shift the long-term cost of protecting private property developed in a flood zone to the taxpayers?

Mike Coday is a Vietnam War conscientious objector, long-time activist for peace, justice and civil rights issues.