Guest Column: Jacksonville must do more to deal with flooding

Jacksonville, we have a problem.

We all know that as Hurricane Irma passed through Florida last month, Jacksonville experienced record-setting flooding. If you think the flooding has been getting worse the last few years, you’re right. Flooding has increased 400 percent in the past 10 years.

To better understand the situation, let’s set aside hurricanes and take a look at flooding that comes from high tides.

From 1997–2006, Northeast Florida experienced 21 days of flooding from high tides alone.

From 2007–2016, this dramatically increased to 71 days of flooding.

So what made these 10 years so different from the previous 10 years?

Four inches of sea level rise. Just four inches!

That may not seem like a lot, but if you picture a bathtub filled to the brim, you can imagine that just a few additional inches of water would cause the water to spill over and flood the entire bathroom.

EVIDENCE ALL AROUND FLORIDA

Since sea levels have steadily risen over the years, coastal areas are experiencing more frequent and severe flooding, even on sunny days.

Not only is this “sunny day” flooding a nuisance, but it can affect our local economy, since employees may not be able to get to work and consumers may not be able to shop.

It is likely that you may have experienced traffic from closed roads due to flooding; perhaps even had your own car and home flooded. These situations are unpleasant and expensive.

The bigger problem is that flooding is expected to get worse.

Over the past decade, the speed of Florida’s sea level rise has tripled, and is predicted to continue accelerating. It took 66 years for the sea level to rise eight inches, and scientists estimate that the sea level could increase another eight inches in the next 20 years.

Rising sea levels pose a significant risk to homeowners mainly because flood insurance is separate from homeowners insurance. Homeowners do not always know if or when they need flood insurance, so they rely on flood maps from organizations like FEMA to help them determine what is necessary.

While FEMA creates flood maps to help citizens and businesses understand their flooding risk, these maps often give a false sense of security because they are based on historical flooding and do not take into account current or future sea level rise.

However, innovative new tools such as Flood iQ, a free educational tool from not-for-profit First Street Foundation, enable individuals to search by address in order to determine if their homes or businesses are at risk of flooding now and/or in the near future as sea levels continue to rise.

LOCAL HOMES AT RISK OF FLOODING

According to Flood iQ, there are 32,763 homes at risk from tidal flooding in Jacksonville.

With a median home value of $154,700 that means the city has more than $5 billion dollars of home value at risk from sea level rise flooding. Flooding should not be accepted as a way of life.

To prevent flooding requires continuous action from local, state and federal officials along with homeowners and business owners.

Jacksonville has already identified close to $164 million of sea level rise related projects required by 2022, and Jacksonville Beach has identified more than $3.6 million of sea level rise related projects required by 2022.

These initiatives are a good start, but more needs to be done and done faster in order to future-proof Jacksonville against flooding from high tides and sea level rise.

Sea level rise is an urgent matter in Jacksonville and other coastal communities. We cannot wait any longer to find practical solutions to protect our homes, businesses and communities.

Now is the time to take action.

Matthew Eby is the executive director of First Street Foundation, a New York City nonprofit that educates the public on sea level rise and how to take action.

Originally published at jacksonville.com on October 23, 2017.