Climate Change is Climbing Mount Dora (1)
When the waters come, how high can we go?
The first of a six-part 2017 report, brought back as part of the 2019 Covering Climate Now initiative, a global collaboration of more than 250 news outlets to strengthen coverage of the climate story.
Earlier this year Mount Dora Mayor Nick Girone read a public statement that would clearly indicate that Mount Dora is serious about responding to the challenges of climate change. “Humankind,” he said,
is currently facing tremendous global challenges affecting every community, including degradation of ecosystems, mass extinction of species, and global/local climate changes.
All people of this Earth, including the City of Mount Dora, no matter their race, gender, age, income, sexual orientation, or national origin, have a right to a healthy environment.
The youth of the world and in our City represent a source of endless creativity and potential, and count among our most valuable resources, along with our environmental resources.
Expanding environmental education and climate literacy is vital to enhance awareness about the environment, inform decision-making, and protect future generations.
It is necessary for the citizens of the City of Mount Dora, and those all over our global community, to develop green jobs and to build an innovative and equitable green economy to combat the aformentioned global challenges.
Expanding environmental education and climate literacy is vital to enhance awareness about the environment, inform decision-making, and protect future generations.
It is understood that sustainability will only be achieved by meeting the needs of the present without compromising the needs of future generations.
It is important than ever to act locally and to cooperate internationally and defend the environmental progress that has heretofore gained.
It is essential to expand and diversity the global environmental movement while promoting the same within the Mount Dora area, to achieve maximum progress.
Girone was reading his Earth Day proclamation, calling it “an annual reminder of the constant need for environmental activism, stewardship commitments, and sustainability efforts.”
In a telephone conversation, I asked city manager Robin Hayes how Girone’s statements about environmental awareness were being reflected in city planning and operations. I was curious about the city’s take on climate change and the increasing impacts in the coming decades. “Mayor Girone is aware of what communities are doing around us and the need to be up to par with them,” she replied. “We have developed a Strategic Plan with five goals for economic development, infrastructure, fiscal, growth management and public safety. Over the next year we’ll address each of these, looking at them from every direction — including, I’m sure, climate change.”
She sent me a copy of the latest Strategic Plan discussion — inputs from Parks and Recreation and Public Works on how they plan to address the five goals — but I saw no mention of operational plans in response to climate change.
So while it is deeply rewarding to hear that Mount Dora acknowledges the pressing needs of climate change, the city has done almost nothing to address it.
Mount Dora isn’t alone in Lake County — none of the other cities in the Golden Triangle acknowledge climate change in their websites, and only Eustis has a page of sustainability links. In my research, Central Florida as a whole hasn’t done much in response to climate change. Even coastal areas of the state where rising seas are an immediate threat have been haphazard in addressing the issue. Our governor won’t allow the word “climate change” to be used in public discourse, and our President has called it a hoax.
Perhaps because the predicted bad effects of climate change seem so far off — six feet of sea level rise eighty years from now — the problem seems small compared to other pressing issues of the day. Yet Florida along with Texas and Louisiana will experience the worst effects of a fast-warming earth the soonest, with flooding coasts, dramatic heat increases, alternating inundations of rainfall and drought, ecological devastation and migration away from flooding coasts.
Meanwhile, development continues at a rabid pace in Central Florida, seemingly oblivious to perils approaching on the horizon.
And the peril of climate change is approaching far faster than anyone imagined.
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Where Hurricane Harvey took Texas by surprise, beefing up to Category 4 strength in the Gulf only a day before dumping four feet of water on the west Texas coastline, Hurricane Irma was a slow-motion nightmare for Florida, reaching Category 5 magnitude at mid-ocean and then slowly, slowly stomping through the Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico and Cuba before menacing the entire Florida peninsula.
The Virgin Islands were decimated by Irma’s winds; twelve inches of rain fell on Saint Thomas and Saint John. Puerto Rico was lashed by 30-foot waves and more that million residents lost power. Flooding in Haiti created mudslides, destroyed homes, flooded crops and created widespread infrastructure damage. In Cuba, the northern coast was raked by 160-mph winds and several thousand flamingos on Cuba’s northern Cayo Coco island were killed.
The track kept altering as it loomed over the Keys, causing a third of the state’s residents to evacuate — first from South Florida and then Tampa.
Covering the entire state, it didn’t matter all that much where you were when Irma made landfall in Marcos Island, south of Sarasota. And just to make things even more fun, Irma then ignored all the forecasts and barreled straight north up the peninsula with 75 mile-per-hour Category 1 winds. Trees and power lines were downed, streets flooded, high-rise cranes collapsed in Miami and Fort Lauderdale, fresh water pipes were fouled salt water, lift stations backed up raw sewage and many areas including much of downtown Jacksonville was flooded. At one time on Sept. 10, there were no airliners over the state.
Even in its weakened state, Irma continue to caused widespread wind damage and power outages in Georgia, and Charleston recorded its third highest storm surge on record. One hundred thousand resident of upstate South Carolina lost power.
84 people died in the the storm and the aftermath, including eight residents of a Hollywood, FL nursing home where the power had been lost. One in four houses in the Keys were destroyed and another 65% were significantly damaged. 15 million Florida homes lost power — three quarters of the population, and for many cable service remained dead for ten days after power was restored.
Coming so soon on the heels Hurricane Harvey, the country was captivated by a pair of natural disasters which alone were record setters. The combined cost of the two storms has been estimated at $300 billion dollars, or one and half percentage points off the GDP (about what the U.S. economy would grow from mid-August to the end of the year)
For all of that, Mount Dora’s Irma adventure was, by comparison, modest. As it shifted inland from Tampa and worked its way north, Lake County received a direct blow with sustained winds that reached 76 mph. 4,600 people and 527 pets took refuge in shelters across Lake County and about 90,000 lost power. The Taveres Seaplane Basin and Marina was destroyed by a small tornado, and another one wreaked havoc in Umatilla.
In Mount Dora, a number of trees came down (seven in a row at the cemetery) and power was out for two days. City power was out longer than usual because the city had to wait for Duke Energy to repair two transmission lines. Public works director John Peters credited electrical utility manager Charles Revell and his crew for getting the juice back up so quickly after the transmission lines were fixed.
Rains washed out a cul-de-sac at Dogwood Mountain causing a water main break that flooded Lake John across Old Eustis Road. The floodwaters entered the sewer system and causing a sewer release into Lake John. The crater from the washout was about 20 to 30 feet deep and 110 x 110 feet. Water samples were taken from Lake John and nearby Lake Gertude to test for e coli bacteria; Lake John tested positive. An environmental reparation firm was hired to handle the clean-up.
Peters also credited Parks and Rec staffers for their help with the aggressive and timely efforts cleaning up immediately after the storm, and gave a shout-out CCI Construction — the city’s contractor in the ongoing utility line relocation project — for providing an operator and backhoe rig to help clear streets.
Cable for many residents remained out for a week longer. According to Peters, the reason took longer is that these cable companies don’t have workers on any comparable scale to power companies in working on a disaster the size of Florida.
Peters also said that FEMA-paid contractor Crowder Gulf would begin picking up the mounds of debris piled in front of every house across the city. City spokesperson Lisa McDonald announced Sept. 29 that the contractor would be working seven days a week picking up yard debris only (no household garbage or construction materials) and that the trucks are large — expect road blockage while they’re working. Lake County officials estimated some 300,000 cubic yards of storm debris was waiting for pickup.
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Further behind in the conga line of monster storms which brought a harsher, more immediate tone to the climate change debate, Hurricane Jose brewed then spiraled and spun then drifted north, glancing the New York coastline. Jose’s main importance to the coastal United States is that it drew the next big storm away from the mainland. Maria formed quickly into yet another Category 5 storm, taking aim on Puerto Rico. At slightly diminished Cat 4 strength, Maria was the most powerful hurricane to strike the island in a century. In in one day, parts of the island received 24–36 inches. In Caguas, a city in the mountains of eastern Puerto Rico, rain gauges measured more than 14 inches in one hour — a world record. Reeling from an earlier hit from Irma just two weeks before, the entire island of 3–1/2 million residents are without power and flooding capsized a dam in the eastern part of the country, forcing the evacuation of some 70,000 residents.
The intensity of these storms has raised questions about climate change impacts at a time when mentioning just saying phrase invokes intense partisan debate. References to it are fast disappearing from U.S. government websites, and Florida government officials are caught in the conundrum of dealing with climate change impacts while refusing to acknowledge their cause.
While it’s not true that climate change caused this summer’s cycle of hurricanes — hurricane activity is cyclic and we’re in a period of more frequent storms — their added intensity is a credible result. Trapped greenhouse gases in the earth’s atmosphere are warming up the planet; warmer air causes evaporation to happen faster, putting more moisture in the atmosphere. Ocean waters are warming, too, and higher-than-normal surface temperatures this summer in the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico (off the coast of Texas, it was almost 7 degrees above normal). Storms brew up fast when the water’s warm, and the speed at which all of this summer’s major hurricanes intensified was unlike any previous season. Harvey grew from a tropical storm to Cat 4 in 48 hours just before making landfall. In 30 years of record keeping, no storm west of Florida has intensified in the last 12 hours before landfall.
Again, big storms can form in any season — but human-induced climate change is responsible for the deep ends of Harvey and Irma and Maria, creating Cat-5 winds and dumping record amounts of rainfall.
Coastal areas of Florida have been talking about the impacts of climate change for several years now, but Central Florida governments at the county and municipal level have had very little of that discussion until now. The problem is coming our way, though — and perhaps much faster than anyone imagined.
Over the next 75 years, climate change will make the state of Florida hotter and wetter. Coastal areas will flood and significant numbers of people will be relocating, many to Central Florida. The changes will affect nearly every aspect of everyday life, from transportation to housing to energy to water. And it we don’t get started now with sustainable solutions and long-ranging mitigation plans, we will be handing our children a much, much worse future.
This report will look at how climate change is already affecting how we do business in Florida and what more proactive governments can do about it. Climate change is heading Central Florida’s way and every government entity should be hard at work preparing for it.
Next: A State In Jeopardy
— David Cohea (djcohea@gmail.com)
David Cohea edits the blog and Facebook page Mount Dora Topics and is director of Live Oak Collective, a Mount Dora, FL-based historic and environmental preservation community.
