Can South Florida’s climate change adaptation programs survive coronavirus costs?
South Florida cities were already struggling to cover the high costs of adapting to climate change, even before the coronavirus.
Now, shutdowns and spiraling expenses associated with the global pandemic are wreaking havoc on government budgets. Although the full impacts of the financial crunch won’t be known for a while, setting aside money for problems years or decades away will likely be a growing challenge for many communities — and their political leadership. Just months into the COVID-19 crisis, the chipping away has already begun on some signature South Florida climate programs.
Miami spent a good chunk of its new climate action plan brainstorming ways to pay for adaptation. Now its resilience office is taking a $30,000 budget hit, part of a $16.5 million reduction city-wide.
The small and very vulnerable town of Surfside has folded a sustainability committee and, after a change in political leadership, redirected money once envisioned for buying out at-risk homes to more immediate flood control concerns — a move town leaders insist would have happened without a pandemic.
Miami Beach, a city that pioneered adaptation efforts touted as a national model, has furloughed three positions in the Environment and Sustainability Department and froze hiring for two more, including an assistant director for the department. The slashes were part of a move to save the city $17.5 million and to ease the blow of a projected $65 million to $105 million loss.
That could be just the beginning for Miami Beach, which banks on keeping streets dry for tourists and has major bills to show for it. Temporary pumps, the mechanical devices used to keep streets dry in the fall flood season, could cost the city nearly a million dollars for one year alone. Raising publicly owned seawalls is another $18 million. And the city estimates it needs to more than double its fleet of permanent pumps, a pricier but longer-term flooding fix.
These figures, released in January during a presentation by city staff, underscore the mounting bill coastal cities face from climate change. A major hit from something like COVID-19 makes signing off on those projects even more difficult.
Miami Beach Commissioner Mark Samuelian planned to introduce legislation to create the city’s own resilience fund in March, but once the pandemic shutdowns began he pulled back.
“I, at this point, am going to wait a few months — not because the funding isn’t in place, because it is,’’ he said. But, he said, he was worried about the timing during “this terrible Covid cloud. It would sort of get lost.”
The city is going ahead with a scheduled meeting later this month to introduce a new flood-proofing project in the neighborhood south of 5th Avenue, which Samuelian points to as proof Miami Beach is still moving forward despite the pandemic.
“We couldn’t be more committed to our resiliency program. It is so important that we continue to make progress and make progress in the right way,” he said.
Coral Gables, which has one of, if not the largest resiliency fund in South Florida, expects it won’t have to touch the nearly $7 million it has set aside. That’s in spite of a projected $10 million budget hole this fiscal year.
“Any shortfalls related to the COVID-19 pandemic are separate and apart from the City’s resiliency projects in its two utility funds (Storm Water and Sanitary Sewer),” city spokesperson Maria Higgins Fallon said in an email.
Surfside, a coastal city identified in a report by the state’s former Chief Resilience Officer as one of Florida’s most vulnerable to sea level rise, scrapped its sustainability committee and plans to repurpose a fund meant to cover future climate change adaptation costs for new coronavirus expenses.
But the changes appear to be less about the new pandemic than a simple walk-back of the former government’s legacy policies.
Mayor Charles Burkett, who took office in March in a sweeping election that saw almost an entirely new commission appointed, said the 10 percent budget cut he asked for across the city’s departments is not related to COVID-19.
Before the end of the new commission’s first month, they voted to disband the sustainability committee and use the cash collected in the brand new resilience fund for present issues, including covering COVID-19 costs.
The resilience fund, a brainchild of former Mayor Daniel Dietch, matched taxpayer dollars with contributions from developers building in the city. The recently formulated Surfside Climate Action plan highlighted it as a future fund for the high costs of climate adaptation, including potentially buying out vulnerable homes and properties.
Months after the fund passed via unanimous vote, the commission removed the explicit language linking it to buyouts after criticism from residents that the money should be used to fix flooding issues in the city today instead.
“Our residents do want our town to be more resilient. They just want it to be more resilient right now,” said then-resident Eliana Salzhauer, one of the most vocal critics.
Now a newly elected commissioner, Salzhauer said the fund was “just tying our hands.” She said they already tried to spend some of the $120,000 or so to pay for a food bank to visit the town and plan to spend more to address street flooding.
“We’re an eight-block town. The idea that Surfside is going to solve the problem of sea rise is a fallacy to begin with,” she said. “This town is never going to have enough money to buy out every waterfront home owner in the city. That is not a realistic goal.”
Or as Mayor Burkett put it in a city newsletter, “We’ve reallocated “resiliency” funds that were targeted at solving imaginary problems that may have occurred in the distant future, to addressing resident issues now!”
When asked for clarification, Burkett said in an email that he expected the fund to be used for immediate issues like street flooding “rather than address perceived or imagined future challenges which may or may not happen.”
In a 3-2 decision introduced by Salzhauer, Surfside also decided to dissolve the newly formed Sustainability Committee. Salzhauer called the committee “baloney” and said it served as little more than “jazz hands” to make the former administration seem more environmentally conscious.
“What’s important is you don’t put all the eco-friendly people in a sandbox and say go play by yourself for one hour once a month while the rest of the town runs roughshod with over-development,” she said.
Instead, the city plans to have a single environmental expert on each of Surfside’s eight other committees. Those positions have yet to be filled.
“I’m trying to give that issue a seat at the table at every table,” Salzhauer said.
Andrea Travani, a civil and structural engineer and former chair of the sustainability committee, said he was “personally disappointed” with the decision not to continue the committee and instead spread the members out to different city committees. Travani said planning for adaptation is a complicated process that requires dedicated time and expertise.
“The thing is no committee will have the time and the resources to look at sea level rise,” he said. “They say they’re going to do it at the commission level. No, you’re not. You’re not gonna spend all the hours you need to spend. With all due respect, you don’t have the credentials for that.”
This story was originally published May 20, 2020 at 7:00 AM.
