Tampa Area Officials, Uh, Er, Um, Beginning To Grasp What Global Warming, Rising Seas Will Do

[hatrack]

To county officials, the headlines are the stuff of nightmares. The waters in Tampa Bay could rise above today’s sea level by as much as 8.5 feet by 2100, one report says. Just constructing the necessary sea walls will cost Hillsborough County an estimated $2.7 billion by 2040, another study found. But it’s the safety of the people living here that keeps University of South Florida researchers up at night. That’s true even for those living far from the county’s coast line — the people asked to “shelter in place” in communities like Gibsonton and East Tampa that are well outside evacuation zones.

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Researchers say the maps back up numerous studies in recent years that have placed the Tampa Bay region among the most vulnerable in the world to climate change. And the risks, they say, could be even greater than anticipated. Take, for instance, hotel placement. After plotting Hillsborough’s 482 hotels on the projected flood zone maps up to the year 2045, the team found that only 188 — or about 39 percent — were located in areas that would remain unaffected by storm-related flooding.

That means the county should not only prepare to fortify, fix or completely rebuild many of those structures in the future, but will also have to consider how best to evacuate 30,000 to 50,000 guests. Many could be tourists who don’t know where to find a safe location to ride out a storm. “There is a big proportion of our hotel stock built along the coast because we’re capitalizing on our geography, but these are some of the other things we’ll have to think about,” Cook said.

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nother example: Hillsborough County is home to 17 of Florida’s 92 “superfund sites" contaminated by hazardous waste. Most are clustered together in parts of east county that are quickly sprouting large housing developments, the researchers found. If a Category 3 storm were to blow through the unincorporated region, 8 of those sites would be inundated with toxic water. The area of most concern is the Raleigh Street Dump, a heavily contaminated site located off U.S. 41 that could be easily flooded by even a Category 1 hurricane, causing battery waste, fiberglass chemicals and other free-flowing contaminants to spill into the water supplies for nearby neighborhoods.

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https://www.tampabay.com/news/hillsborough/2019/10/30/facing-a-future-of-flooding-hillsborough-county-officials-ponder-how-to-keep-communities-above-water/

[GitRDun]

1. As my father used to say to me

They need to start using their heads for something besides a hatrack, eh?

All these problems are solvable provided the politicians pull their collective heads out of their butts.

Beautiful part of the country.

Hope someone down there starts thinkin'

[brush]

2. How many billions for a seawall? Who will pay, property taxes? Time to think about relocating