NORFOLK – A plan to help Norfolk stand up to sea level rise 50 years from now has led to a rift between City Hall and a local builders’ group that worries new rules will make it too expensive to construct new homes.
The City Council unanimously approved a total overhaul of the city’s zoning ordinance Tuesday night. It’s the first such rewrite since 1992 and has been in the works since 2014. It clocks in at a cool 881 pages.
The new law includes several steps to bolster the ability of new development to withstand rising tides and regular flooding. Before getting approval for new construction or major renovations, builders will have to accumulate a certain number of “points” by including flood-protection measures such as higher elevations, on-site stormwater treatment and alternative energy generation.
Several council members praised the new ordinance at a work session, saying they were happy to be taking bold steps to tackle the problems presented by the water that surrounds Norfolk and proud the city is on the cutting edge of addressing sea level rise.
“Norfolk is swallowing a giant resiliency pill right now. Instead of taking it as a slow approach, we’re taking it all at once,” Councilman Tommy Smigiel said. “I know there’s a sense of urgency … I don’t want to find out later that there’s bigger mistakes and I don’t want to lose development in the city when we need development.”
Smigiel was echoing concerns from the Tidewater Builders Association, a regional group of developers that argued in an open letter that all the new measures would add up to greater costs for builders – and possibly less development in Norfolk.
The list of complaints from TBA is long: that the hefty new code hasn’t been properly vetted and is too long for them to get through with a fine-toothed comb; that one-size-fits-all construction requirements will mean higher costs and less-functional buildings; that more extensive reviews will slow construction timelines.
All of those issues ultimately mean higher costs, the builders group argues. TBA estimated a new single-family home built in Norfolk under these rules could cost as much as $14,480 more than under the old zoning plan.
The city has acknowledged these new standards will mean some new costs for builders, but its estimates top out at $2,500 extra – about a sixth of what the builders claim.
“Resilience, like freedom, isn’t free. There are costs associated with being a resilient community,” planning director George Homewood told the council Tuesday.
Several council members rebuffed the complaints from TBA, both in their informal work session and the formal public meeting.
“The cost of the land may be going up and the cost of materials may be going up, but I’ll tell you what’s definitely going up: the level of water and the intensity of the storms,” Councilman Martin Thomas said during the work session. “That’s our job, to protect the future of the city, not protect the current developers.”
During public comment on the zoning ordinance, Bob Widener from TBA stood up to list the group’s concerns. He said members had been told that, once a draft had been made public in October ahead of a Planning Commission hearing, they might as well stop talking to city staff and take their complaints to planning commissioners or council members.
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I don’t get it. Are they planning on making Norfolk the Venice of the Mid-Atlantic coast? These new super buildings are going to be resilient to sea level rise and everyone will just commute by gondola?
Maybe the Norfolk city council should take a field trip to the Barrier Islands Center. They can watch the video on the rich Northeastern businessmen that squandered their fortunes trying to make their duck hunting lodges on the barrier islands “resilient” to sea level rise. Spoiler alert, the fortunes and lodges are all gone, but the sea is still there.
The people with good sense put their homes on barges and moved them to higher ground, which is the only real answer for rising sea levels. There was no federal flood insurance program back then, so it didn’t take too many flooding events to make people understand it was time to move. These days, we subsidize stupidity by repeatedly paying people to rebuild in flood plains, event after event. I’m looking at you Outer Banks.
Here’s an interesting article on European stone age tools dredged up by fishermen 60 miles off the coast of Virginia in an area that used to be dry land. Despite the recent hysteria, sea level rise is nothing new.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/new-evidence-suggests-stone-age-hunters-from-europe-discovered-america-7447152.html
Chris Willis, perhaps a trip to the Netherlands or London on the Thames is in store for you? For one, there is a YUGE difference in building on shifting sands and barrier islands and building inland, on loam and clay. Secondly, the steps that the City of Norfolk have been taking towards rising sea levels cannot begin to compare to moving a few dozen homes from a sand-shifting barrier island. These steps were begun over forty years ago and continue to evolve as finances and budgets permit.
If you look to Europe and the models put in place there, you will notice a profound difference between their approach to sea level rise and America’s. First of all, few Europeans bought the argument that global warming was not occurring and therefore melting ice was not causing the seas to rise. So, precious time was NOT wasted and people realized that for the sake of sustaining the viability of their cities and farmlands, dikes and flood gates must be erected. So, they did what they had to do, damn the costs.
Here in the good old USA, not so much. Oh, we have no issues with spending upwards to twenty billion to keep a couple of thousand ner’-do-wells on the other side of a wall built on dry land. But, to convince folks that trillions will be needed to keep New York, Boston, Norfolk, Wilmington (N.C.), Miami, Charleston, San Diego, Los Angeles, New Orleans, Houston and San Francisco from drowning; well that money is slated for our security and billionaires’ pockets. Nothing to see here folks. By the way, gum boots are all the rage now!
So, when you cavalierly imply that the City of Norfolk is stupid for having a plan to thwart or at least stem the rising tides that are coming, please do some research please. Look beyond your own small world of barrier islands and global warming hoaxes before making non-sense statements like “These days, we subsidize stupidity by repeatedly paying people to rebuild in flood plains, event after event. I’m looking at you Outer Banks” I believe what you call subsidies, most folks call insurance. So, unless you are willing to watch nearly a dozen major cities and hundreds, perhaps thousands, of small villages (communities like Cape Charles) all along the coastline of America drown, you’d better be prepared to pay the price. Our children and their children surely will, one way or another.
Federal Flood insurance isn’t really insurance. It is a subsidy provided by taxpayers like you and me. The private insurers all got out of the business back when Florida got whacked by repeated hurricanes in the early 2000’s, and it became clear they couldn’t make a profit. You buy it through private insurers, but all flood policies are actually underwritten by the federal government. The premium homeowners pay does not begin to cover the actual cost of payouts every year. There would be far fewer people choosing to build their homes and businesses in flood prone areas if they had to take that financial risk themselves instead of off loading it onto the backs of their fellow citizens through the National Flood Insurance Program.
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/10-things-politicians-wont-tell-you-about-femas-flood-insurance-2017-08-28
Next, if you read the article Wayne posted, there is nothing in Norfolk’s proposed new building code about erecting dikes or improving flood gates a’ la Holland and London, which I have visited by the way. Instead, they are talking about on-site storm water management(retention ponds for rain water), alternative energy sources, and higher elevations. That might help out when the next hurricane or Nor’easter rolls through, but please explain how it makes Norfolk resilient to sea level rise. How does a retention pond or a backup generator help when the street out front has become a permanent part of the Elizabeth River?
It comes down to this Chas, I believe that the climate is changing, and always has since the beginning of the planet. I believe that human activity has had an impact on our global climate but it is not the only factor, and may not even be the major factor. I do not believe that we humans can turn back the clock or influence the major climatic trends favorably in any meaningful way. The best we can hope to do is adapt to the change. The most sensible way to do that is to abandon flood prone areas as they become untenable. Spending trillions of dollars to build massive levees and flood gates all along the East and West coasts doesn’t make any sense to me. People should decide for themselves when it is time to go, based on the risk they are willing to take. That risk should be priced fairly and not subsidized by tax payers who have chosen to live in less risk prone areas of the country. This exodus may happen slowly over a number of generations, or it may happen quickly depending on which models are correct. Eventually though, you won’t be able to build a levee high enough. This is nothing new. Climate change has resulted in many mass migrations throughout human history. It has played a role in the rise and fall of entire civilizations. We like to think we’re special and in the midst of some unprecedented emergency, but as has been noted before, there is nothing new under the sun Chas.
https://www.sapiens.org/evolution/early-human-migration/
https://climate.nasa.gov/news/1010/climate-change-and-the-rise-and-fall-of-civilizations/
After re-reading my reply to Chas, I thought I should point out that I in no way expect that our government will take a sensible approach to this problem like the one I outlined above. That would be crazy talk. Instead, they will throw bazillions of tax dollars at this in the hopes of buying time. They will say that they are doing this because of the urgings of kind-hearted citizens like Chas, or for the children, or something equally ridiculous, but in actuality, they will do it because all of that expensive waterfront property is owned by the people that write their campaign checks. The people that own the office towers, apartment buildings, hotels, and such are not going to let it all go quietly. They will demand that something be done, even if it is stupid and futile. It should be entertaining to watch anyway. All of this is assuming that sea level rise turns out to be an actual problem on the scale that the current alarmists are predicting.
NOW! That’s what I call a good response. Well informed with just a touch of right-back-acha…Chris, you responded well and actually informed me to various issues I was not totally familiar with. For that, I thank you. And my point is this…I cannot readily debate or find fault within your response, as it is well written, informed and pretty much spot on. For that, I thank you.
One point though, and I am familiar with this aspect. I know for a fact that the City of Norfolk is looking into alternative methods of flood control beyond the storm influent control and retention. In 2016 there was a joint meeting with officials from both the Netherlands and Great Britain to enact discussion and pre-planning for a sea wall and/or a series of locks and barriers to control sea level rise. The navy has already put in place actions to enable the raising of the docks and buildings at Naval Air Station. The City of Norfolk is working in conjunction with those plans.
Will this be costly? You bet. Will the taxpayer foot the bill? When have we not? But, your points were well said and timely. You seem well informed and well-read. Adaptation is the key to this conversation. And anyone who can admit that climate change is real and on-going and nothing new, I can have a conversation with. For that, I thank you. And one last point, you and I both agree on…there IS nothing new under the sun.