How Far Will Sea Levels Rise? In Miami, They Drew Lines On The Pavement To Find Out

By: By Terrell Johnson

Published: November 20,2013

 

 

 

 

 

12 / 20

Sea Level Rise in Miami Beach

Emily Honeyman chalking 3 feet of sea level rise in Miami Beach, Fla., for the High Water Line project. (Courtesy Jayme Gershen/High Water Line)

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Looking ahead to a future shaped by Earth's changing climate, it's tempting to minimize the impact of a few feet of sea level rise or temperatures a couple degrees higher than today's, especially when the numbers seem so small.
But in a place like Miami, numbers like those will make a huge difference in the lives of the more than 5 million people who live there – in fact, whether they'll be able to live there at all.
Visualizing what this future might look like – and sparking conversations about it on the street – is what New York artist Eve Mosher, project co-director Heidi Quante and some 300 volunteers had in mind last week, when they laid down 26 miles of chalk lines through the streets of downtown Miami and Miami Beach.
It was all part of the latest installment in the High Water Line project, which started in New York City back in 2007 and aims to show how rising sea levels will impact life in major cities like Miami, Philadelphia and London this year and next.
“It’s really like a very large performance, with many different people, passing it off from one person to another," explained project co-coordinator Marta Viciedo. "And the communication, the dialogue that happens [when people ask] hey, what are you doing?"
The lines, drawn with a chalk line marker you'd find at a baseball field, show how far the Atlantic Ocean and Biscayne Bay would encroach if sea levels rose by 3 feet and by 6 feet, reflecting optimistic (and pessimistic) forecasts for sea level rise in Miami by 2100.
Following maps based on sea level rise analysis by Climate Central, the volunteers laid down chalk through historic neighborhoods like Little Havana and right up to the doors of both American Airlines Arena, where the NBA's Miami Heat play, and Marlins Park, the home of baseball's Miami Marlins.
All along the way, they got the chance to meet and talk with the very people who will be impacted most by rising seas, which Mosher said was the project's main goal.
"As odd as the things that happen in New York and Miami are, pushing a field marker through the streets is enough of a surprise that it gets people curious and gets them to come up and ask me what I’m doing," she added.
Like much of South Florida, Miami is a place where the need to adapt to sea level rise is far more urgent than in the rest of the country. "In Miami, it's not 'if,' but 'when,' " Mosher said. "So what can you do with that knowledge?"
Sea levels already have risen in this region by about a foot since 1880, noted Nicole Hammer Hernandez, the program manager of Florida Atlantic University's climate change initiative. And solutions that might keep out the sea in other cities won't work for Miami, she added.
“Because South Florida sits on very porous limestone rock, the water doesn’t just come up over the edge – it comes in through that porous rock underneath," she explained. "So if you build a seawall, the wall will prevent water from coming up over that edge, but the water is still going to come in underground."
Water that comes in underground both raises the water table and infiltrates the fresh drinking water supply.
"Some people say, we’ll just raise the buildings, we’ll put everything on stilts, and we can manage that way," she added. "That solves one piece of the problem. But the other piece is, where are we going to get our fresh water from?"
To Viciedo, who helped coordinate meetings with community leaders in Miami weeks in advance of the line drawings last week, this is a challenge that the people of Miami feel they can rise to meet. Her own family, she added, were refugees from Cuba who escaped to find freedom in the U.S.
"I think this is an interesting moment, where so many people have had to be resilient before," she said. "They’ve escaped really, really poor conditions in the countries they’ve come from, and they’ve come here to build a life. And they’re already resilient – they’re resilient communities and resilient individuals.
“They’re not saying, 'ooh we’ve got to run,' " she added. "They’re saying, this is another challenge for us."