Forum explores coastal storms ... and what we can do about them

Those images and others from around Rhode Island drove home the effects that climate change can have on the shores of the Ocean State at a recent online forum hosted by state Sen. Victoria Gu (D-Dist. 38, Westerly, Charlestown, South Kingstown).

Gu assembled those who study coastal erosion and other effects of climate change for a one-hour presentation last week on the current state of affairs along local beaches.

“I’ve had a lot of different people reach out to me with a lot of different solutions to climate change,” Gu said. “This has to be dealt with at all levels of government.”

Last month, Gu and state Rep. Tina Spears (D-Dist. 36, Charlestown, New Shoreham South Kingstown, Westerly) introduced legislation to mandate the creation and maintenance of a statewide coastal resiliency plan, the Act on Coasts. The plan will assess community vulnerabilities, recommend mitigation strategies along ocean and river coasts, and recommend financing strategies to implement these resiliency strategies.

The region took the brunt of three significant storms between mid-December and the end of January. Winds on Dec. 18 produced wave and water levels not seen since Hurricane Sandy, according to data collected by researchers at the University of Rhode Island.

A photo taken Feb. 4 shows Westerly Town Beach after a recent storm, with a lone person walking in front of a row of homes perched along the edge of what’s left of the dune system.

“There isn’t a lot of beach or it’s pretty dry and rugged-looking beach,” University of Rhode Island Coastal Resources Center Director J.P. Walsh said. “There’s been a lot of erosion along the dune face. Many of those homes don’t have steps coming down to the beach.”

Walsh also showed a series of drone photos over South Kingstown’s town beach  documenting 5 to 10 meters of erosion between Nov. 10 and Jan. 24.

Another showed the breaches over the past two winters along the western side of the Charlestown Breachway.

“At this point, Charlestown is really struggling with what to do,” Walsh said. “But they’re fortunate. We are working with them on a new NOAA-funded project with modeling this area and ways to address the problem.”

From Napatree to Point Judith, the south shore is a series of barrier and headlands made from glacial material, Bryan Oakley, an environmental earth science professor at Eastern Connecticut State University, said.

“The shoreline is moving landward,” he said. “We’ve been here before. This is a stretch of shoreline that takes a beating during winter storms and tropical storms as well.”

Oakley focused part of his presentation on largely undeveloped Napatree Point.

“That allows us to see what the shoreline does in the absence of a lot of human involvement,” he said.

The most recent storms show there’s been a “textbook response” at Napatree to both collisional activity, where a wave runs up against a dune of some 20 feet, and overwash, when water takes sediment from the front barrier and deposits it onto the back barrier.

Both are present at Napatree.

“This is how barriers respond and how they maintain their resiliency and this is how barriers migrate over time in response to storms and sea level rise.”

Even though the process looks destructive, he said, it’s a key to the barrier dune’s survival.

The experts said there are ways for everyone can get involved in coastal resiliency efforts.

“We often hear that a picture is worth a thousand words,” said Pam Rubinoff, who studies coastal resilience at URI’s Coastal Resource Center.

“That’s really true in a lot of these images, but they also bring a lot of information and data to us.”

A smartphone app called MyCoast allows its users to submit their own photos and data of local flooding and other adverse storm effects to state researchers.

“It’s used for model validation, for decision-makers, it’s used to try to get grants for money to take care of these things,” Rubinoff said.

Visitors to mycoast.org can look at galleries of submitted photos chronicling featured storms and extreme king tides.

Researchers take the user-submitted photos through the app and are able to tie it to environmental and tide data and monitor it.

“Since 2014, we’ve collected over 4,000 reports,” Rubinoff said. The program has about 350 active volunteers.

Sue AnderBois, with The Nature Conservancy, touted the organization’s partnership with the Rhode Island Infrastructure Bank on its Municipal Resiliency Program.

“We work with municipalities to do short-term planning with towns to determine top priorities and next steps,” she said. She encouraged participants and community members to get involved in different ways, such as by documenting climate change through photography, if that’s a passion, or helping with grant writing.

Save The Bay Executive Director Topher Hamblett said the organization is planning a dune grass planting event for later in the spring.

“Just so they can stay intact. We should do what we can while we can,” he said. “I think the more that the people of Rhode Island clamor for a much larger-scale approach and strategy to resilience, the better off we’ll be.”

Gu said a future presentation would delve into areas such as Coastal Resources Management Council regulations and efforts at the state and local levels to find solutions.

“We have organizations that are working hard on this and other issues,” she said. “They have ways that everyone can plug in.”