Rick Dimino

Hurricanes Harvey and Irma are vivid reminders of the implications of the growing threat of severe weather events and the impact of climate change. While these two storms did not target Boston’s coastline and infrastructure, our region is extremely vulnerable to future flooding, storm surge and rising sea levels. Today, as we are all contributing to the humanitarian relief and rebuilding process across the Southeast, government, businesses and citizens must take responsible steps here at home to build our climate resiliency. Powerful hurricanes and the storms of the future will inevitably come this way and we must prepare for the possible harm to our people, communities and assets.

Boston is among the most vulnerable cities in the United States with serious financial losses expected from a severe weather event. As the price tag for Hurricane Harvey continues to climb (some estimates now topping $100 billion in damages and lost economic activity), we are reminded of annualized losses projected for sea level rise alone in the city’s Climate Ready Boston report: $137 million with nine inches (2030s-50s); $455 million with 21 inches (2050s-2100s); and $1.39 billion with 36 inches (2070s or later). We cannot allow our city, businesses and citizens to incur these costs that will surely follow a lack of, or insufficient amount of, action.

Fortunately, Boston Mayor Martin J. Walsh understands this fact and recently announced the city of Boston would double down on efforts to address these concerns. The Climate Ready Boston report released by the mayor at the end of 2016 is a comprehensive strategy which includes climate projections, city vulnerabilities, recommended resilience strategies and a roadmap for implementation.

The Boston Planning and Development Agency is also in the process of finalizing an updated Climate Change Preparedness and Resiliency Checklist for all construction projects that fall under Article 80 large-project review (over 50,000 square feet). Developers will be required to consider and analyze the impacts of future climate conditions – rising sea levels, extreme precipitation and rising temperature – and incorporate them into project planning, design and construction. These reasonable steps are worth taking and deserve support from the construction and development community.

Aggressive Steps Needed Now

Some of our most vital state transportation infrastructure is highly vulnerable to the impacts of severe weather and flooding. Each of the responsible public agencies to these assets has done a risk assessment; some have even started to put in place some resiliency measures. This is good news, but a comprehensive infrastructure resiliency strategy is still needed together with a financing mechanism and dollars.

There is considerable political support for our elected officials taking action against future flooding; 82 percent of registered voters in Massachusetts believe our region will be impacted by powerful storms in the next 10 years, according to a WBUR/MassINC poll conducted in June 2017. Taking steps to prepare for climate change may be a partisan issue in some parts of the country, but it is thankfully a consensus position here. The voters in Massachusetts are looking to the state and municipal governments to increase their own efforts on climate due to the uncertainty and lack of leadership in this area at the federal level. The images of the destruction that followed Harvey and Irma will certainly reinforce and strengthen the collective desire to see collaborative action between the government and private sector.

An engaged development community and businesses stand ready to collaborate with the public sector. A Better City continues to engage the region’s private sector leaders in this work by providing resources to help companies understand their climate risk, assess their assets’ vulnerabilities, and determine the type of resilience measures best suited for their facilities. We will continue to work with the city and the state to provide input on the new proposals and policies that impact construction, developers and the business community.

Still, even with all this positive steps, Boston is at risk. We need to move aggressively to advance the collective investment in resilient infrastructure, so we can prepare as best we can for the current and predicted storms of the not-so-distant future.

Rick Dimino is president and CEO of A Better City.