Waterfront homes in Quincy’s Squantum neighborhood in 2024. Massachusetts is in the middle of updating regulations governing buildings subject to flood risks. iStock photo
Climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe often compares climate planning to driving while looking only in the rearview mirror. We’re making decisions about the future based on the past even though the road ahead looks nothing like the one behind us. The seas are rising. Storms are getting more intense. Flood zones are shifting.
The good news is that we have the tools to see the road ahead, at least partially. The real challenge is changing course. Massachusetts has major opportunities right now to do exactly that.
Last month, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers released a draft coastal resilience plan for Boston. The plan will help protect hundreds of thousands of Boston residents and prevent an estimated $41 billion in damage. It brings critical funding for flood protection.
But it could go further by relying more on nature-based solutions instead of primarily seawalls.
Marsh restoration, vegetated berms and parks are win-wins; they reduce flooding while storing carbon, creating habitat and improving public access to the waterfront. They don’t just defend against climate change; they make communities better places to live.
Housing Push Can’t Overlook Safety
At the same time, Massachusetts is updating several regulations concerning where and how we build for decades. That’s especially important as the commonwealth works to address its housing crisis, with a need to add 220,000 homes by 2035. Faster housing production is essential. But speed cannot come at the expense of safety.
The state has, appropriately, been seeking ways to speed up housing production, in part by revising permit frameworks.
Among those frameworks, however, are regulations that are designed not just to protect the environment, but to keep buildings – and the people within them – safe.
Solutions to the housing crisis also need to consider the approximately 336,000 existing homes at risk of flooding. We need to protect these homes, which in some cases may mean relocating them, and we need to make sure that newly constructed homes aren’t placed in tomorrow’s disaster zones.
We know how to do this. Smart planning and protective regulations offer the climate solutions we need.
Yet the state’s recent efforts to implement such rules have stalled, or been stymied by bad-faith opponents who cast environmental rules as the scapegoat when really they safeguard people and property.
A proposed hotel-condominium development in Provincetown would likely not have been approved if the state had finished work on proposed coastal flood regulations sooner. Image courtesy of Machado Silvetti
Flood Plain Construction Standards Up for Review
One example is a proposal before the Board of Building Regulations and Standards.
State resilience experts have recommended applying existing flood plain construction standards to a broader FEMA-mapped area that better reflects today’s flood risk. This isn’t a new or burdensome requirement. It simply extends current protections to places that we already know are vulnerable.
The need is clear. A report by the Metropolitan Area Planning Council found that 96 percent of disaster claims in the study area came from properties outside the area where those standards currently apply. Existing rules are protecting yesterday’s floodplain, not tomorrow’s.
The proposal should also cover major renovations.
Roughly 80 percent of the buildings that will exist in 2050 have already been built, many of them in flood-prone locations. As buildings are substantially improved, they should become more resilient. And over time, Massachusetts should move beyond FEMA’s maps altogether by using more accurate state flood models and the best available science.
Julia Carlton MacKay
The state must also finalize long-delayed updates to the Wetland Protection Act known as the “Resilience 1.0” regulations. Drafted in 2023, these rules would establish statewide standards for development in coastal flood-risk areas – standards Massachusetts has never had. Every year they remain unfinished is another year new development can move forward under outdated assumptions.
The consequences are already visible.
In Provincetown, a proposed hotel and condominium project is moving forward directly along the shoreline, in a coastal area known to be vulnerable to waves and flooding. State climate tools identify the site as high-risk.
Under the proposed Resilience 1.0 standards, the project would likely not be allowed in its current form. But because those rules remain unfinished, it can proceed. That leaves future residents exposed to risks we already understand and undermines our efforts to build lasting housing.
Massachusetts can lead on both climate resilience and housing. But only if we stop planning for the coastline we used to have instead of the one we’re rapidly getting. The water is rising. It’s time to fix this now.
Julia Carlton MacKay is director of community resilience at Conservation Law Foundation.
