Cities step in where Trump fails to lead on climate change

High Water Higher Bridges — Milwaukee’s South Sixth Street Bridge over the Kinnickinnic River in April. The Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District raised the bridge to prevent the waterway from backing up amid downpours. It’s the type of change that cities throughout the country are making to prepare for the intense rainstorms that have resulted from the planet’s warming climate.
Photo: AP Photo/Ivan Moreno

Climate change is often seen as posing the greatest risk to coastal areas.

But the nation’s inland cities face perils of their own, including more intense storms and more frequent flooding.

Even as President Donald Trump withdrew the United States from a global climate agreement, many of the nation’s river communities are responding to climate change by raising or replacing bridges that suddenly seem too low.

The reconstructed bridges range from multi-lane structures that handle heavy traffic loads to small rural spans traversed by country school buses and farmers shuttling between their fields.

In Milwaukee, bridges have been raised as part of $400 million in flood-management projects across a metro area with 28 communities.

In Reno, Nevada, officials spent about $18 million to replace a bridge over the Truckee River last year and plan to replace three more after flood-danger projections were increased by up to 15 percent.

Because the cities are inland, they’re “not the kind of places that people are used to thinking of being in the forefront of climate change,” said Jim Schwab, manager of the Hazards Planning Center at the American Planning Association, which is working with nearly a dozen cities on flood-mitigation options.

Many communities are “still feeling their way through this particular problem,” he said.

Data lacking, but bridge-raising picks up

No one tracks how many communities are raising bridges or replacing them with higher ones, but the Federal Emergency Management Agency says it’s now routinely providing money for this purpose, although no dollar total is available.

Typically, more than 1,500 bridges are reconstructed each year for a variety of reasons.

Schwab said he’s sure hundreds and possibly thousands of bridge-raising projects have been completed recently or are planned.

A cursory check by The Associated Press in a handful of states found at least 20 locations, including in Wisconsin, where bridges have been raised or construction will begin soon.

FEMA is now finalizing a rule that states that floods “are expected to be more frequent and more severe over the next century due in part to the projected effects of climate change.” The U.S. sustained more than $260 billion in flood damage between 1980 and 2013.

Given the Trump administration’s skepticism about climate change, however, a FEMA spokeswoman says the agency “has not determined what its next action will be” on the rule.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers did not respond to requests for information on cities where flood risks have been reassessed.

As planet warms, more intense rain

Increasing humidity — a result of the more than 1.5 degree increase in global temperatures since 1880 — has resulted in more intense downpours, according to David R. Easterling, director of the national climate assessment unit at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

“It causes day after day of rainfall, and that leads to flooding,” Easterling said.

River level forecasts have increased in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, since massive rainstorms in 2008 caused the normally placid Cedar River to climb higher than anyone thought possible, eventually topping the previous record flood by 11 feet. More than 1,100 blocks in Iowa’s second-largest city wound up underwater.

Afterward, the Corps of Engineers raised Cedar Rapids’ projections for a 100-year flood by 8 percent. A 100-year flood is the worst flood that can be expected to happen over a century. It has a 1 percent chance of occurring in any given year.

As part of a massive flood-control project, the city decided to raise its Eighth Avenue Bridge by 14 feet, putting it 28 feet above the average water surface.

“What used to be the norm is no longer the norm,” said Rob Davis, the city’s flood-control program manager. “The norm is much higher.”

‘Cities have to do something’

In Milwaukee, the Metropolitan Sewerage District raised the South Sixth Street bridge over the Kinnickinnic River to prevent the waterway from backing up amid downpours.

Similar projects are planned in Hobart, Indiana, and Rockford, Illinois, where higher river levels have been projected.

The preparations for climate change seem oddly disconnected from the political debate about the issue.

In Texas — where politicians including U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz have questioned whether the climate is growing warmer and if humans have caused the change — Austin has raised two bridges in the past five years and plans to improve three more stream crossings, said Pam Kearfott, a supervising engineer in the city’s watershed protection department.

Officials “try to stick to the technical basis for change” and ignore the politics, she said.

In the West, small communities in the Ross Valley north of San Francisco anticipate worse seasonal flooding from climate change. They plan to replace five bridges that are now too low, at a cost of more than $10 million.

As Cooper Martin, who heads the National League of Cities’ Sustainable Cities Institute, puts it, “With the changing climate, cities have to do something.”

Or, as hundreds of U.S. mayors put it when committing to uphold the Paris climate agreement that Trump dishonored, “The world cannot wait — and neither will we.”

More than 340 mayors representing more than 65 million people have joined the Climate Mayors campaign, signing on to a statement earlier this summer that began, “The president’s denial of global warming is getting a cold reception from America’s cities.”

Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett joined the effort, as did Madison Mayor Paul R. Soglin, Bayfield Mayor Gordon T. Ringberg, Glendale Mayor Bryan Kennedy, Kenosha Mayor John Antaramian, La Crosse Mayor Tim Kabat, Middleton Mayor Gurdip Brar and Monona Mayor Mary O’Connor.

Did you know?

The Milwaukee City Council unanimously passed Council resolution 170337 pledging the city’s support of the principles of the Paris Climate Accord.

Milwaukee also joined more than a dozen other cities in re-publishing EPA Climate information removed from the federal website after the inauguration of Donald Trump. Check it out at milwaukee.gov/climatechangeisreal.