One of the most rapid sea level surges on Earth is besieging the American South, forcing a reckoning for coastal communities across eight U.S. states, a Washington Post analysis has found.sea levels are at least 6 inches higher than they were in 2010 — a change similar to what occurred over the previous five decades., a Post analysis of satellite data shows. Few other places on the planet have seen similar rates of increase, such as the North Sea near the United Kingdom.
Galveston, Tex., has experienced an extraordinary rate of sea level rise — 8 inches in 14 years. Experts say it has been exacerbated byseveral huge pump stations in coming years, largely funded through federal grants. The city manager expects each pump to cost more than $60 million — a figure that could eclipse the city’s annual tax revenue.
“We’re seeing flooding in a way that we haven’t seen before,” said Sweet, who leads the agency’s high-tide flooding assessments. “That is just the statistics doing the talking.”expected to strike 15 times more frequently in 2050 than they did in 2020, Sweet said. Rodneyka Lofton has lived in the same house on St. Emanuel Street, along a swath of Mobile’s heavily industrialized waterfront, for “a majority of my life,” she said.
Texas Street, around the corner from Lofton’s home, was once again inundated one morning earlier this year. A car was inching through deep water. Repeated flooding has left graves at the Old Plateau Cemetery in Mobile, Ala., sunken and in disrepair. “That’s what I’m trying to get my own grip around for myself and my family,” said Bruhl, a member of the St. Tammany Levee, Drainage and Conservation District whose home flooded in 2021’s“If we’re going to continue to live here, we’ve got to find a protection that can mitigate a lot of this, because at some point it becomes not sustainable anymore.”has replaced vast stretches of land with asphalt and other surfaces that can worsen flooding.
In the early morning, the rising tide in Pensacola Bay swallowed an outfall pipe that is supposed to empty water from a downtown neighborhood called the Tanyard.the tops of the drains along S. De Villiers Street — a telltale sign of the higher ocean creeping backward up pipes and a predicament plaguing a growing number of coastal communities.
“Storm water flooding is getting worse and is unsustainable,” said Renee Collini, director of the Community Resilience Center at the Water Institute. “Almost all our systems are gravity fed, and they were built out a long time ago.”