(Via LinkedIn )
Ana Miranda
Ana Miranda has lived in the Bayside Historic District in Miami’s Upper Eastside since 1989, in a house that was constructed in 1936, a home that has survived numerous scrapes with severe thunderstorms, tropical storms and hurricanes. And even though her house is in close proximity to Biscayne Bay, Miranda said she’s never had a problem with storm surge when hurricanes Andrew, Irene, Katrina, Wilma and Irma paid visits.
“This was part of the Arcadia subdivision, and they purposely built it on the high ground,” said Miranda, a dance instructor and movement therapist whose home is 12 feet above sea level. “As it is now, I am just at the very edge of where you have to carry flood insurance.”
She’s now fearful that her neighborhood might not be around in the future – and not necessarily because of sea-level rise, which is projected to swell around two feet higher than current levels in the next 40 years. It’s because Bayside is on the wrong side of a series of floodwalls, ranging from 1-13 feet tall, that the Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) has proposed constructing between NE 61st Street and Biscayne Boulevard in Miami, and NE 112th Street and NE 12th Avenue near Biscayne Park. South of NE 78th Street, the walls would be constructed east of Biscayne Boulevard, just in front of existing businesses. The walls themselves would be built around roads and entranceways of businesses and equipped with steel gates that can slam shut. When those gates are closed, there would be a continuous wall approximately four miles long.
(Miami-Dade County Office of Resiliency)
The Army Corps of Engineers’ preliminary plan calls for walls up to 13 feet tall along the Biscayne Corridor between NE 64th and 112th streets.
The purpose of the floodwalls? To augment miter gates that USACE wants to install within Little River and the Biscayne Canal that can close in the event of a dangerous storm. If the engineering works, large chunks of eastern Miami-Dade would be saved from flooding by storm surges up to 14 1/2 feet in height. But neighborhoods east of the wall, Miranda realized, will be inundated with water.
“I am not in a flood zone and all of a sudden I’m going to be in a flood zone,” Miranda recalled when she found out about USACE’s preliminary plans last year. “Basically, we will be in kind of like a bathtub, you know?”
So Miranda launched an online and word-of-mouth campaign to kill USACE’s plans. She’s advocating for a “nature-based” alternative instead, similar to what Brickell Key developer Swire Properties proposed for the waterfront Brickell-Downtown area: oyster reefs, mangrove islands, berms, bioswales, boardwalks, modest-sized floodwalls and other features that create a green promenade that acts as a flood control device and a pedestrian amenity where people can even launch kayaks.
In February, Swire Properties unveiled its hybrid proposal, designed by infrastructure consulting firm Moffatt & Nichol, as an alternative to USACE’s overall plan to construct a series of floodwalls – some as tall as 36 feet in addition to others rising up to 10 feet – on land and directly in Biscayne Bay to support one or two sector gates that USACE wants to build in the Miami River.
USACE’s proposal to construct floodwalls in Brickell-Downtown – which would stretch roughly from SW 15th Road and Brickell Avenue to NE 2nd Avenue and Biscayne Boulevard – received international attention. But the walls it wants to construct in the Upper Eastside, eastern Miami Shores and unincorporated Miami-Dade received minimal attention. Miranda wants to change that, especially among homeowners in those areas. It’s been an uphill battle, she admits.
Steel & Concrete Solutions
The “Nature Not Floodwalls for Biscayne Corridor” Facebook page Miranda administers has just 33 members. As of July 22, her Change.org petition – “We want nature-based solutions over floodwalls along Biscayne Boulevard!” – has garnered only 738 signatures.
“It’s been slow, it’s like me and two neighbors trying to get the word out on (online community board) Nextdoor,” Miranda said.
Aside from a brief mention in a New York Times article, the Biscayne Corridor floodwalls have yet to receive any media coverage, she complained.
But Miranda’s quest for more attention was boosted on July 7 when county officials explained USACE’s plans for the Upper Eastside to a few dozen people at a Bayside Residents Association meeting held at Legion Park’s Community Center. The presentation was met with shock and confusion by those in attendance.
(Army Corps of Engineers)
A reinforced concrete T-wall storm surge barrier in Richmond, Va.
“I feel personally that my home, my community, has been written off to find a solution for the rest of the city. … We are SOL because we live a little closer to the bay,” Deborah Stander, a Belle Meade resident and former president of the MiMo Biscayne Association, declared at the meeting.
But due to time constraints, the Bayside Residents Association adjourned without voting. As of deadline, it had yet to take a stance on the USACE measures.
“With climate change … I guess [many people find it] easier to stick your head in the sand and forget about it,” Miranda said.
The floodwalls and canal surge gates for the downtown area, Upper Eastside and the greater Miami Shores region are just part of an estimated $4.6 billion package outlined in what USACE refers to as the Miami-Dade Back Bay Coastal Storm Risk Management Feasibility Study, which looks at how the federal government can help most of Miami-Dade County survive in the event of a monster 200-year storm event when the oceans are higher and warmer.
Among USACE’s proposals are planting mangroves on 80 acres of submerged land near Cutler Bay, building and upgrading pump stations, floodproofing 3,800 buildings in low-lying areas (including critical infrastructure like hospitals, shelters and fire stations), and literally raising 5,800 homes and businesses in places like Miami Beach, the Miami River corridor, Aventura and northeast Miami-Dade by placing them on taller foundations.
In that same study, USACE engineers considered proposing floodwalls in Miami’s Omni-Edgewater area as well (between Interstate 395 and Interstate 195) but withdrew the idea after determining it wouldn’t be cost-effective, according to a June 2020 USACE report. A USACE appendix report issued in April 2020 stated that floodwalls might be proposed in the Arch Creek basin, a 2,838-acre region covering unincorporated Biscayne Shores, Quayside, the Jockey Club and southeastern North Miami, but that so far “no modeling has been suggested to do so.” Instead, the upgrading of two pump stations and a water control structure in Biscayne Shores was advised. (Biscayne Shores, a low-lying neighborhood of low-rise apartments and single-family homes, was devastated by Hurricane Irma’s storm surge and heavy downpours in 2017, in spite of the two pump stations.)
(Army Corps of Engineers)
A concrete storm surge barrier in Norfolk, Va.
Mark Haviland, spokesman for the USACE’s Norfolk office, which is spearheading the planning, insisted that the Back Bay proposal for Miami-Dade is far from finalized and will be guided by input from residents, community groups and Miami-Dade County commissioners.
“This is an ongoing dialogue, one step in the process, and we still have a long way to go,” Haviland explained in a brief phone interview with Biscayne Times.
Indeed, USACE’s study is still evolving and won’t be finalized until September. Even then, the USACE’s “chief’s report” will undergo extensive revisions over the course of three years, and that’s if the study receives another $3 million from the U.S. Congress in October, explained Jim Murley, chief resiliency officer for Miami-Dade County.
“Everything in this entire document is at 10% completion,” he said.
Construction on any new storm surge infrastructure won’t likely start until sometime after 2026 and take around nine years to complete. The federal government will pay for 65% of the project.
A Battle for a Nature-Based Plan
USACE’s study has already been criticized by local organizations, environmental groups and at least one government body.
In July 2020, Drew Bartlett, executive director of the South Florida Water Management District, stated that USACE engineers failed to consider how surge gates might affect federal flood control measures elsewhere in the state or efforts to restore natural wetlands in the Everglades. USACE may have under-estimated the impact of sea-level rise, future “extreme weather events” and “inland drainage impact,” he stated. Additionally, Bartlett wrote that USACE should “maximize the opportunities to enhance water quality in Biscayne Bay” and take “innovative natural or nature-based, green infrastructure and low impact design solutions strategies, as part of non-structural management issues.”
A 16-page report issued by Miami Waterkeeper, The Miami Foundation, The CLEO Institute and the Environmental Defense Fund in June 2020 criticized USACE’s Back Bay recommendations as a “$4.6 billion missed opportunity to create meaningful resilience in our community,” and that the tentative plan “inflicts unacceptable environmental harm, exacerbates [economic] equity issues, and ignores – or worsens – chronic flooding from sea level rise.” Instead, the USACE should expand its mission to make Miami-Dade more resilient to climate change with nature-based solutions, thereby improving the local economy and enhancing the water quality of Biscayne Bay, the report recommended.
After Swire Properties pushed its hybrid-solution plan in February, Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine-Cava and Miami City Commissioners Ken Russell and Manolo Reyes insisted that the Corps of Engineers incorporate nature-based solutions.
Although USACE engineers have told elected officials they’ll try to make the Downtown-Brickell flood structures look “less like a wall” there’s no commitment that Swire Properties’ plans will be incorporated into the federal agency’s study. During a February Miami City Commission meeting, when the Swire Properties plan was unveiled, Col. Patrick Kinsman, USACE’s Norfolk district commander, reportedly expressed skepticism.
“That looks like a great presentation. I don’t think the [mangrove] islands are going to stop the storm surge,” he stated, according to a Local10.com report.
(Environmental Defense Fund)
Rachel Rhode, senior analyst for the Environmental Defense Fund.
Rachel Rhode, a senior analyst for the nonprofit Environmental Defense Fund, said the public will have to assert itself if it wants to make sure nature-based solutions are incorporated in the federal plan, since the USACE is focused only on mitigating storm surge and is reluctant to incorporate more nature-based features.
“They don’t know how to adequately value the benefit of nature-based solutions,” Rhode explained. “The [members of] the Army Corps of Engineers know your more traditional, hardened engineering practices.”
But Kinsman isn’t alone in being skeptical. Shimon Wdowinski, an earth and environment professor at Florida International University, said for mangroves to work they have to be close to the surface to act as an effective barrier against storm surge.
“The bay is deep. You’ll need to fill the bay,” Kinsman explained.
That means creating shallow spoil islands where mangroves can grow, an expensive process that will have to be properly analyzed.
“One row of mangroves is not the solution; you need a wide area that can absorb the surge,” he added.
(Environmental Defense Fund)
A second rendering of the barriers the Army Corps of Engineers has proposed along the Brickell-Downtown area waterfront, as well as the group’s “nature-based” alternative.
Rhode insisted that nature-based solutions like those than inform Swire’s proposal – which incorporates other elements including new seagrass plantings, noninvasive oyster reefs and rejuvenated coral reefs – will ultimately be more cost-effective, since they not only mitigate storm surge but also help improve water quality and bay ecosystems. This in turn will help the local fishing and tourism industry. Berms and natural systems are also easier to adapt to sea-level rise, which is projected to increase at faster rates until at least 2100, as opposed to massive artificial barriers composed of concrete and steel.
“There are billions of dollars at stake,” Rhode said. “We want to make sure it’s done right so we don’t have to pay (that amount) 50 years down the line.”
Yet, the danger isn’t that USACE will build walls that locals adamantly oppose, Rhode pointed out, it’s the possibility that USACE will opt out entirely, thus leaving Miami-Dade County and the state of Florida with having to pay for billions of dollars in mitigation efforts without any sort of federal help. That’s why USACE’s leadership, and its boss – Congress – must be shown the value of nature-based solutions that have been successfully tried in other parts of the nation.
Said Rhode, “Nobody wants to turn down billions of dollars being pumped into the county.”