>>This week on the second of our NewsNight Conversations series, looking at issues facing central Florida's coast and waterways, resiliency and how to shore up our region's coastal communities for future generations.

>>We take a lot of things for granted right now that we may not be able to for much longer.

>>I think right now we're kind of in the next couple of years at a critical junction.

>>Tonight, as the state ramps up resiliency spending, an in-depth look at how our region can mitigate future damage from sea level rise and storms.

>>How do we get better in planning pre-storm to make it easier on all those involved.

>>From Crisis to Conservation, the importance of restoration and resiliency.

NewsNight Conversations starts now.

Hello, I'm Steve Mort, and welcome to the second of our two part NewsNight Conversations series, looking at some key environmental challenges facing central Florida's coast and waterways.

Tonight, we're looking at the critical issue of coastal resiliency in our region.

With its extensive coastline that unique environmental challenges, Florida faces a pressing need to adapt and prepare for the increasing threats posed by hurricanes, sea level rise and erosion.

In 2021, the legislature established the Resilient Florida program in the Department of Environmental Protection to create a statewide vision for resilience and help local communities adapt through grants.

So far, the state says it spent $1.8 billion through the Resilient Florida program.

That money going towards hundreds of grants to pay for comprehensive vulnerability assessments and resilience projects.

The state also says the Florida Department of Transportation has spent $4.9 billion on resiliency infrastructure since 2019.

First tonight, NewsNight's Krystel Knowles has been looking at some of the work taking place in Brevard County.

>>In coastal communities on barrier islands, a robust resiliency plan is often seen as essential.

Satellite Beach City manager Courtney Barker is all too familiar with the price of living in paradise.

>>Coastal resiliency is interesting for us because we're a barrier island, so we have the river on one side and the ocean on the other.

So in the riverside we worry about flooding.

On the ocean side, we worry about erosion.

And we are one of the highest eroding areas of the state of Florida.

And in Satellite Beach particularly, we have a very strong wave action.

So even a normal hard rain can cause a major erosion event.

So right now, the county and Army Corps of Engineers is very nourishing the beach at this moment.

>>Creating a more resilient coastline requires a multifaceted approach.

And environmentalists and scientists say change needs to happen urgently.

The East Central Florida Regional Planning Council's Brenda Defoe-Suprenant explains that sea level rise means that completely turning back the clock may not be possible.

>>When you look in the past, we have seen about a foot of rise over maybe 100 years.

And what the data is telling us is that that foot of rise, the window for that is narrowing.

So essentially, we've seen the equivalent of 100 years of rise in 30 years.

One of the issues there is the the storm surge and the erosion that comes with that compared to on the Indian River Lagoon side.

A lot of the area is low lying.

So we're going to see faster rise on that side versus the Atlantic Ocean side.

>>There are a lot of projects being done now.

>>Dr.

Leesa Souto, Director of Operations at Applied Ecology, an organization specializing in ecological studies, is developing future scenarios aimed at understanding the impacts of climate change and sea level rise.

It's all to help coastal communities enhance their resilience.

>>One of the main reasons that we're going to see interior flooding is because the storm system, the infrastructure, really the end of the pipe usually goes into a water body like the Indian River Lagoon.

Very few go into the Atlantic Ocean anymore, but they're going into ponds or going into canals or going into rivers.

They're going directly into this estuary.

So what happens when sea level rise comes?

The water is going to rise up.

That pipe is going to be underwater now.

So it doesn't have any place for it to flow.

Already with the king tides, this is submerged as our stormwater pipes start to fill up with with really flood water or could be tidewater like we've seen in Miami, as the sea level rises, it fills up the stormwater infrastructure.

So now where is the storm water going to go?

It can't flow into the lagoon anymore.

If the storm water pipes are full of lagoon water already.

>>In response to the pressing need for coastal resiliency, cities like Satellite Beach are working on changing code to allow new homes to be built on stilts.

This would allow storm surge to roll underneath to prevent flooding during large rain events or sea level rise.

>>Any time you build on pilings with storm surge, you have a much better survival rate for your structure than if it's done on a slab foundation.

That type of a construction would be a lot more insurable, in my opinion.

>>Experts say developers must shift their coastal building strategy.

>>The worst thing we could possibly do is what we've been doing in the past, which is rip out every tree on a parcel, compact the entire lot till it's almost concrete and then build impervious surface over the entire lot.

What we need to be thinking about is how do we design buildings and design our communities to enable the natural flow of stormwater to go back into the ground?

>>I think now, coastal resiliency has become really center point for a lot of municipalities.

>>Chief Resilience Manager for the city of Cape Canaveral, Zach Eichholz explains that undertaking beaches nourishment projects, implementing stormwater mitigation measures and creating more green spaces are just some of the ways to make the coastal community stronger.

>>We're standing here at Veterans Memorial Park, and behind me is a grant funded project from the National Science Foundation to build a smart rain garden.

Basically, this project entails constructing what used to be a dry retention area that really was just covered in Saint Augustine grass into a new area that has almost 1,000 Florida native plants that will be able to take more stormwater off of the street and treat it naturally before it enters the Banana River lagoon.

And in doing so, by taking more water off the street, we'll be able to mitigate flooding in the local area.

>>NewsNight's Krystel Knowles reporting.

Well, joining me in the studio now to talk about resiliency efforts here in central Florida are Leesa Souto, she's operations director for Applied Ecology.

Applied Ecology works with cities, counties and the state on environmental resource management, ecological studies and more.

Dr. Souto has been working in the field of Florida's water resources for more than 30 years, including shoreline restoration.

Darcie McGee, assistant director of Brevard County's Natural Resources Management Department, Breverd's Beach Management program administers several beach restoration projects to protect property and maintain healthy beaches.

Courtney Barker.

She's been city manager of Satellite Beach since 2013.

Satellite Beach established a Green committee in 2015.

It's also published its first sustainability action plan in 2017.

And Jenifer Rupert, she's the regional resiliency officer for the East Central Florida Regional Planning Council.

The council established in 1962, is an area wide association of governments.

Its members provide project policy and planning assistance to governments and organizations within eight counties in the East Central Florida region.

Thank you guys so much for coming in.

Really appreciate your time today.

Let me start with a broad question for each of you.

How do you define coastal resilience, I mean, if you had to explain it to somebody in the ride up an elevator, what does it mean to have a resilient coastline?

I'll start with you, Leesa.

>>Well, I think resiliency is about planning and being adaptable, so trying to understand what's coming at you so you can be prepared for it.

So it's really just a matter of, you know, being able to collect the information that you need to know to predict what's about to happen to you in the next timeframe, be it 50 years or 100 years.

So you can be prepared.

So what cities and counties and governments, it's a big deal.

We do a lot of installations with the military to prepare them.

They've got missions that they need to get accomplished.

But even households, we're always planning, right, for maintenance for things that are coming at us.

So resiliency is really just a different kind of a planning mechanism.

>>What do you think, Darcie?

>>We define that as the ability to bounce forward, to look at people, places and prosperity and plan for the future so that we can bounce forward and bounce back from any kinds of structural shocks and stressors.

>>Yeah.

Courtney How do you view resiliency?

>>I view it as, you know, the term came out really as a way to describe how cities and counties and local governments are going to respond to the impacts of climate change and and sea level rise.

And that includes everything from the increased heat to the eroding shorelines to even water quality issues and storms.

I mean, flooding.

So being a resilient community for us means that we can survive that, we can bounce back faster because we know and we're prepared for what is coming.

So and that really is in the face of a changing climate.

>>And you mentioned storms.

And of course, that's particularly relevant this year because it's predicted that we'll have a fairly busy season.

Hopefully we don't, of course.

Jenifer, what do you think?

>>We do use the ability to bounce forward, respond to and recover from, I think shocks and stressors is the kind of common theme.

So those short term shocks, hurricanes, infrastructure failures, those kinds of things and those longer term stressors, that does include climate change, It does include affordable housing and it includes shifting economic trends.

So kind of looking at it holistically from that, people, places and prosperity perspective is, I think, what all local governments and people are challenged to.

And I think for late in layman's terms, it's really, you know, how are we setting ourselves up for success?

You know, when you're walking out the door in the morning, what do you do to set your family and yourself up for success?

And I think local governments are applying that same type of mantra and things that we do and plan for.

>>You guys mentioned there about the causes of the resiliency issues that we face, and I wonder whether we can pinpoint everything I mean there's - there's climate change, sea level rise, but there's also other things, right?

I mean, the development that we've done on dunes over the years, stronger storms.

What do you see as the the main causes for the resiliency issues that we face today?

Leesa?

>>We're really struggling with what to do with our flood plain areas in Florida.

We've got an awful lot of low lying wetland areas and flood plain areas.

That is where everybody wants to live.

And so historically, that has been compromised and now they're about to be taken back.

Right.

So with sea level rise and groundwater rise.

There are there are just low lying areas are going to fill in.

And that's not just on the coast.

So the rivers are going to fill up.

The low lying wetlands are going to fill up.

Everything's going to fill up very slowly, gradually.

So that's that's a big issue where we're still seeing developers going in and getting variances today to build right in those flood areas.

So that's a big change that needs to happen.

And that's a sentiment, not a political change of political wind.

That needs to change entirely.

We need to stop building in the areas where we have potential storage for all this water that's coming.

>>As Leesa said, the flooding is a big one.

And, you know, Brevard County's got St. John's River, Banana River, Indian River Lagoon, Sykes Creek and the Atlantic Coast, and that's a lot of coastline.

So there there's different shocks and stressor - stressors and all those areas.

But, you know, I think a common theme is certainly flooding.

>>I mean, as somebody who runs a city or is involved in running a city, Courtney, I mean, there's got to be a lot of other factors.

And I wonder whether there is an economic imperative to this as well.

I mean, when you took over in that job, what was it that caused you to focus so much on that particular issue?

Does this go beyond just the environmental impacts?

Do you have to be concerned about other things that can be affected by that?

>>Yeah.

So we - a really good example is our fire station and our public works building.

Both of those buildings were in a flood zone.

We wanted to the Public works building was in total bad shape and then with the fire station they were running out of room and we put a second story on a fire station that's in a flood zone that we might have to move in 30 years.

You can make a very costly mistake by not doing that forward planning.

So it's definitely an economic decision.

>>I mean, there were, of course, economic decisions for individuals as well.

Right.

And we we talk about property insurance and the crisis in that market in our state all the time.

And I just wonder whether any of you are concerned about this issue that sometimes we see after major storms, which is called climate gentrification, where basically people can't afford to live in their communities that they may have grown up in for generations because of the climate impacts.

What do you think, Leesa?

>>I thought it was an interesting word climate gentrification, and I've been watching it happen regardless of climate my entire life here in Florida.

Something that's similar is what we describe in academia as the managed retreat.

>>Yes.

>>There's the potential that cities and counties could somehow plan to remove people from dangerous way.

>>Yeah.

>>It's in theory, it's in the literature.

And for I'd love to see the mechanisms like you were talking about to make that happen because we're trying to visualize this managed retreat and what the big picture do you guys ever do that what this is going to look like for the beachfront properties, for those properties that we know when they get them, when we get the 22 foot storm surge or something horrible that they're just completely annihilated, who's going to pick up that rubble and put it all back together?

The insurance companies, I think, are pulling out of the the coastal areas already.

>>And we've lost eight in the state of Florida.

Right.

Have become insurance companies have become insolvent.

And I think there's there's examples across the country.

Norfolk, Virginia, has already kind of carved out an area where they're no longer going to be investing in their infrastructure and rebuilding it.

So they're saying there's a hit, they've hit the tipping point.

We can't hold the water back anymore.

Therefore, we are no longer going to maintain, manage and reinvest in this particular area because the water is going to be there.

So therefore, we need to move people away from that area.

So that is there are examples of that happening.

>>We haven't had a structure lost to erosion since we started our beach renourishment project.

However, we've had some undermining where a portion of the home our codes require you to move back, right?

That's the smart thing to do.

But the insurance companies have been either not have insurance or the especially this last storm, Nicole treated the owners terribly and their only recourse was to sell their property.

And there is no lack of people that have cash.

They don't need insurance and they now are building it to new standards, which is on the homes, on pilings, on stilts go way down into the ground.

So they're undermined.

They're still sitting there.

That is the gentrification that we're seeing, is that the people that grew up there can no longer afford to redo their house, move it back.

They've got to sell out.

And you've got people coming from out of our county that just they want to live there.

They want to get as close as they can to the beach.

And it's not maybe the best decision.

>>And we saw some of those reconstructions on stilts in Krystel's piece at the top of the program.

Where do you come down on this, Courtney?

I agree with Darcy that that's what we're seeing is people who grew up in the area can no longer afford to live there, and insurance has priced many people out.

I'm me personally.

I'm on the third insurance company in three years.

So it's it's an it's my insurance has tripled in three years.

So it's very expensive and we're going to see a lot more of that occurring.

>>Do we need to be concerned, Leesa, about about critical infrastructure, the things that keep our state going?

>>Oh yeah.

I mean, we have a Space Force base, very vulnerable, Brevard County and a lot of, you know, we've got a power plant along our coast.

So yeah, yes, of course we need to be aware and fortunately I think that those big federal facilities are doing resiliency planning.

They are they they've got orders and and federal requirements to do so.

So fortunately they are acting.

You know, we're doing a tremendous amount of work for the federal government to assist them with that planning and and in strategies to address and where to move buildings.

I mean, just the conversation that we just had, you know, we're the city of Satellite Beach says we don't want to rebuild our fire station where it's going to flood in 30 years.

I mean, that's the same conversation, except the facilities are much, much bigger.

And they're even they're billions of dollars, but they're they're doing the same thought process.

But we need to move it.

We need to move it.

>>You know, we're just kicked off a program called the Military Installation Resilience Review and where DOD has done a fantastic job looking inside the fence line and building up and strengthening and hardening their infrastructure internally.

They have an office called the Office of Local Defense and Community Cooperation who helps local governments that support the installations, look outside the fence line and build and strengthen and harden the infrastructure on the outside the fence line.

That program just got kicked off in our region, which we're very fortunate to work with them.

I think Space Force and and even NSA Orlando, which is an internal installation, their presence in this region is very important to as an economic driver and having the ability to look at those issues and examine infrastructure that supports those installations is really something that we're look forward to moving moving in that direction.

>>Does the way we tackle zoning, construction incentives have to be tailored specifically for our region because I've covered the resiliency efforts that are taking place, for example, in Miami Beach, where they've kind of jacked buildings up.

I mean the whole city is essentially higher, the streets are higher.

Business have been raised up, pumping stations, walls and so on.

I wonder whether there are unique challenges to doing resiliency where we are in central Florida, Leesa?

>>There is a process that called a vulnerability assessment that cities and counties and regions can participate in, and they get funded by the state of Florida, where they can go into their community and understand very specifically what their issues are.

Each community has their own unique situation in the inland here in central Florida, temperature might be more of an issue than water, or it could be that because they have perched aquifers, their stormwater doesn't have enough anywhere for it to drain down.

So when it rains it sits on the surface for longer.

So everything is going to pond different, different than maybe farther south or farther north.

So each community kind of has to look at their vulnerability themselves.

What do they think is vulnerable?

So trying to redesign the entire stormwater infrastructure to deal with what is probably going to be the 500 year storm that's coming every couple of years is is going to be unique for each for each community.

>>Yeah, absolutely.

And those vulnerability assessments really focus in on an asset and what's happening to that asset, the amount of exposure it has to any type of element.

And we've really tried to take it a step further within the collaborative itself or the Regional Planning Council.

We've identified the drivers of vulnerability in this region and that really allows us to - yes we're going to respond, we're going to get better at response and build things back better and do everything in that way.

But we're also going to lean into some transformative change in this region.

So to take those vulnerability assessments and really look at a particular asset in who it serves and how some might be prioritized in different ways higher than others because of the people that they serve and the populations they serve.

It's really a way that we are uniquely addressing vulnerability assessments as we're moving forward in east central Florida anyway.

Darcie, what do you think?

>>So from a more from a Brevard county perspective, we're seeing a lot of residential development being driven by all the space activity going on.

So what we're trying to do from our perspective in terms of a comprehensive plan and land development regulations is we're in the middle of doing our what they call the EAR every seven years.

You look at your comprehensive plan and see where it needs to be tweaked.

Now we need to figure out how do we take these concepts we came up with that were adopted by the Board of County Commissioners.

I mean it was a very successful activity.

How do we now implement those?

How do we get out of the way of innovation?

Because some of the stuff that we have we recognize is not allowing people to be innovative if they want to be.

So that's what we're working on now is to - how do we get the parallel flood policies implemented for developers to use, they have to have the tools to use them or they're not going to use them.

>>One thing that Hurricane Ian showed us was that resiliency is not just an issue in coastal areas, right?

I mean, there are resilience, resiliency issues being faced everywhere and huge amounts of flooding in Seminole County, in Osceola County.

How do you tell people that they should be concerned about these issues if they live 50 miles away from the coast?

What do you think, Leesa?

>>Yeah, it's hard to so it is hard to get humans to get excited about something that might happen to them in the future.

Right?

We've seen that.

So I think once Ian goes through, then people are more likely to listen to you so you can wait for the emergency to happen.

And now you've got an active listening audience.

Unfortunately, you know, we're very reactive.

We humans.

I'm a planner, you're a planner.

We're probably all planners here.

So we like to we like to be more proactive.

We like to plan for things to happen.

But as a species, we tend to be reactive.

>>We do for sure.

>>So once the storm goes through, that's the time to make the political changes.

That's the time to make the move.

The state is investing right.

The state is is coming to the table with force and money and ideas and technical capabilities, and we need it.

So I'm more optimistic than I've been in my career ever in Florida with what changes are being made, with what local governments are bringing to the table with our governor and our state government is bringing to the table in the federal government as well.

You know, we're doing a lot of federal work right now, but I'm really encouraged with the vision that we have in Florida and the momentum that we're beginning to aspire to.

We're just getting rolling.

But I can feel the momentum coming.

>>Well, let's talk about whether you guys are optimistic.

What do you think, Darcie?

Are you optimistic for the future of our coastal areas and our inland areas too, of course?

>>Depends on what day you asked me.

But in general, yes, I mean Brevard County.

When you talk about differences of other areas, you look at Volusia County where their beaches are hardened and they're already hardened with giant massive condos on there, Miami, same thing.

Brevard County still has natural shorelines, even where they're developed.

We do not allow hardening seawalls on the beach.

And so seeing the benefits of engineering with nature and how do you use natural infrastructure to actually address these issues, living shorelines with wetland restoration and preservation and trying to use what we have left to to assist us in managing water and not just not just on the coast.

>>When I first started with the city, the first meeting that we had about climate change, we put the words climate change meeting here on our marquee and we had a lot of people, Why are you doing this?

This is not necessary.

This is a waste of money.

And now we have the meetings.

Now we're talking about what is the city going to look like?

Where are we going to go ahead and create codes to elevate structures?

What how is that going to happen?

And and they're great conversations.

So it's very exciting to see that.

And I think if we can continue on and marching forward and making some good land use policies statewide as well as statewide transportation changes, investing in our public transportation and start reducing emissions, I would be really happy.

>>Jennifer, last word to you.

Are you optimistic?

Do you agree with what you've heard here?

>>Yeah, absolutely.

And there is a lot of hope in this work.

There is nothing like a hazard to be the great unifier.

Right?

We all experience things in the shared humanity the same way, whether it's floods, fire or whatever that impact is.

And I think when you talk about efficiency and effectiveness in government structures and really working from a whole of government perspective, you're seeing that at every level of government, whether it's federal, state, regional and local.

Even thinking about the women on this stage that I have, I find a lot of hope in the work that we're doing, the relationships we've built and the connections that we continue to work together to for the greater good.

>>And I guess as things become less abstract for the public, the more they'll sort of get behind behind those efforts.

Well, it's fascinating conversation, but that is all the time we have for this week.

My thanks to the panel for joining us this evening for this important discussion.

Be sure to check out more of this discussion on our Website, wucf.org/newsnight.

Meantime, we'll be back with our usual edition of NewsNight next Friday evening at 8:30.

Until then, for all of us here on the program, take care and have a great week.