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♪ Narrator> Around the world, major storms are becoming more frequent.

(thunder strikes) Oceans are warming, and in the last 100 years, the sea level has risen 13 inches.

Scientists anticipate another foot by 2050.

♪ Like many of our most cherished cities, Charleston is vulnerable to the impacts of our changing climate.

♪ Susanna Hopkins> People come to Charleston to see the beaches and see the ocean, eat our seafood, you know, enjoy these beautiful views of our harbor and of the water.

But where we love the water, we also have always had this fight against the water.

♪ 2015 to 2017, we saw a significant increase in major flooding events in the Charleston area.

That was the 2015 1000 year flood event.

2016 we saw Hurricane Matthew.

In 2017, we had Hurricane Irma.

So many people's homes and properties were devastated and destroyed from these floods.

That was really what kick started this, you know, resilience movement and these conversations around flooding in Charleston.

And how can we become proactive instead of reactive with these flooding issues?

Keith Bowers> The Charleston peninsula along the edges have grown quite a bit because we filled in a lot of the wetlands and the estuary out there.

We do know that there were tidal creeks that ran and bisected the peninsula as well.

When we get a big rainstorm in Charleston, we still see the areas that are flooding the most are the areas that were historically wetlands where these tidal creeks that have been filled in.

>> Not a surprise.

Nature remembers where it's naturally supposed to be.

So at least in the downtown area, this is where we see some of our frequent flooding, where the water is creeping back up, where it historically was.

♪ Herb Frazier> I spent the first 14 years of my life in the Anson Borough housing project that used to be at the east end of Calhoun Street.

Before development, that was a marshy area.

In fact, the name of the street that I used to live on was called Marsh Street.

And that street, it was like a canal.

It looked like Venice, on a high tide, on a full moon.

♪ Narrator> On the other side of the peninsula, another public housing project, the Gadsden Green Homes, is the site of frequent flooding.

♪ Beginning in the 1930s, the city of Charleston filled in the Gadsden Creek marshes.

♪ The housing project sits on the former marsh.

♪ Merrie Koester> We are standing at the corner of Line and Haygood in Charleston, South Carolina, on the west side.

It looks like we're standing in a street, but what we're really standing in right now is Gadsden Creek.

Gadsden Creek is a historic, formerly 100 acre salt marsh that was the center of a Gullah Geechee community that thrived here.

One of the most amazing things about salt marsh creeks is that they will continue to try to be a creek, no matter what you do to them.

Most people don't understand that what they're driving through is salt water, and that this creek is doing what it's always done.

Keith> There's actually three ways that the peninsula has been flooding.

One is just storms that come in and dump a lot of rain, and we, cause flooding in the streets and in the neighborhoods, because that runoff can't run off fast enough into our storm drains and back out into the Ashley River and the Cooper River.

♪ We also have flooding that occurs now more and more often because of king tides or elevated high tides.

And then we have flooding associated with storm surges like hurricanes or northeasters or other types of storms that come in and hit Charleston.

And sometimes it's a combination of all three.

♪ Anna Kimelblatt> One of the major ways that we're feeling impacts from sea level rise is a disruption to our daily life.

♪ And when we have these days where the peninsula is underwater, businesses have to close.

And, you know, some might be inundated and they're closed for an extended period of time.

So this is causing a major economic disruption for us in the city for sure.

We're seeing a lot of erosion in our beach communities.

So these beach communities are continuously having to pursue funding for these very expensive renourishment projects.

There's question about whether or not that's a sustainable model.

We're seeing a lot of, you know, nursery and breeding grounds be submerged more frequently.

That can be a huge threat to some of our seabirds, our sea turtles, our fish species that might use marshes or estuaries as breeding or nursery grounds.

♪ It can definitely impact what's available on the market, which can impact, of course, our restaurant industry, which is a huge part of our life in Charleston.

♪ Narrator> The consequences of sea level rise aren't limited to the Charleston Peninsula.

People who live in other parts of the city and county feel them acutely, as well.

♪ In the area's historically Black communities, the effects of a warming climate are compounded by development, ♪ government policy, and a history of racial inequality.

The city of Charleston and Charleston County are part of the Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor.

♪ Erica Xavier-Beauvoir> The corridor is under the National Park Service.

It is considered a National Heritage Area from Jacksonville, North Carolina down to Jacksonville, Florida, and 30 miles inland.

♪ With over $1 million, Gullah Geechee people that still consider themselves Gullah Geechee and their descendants.

♪ >> Ain't nothing more Geechie than grits.

♪ Erica> We are dealing with sea level rise.

We're also navigating land issues, land development, and what's happening is a lot of the land developers are coming in where there was a community that didn't have that many flooding issues and instances because of the development and the shifting of the land, now there's water coming into that particular neighborhood, and this is happening across the corridor.

♪ Narrator> Rosemont is an old Black community in the area known as the Charleston Neck.

♪ It was bisected in the 1960s by the creation of Interstate 26.

Homes and businesses were destroyed, and some residents had to relocate.

♪ Herb> The federal government and the state built the interstate I-26 and extended it into Charleston.

It stopped at what is Line Street, where the old Cooper River Bridge used to be.

It continued on and right through Black communities on the peninsula.

So it's, it not only split the peninsula in half, but it also removed a lot of Black homes.

♪ Herbert L. Maybank> Rosemont was a small, small, confined community in the Jim Crow era of the 50s, 40s.

We were, like self-contained, basically.

We had stores.

We had barbershops.

People "cut the ears" in their homes.

We got along.

But in the 60s, what it was, 1968, that highway was built.

♪ And as a result, it took that section of Rosemont out and split it.

And it created this, this barrier that kind of, like, locked us in even further, you know.

Narrator> Today, Rosemont sits between the highway and the marshes of the Ashley River, with a chemical plant next door that has exploded twice and appending new development to the south called Magnolia Landing.

♪ Herb> That was an industrial area, at one time.

People who lived in Rosemont, they used to work in the factories.

♪ When all of the industrialization left, it left this raw, polluted land, which had been remediated somewhat.

But that land is going to be redeveloped into a multi-use development that is going to take a couple of decades to really fully build out.

♪ And I find it really interesting that the Rosemont community is as resilient as it has been in the last, what, 50 plus 60 years, is now faced with yet another wave of change.

♪ Herbert> That whole field to my right gets flooded out.

This house bears the brunt.

All in this yard it floods and goes up to the house.

There was a house here that has been torn down.

But all of this gets rained out.

Gets watered out, gets flooded out.

One of the residents who lives there across the street.

They have to put buoys down into her walkway to get across that water, to get in and out of the house, or have to stay in the house until the water recedes.

This is all part of Rosemont and part of our still not being able to live comfortably in the 21st century.

And as a result of the systemic patterns of government that has limited this neighborhood from being in the mainstream.

We are included in this thing called humanity.

And so where's the compassion?

Where is the equity about fairness that will come in here and do something for this small community that will help this generation and the next generation to live a better quality of life?

Narrator> To the east of the Charleston Peninsula, on the other side of the Cooper River, the historic settlement community of Ten Mile is also grappling with the related problems of development and sea level rise.

♪ >> Settlement communities, which are also Gullah Geechee communities as well post the Emancipation Proclamation, when slaves were freed.

A lot of them didn't have a place to go to.

They put together any resources they had, and they bought the property that they could afford.

And a lot of that property was along the coast.

And plantation owners didn't want that property because they saw it as inferior.

♪ And Ten Mile is one of those settlement communities, or Gullah Geechee communities in South Carolina.

♪ JoAnn Howard> Ten Mile has always been like a very rural area.

When you walk by, somebody was in their field.

♪ They were either planting or harvesting.

So that's what everybody kind of did.

Martha Pearl Ascue> And aside from farming, there was a huge amount of fishing and crabbing in oyster beds.

As a matter of fact, that's why Seafood Road got its name, because it used to be an oyster factory.

♪ Carla> Growing up, a lot of members who live here are family.

And so as a result, you had...the phrase "It takes a village."

It really took a village.

♪ Brandon Stewart> I grew up here, and I didn't know how well I had it.

How you've been?

I went to middle school here.

Went to Laing Middle School.

I went to Wando High School.

I graduated, went to college.

♪ I was living in North Charleston, and every day just kind of doing the regular 9 to 5.

I thought that was what I wanted.

But I didn't know in the background that my family had a plan for me.

I didn't know that Ten Mile was a generational area that I was grown up into.

When my grandfather passed away, he gave his property to me.

He told me that he wanted me to carry on the legacy.

The first thing that we did was we had to make sure that we helped the community.

Martha Pearl Ascue> Even during the integration of schools, even during the Great Migration, it stayed reasonably stable.

Instability occurred about probably 15 years ago because development began to move in this direction.

♪ Carla> The growth of Mount Pleasant has been expanding further north along highway 17.

And so we are the next community across the Mount Pleasant border.

♪ We've probably had more than 100 plus homes built in the last two years, and that's more than the community has had in decades.

♪ Larry Kobrovsky> This was rural.

It still is rural, but all the development and how its come here.

You have really huge subdivisions like Park West, Dunes West and Carolina Park.

Well they end, right where Ten Mile begins.

♪ If we don't stop, it will be one big mass subdivision of townhouses.

So that's the fight.

The battle has come here.

Not because anybody here has changed.

They're still, you know, here, but the development has come to them.

Martha> What we've seen since the new development on Seafood Road, when there's a king tide or just a high tide, at times it's impassable.

You can't, you can't get off of this road.

♪ Brandon> There are many areas in the community where there are older people that live, that cannot travel, or even pretty much get out of their yards, if there is standing water and water does not go away in one day, just one problem after another.

Narrator> The South Carolina Environmental Law Project has provided legal support to the Ten Mile community.

Filippo Ravalico> The idea of crowding, additional buildings in such vicinity of the Atlantic Ocean sounds like the opposite of what we should be trying to do to adapt and to build resilience.

It's both not in the interests of the community that is being gentrified, but it's also a future problem for the people that are going to be put in those houses.

This is a problem we have all over the US coastlines.

Narrator> The city of Charleston has begun developing a water plan to manage flood risk.

The Army Corps of Engineers has proposed an eight mile extension of the battery wall, extending along both sides of the peninsula.

♪ Kaylan Koszela> At the south end of the peninsula.

We've historically had our batteries, our high and our low battery, and for centuries they've done a pretty good job of protecting the neighborhoods and assets around there.

From large storm events, there has been a little bit of toppling, but better than if something hadn't been there.

♪ We underwent tens of millions of investment in restoring our low battery, and we did that because it's a proof of concept of success.

We got, in partnership with the Army Corps of what protecting our peninsula could look like.

They said, well, you really you need an elevated edge.

♪ Keith> What we're looking at and what the city is looking at is okay, if it's going to be a wall, can it be a wall combined with green infrastructure?

♪ We think about the battery as a walkway, a greenway almost for people to use and stroll along the waterfront.

On the other side, on the water side of that battery is a wall that protects the peninsula.

♪ Kaylan> We are in the midst of that work right now.

We have an M.O.U with the Corps doing that work.

We continue to check in with them to see if this is something we can keep moving forward in partnership.

It's going to be a generational, transformative project, and it can be done in a really good way.

And we're excited about that.

♪ Narrator> The city of Charleston has taken cues from the Dutch in 2017 and 2018, then mayor, John Tecklenburg and Dale Morris, an economist with the Dutch embassy, met with experts from the Netherlands to learn about Dutch flood management practices.

They held a series of workshops called the Dutch Dialogs.

♪ Kaylan> They've done it in New Orleans, they have done it in Norfolk, and it really piqued city leadership interest at the time to perhaps have this expertise come to Charleston and, and understand our environment, our challenges and opportunities, and how to really embrace this idea of living with water.

♪ We built off of that foundation of, of the Dutch through our city planning processes and culminating in our, our city water plan, which is really our roadmap for how we leverage this challenge and build opportunity from it to fully manage water successfully here.

♪ Narrator> The debate over hard structures like a wall versus green solutions continues.

Anna Kimelblatt> I'm optimistic the city can make this an amenity that not only contributes to flood and storm surge mitigation, but also provides another community benefit in terms of perhaps green space and a walking trail.

Susanna> We have a lot of similarities with Amsterdam.

They are so forward thinking in how they approach these issues and the solutions that they provide.

Let's consider what are the green solutions that we can implement to work with the water and provide the water a place to go during these water events that are going to continue to be increasing in our, in our city.

Keith> The Fishburne Tunnel is carrying storm water runoff from a certain section of the city and draining the city, which has had a legacy of flooding there.

It was needed to do that.

And there are other plans to do other similar types of infrastructure around the city.

♪ Narrator> The US 17 Spring Fishburne project, a deep tunnel drainage system, is nearly complete.

It will send flood water into the Ashley River to relieve flooding in downtown Charleston.

Keith> We've rightly been paying a lot of attention to flooding and the quantity of water running off this city and other areas.

We need to also be paying attention to the quality of that runoff as well, because when that rain hits streets and hits rooftops, it picks up pollutants off of there, and it carries those pollutants right into our waterways and right into our wetlands, which begin to contaminate those areas.

From a water quality perspective, the best thing to do is treated at its source.

If we can find a way of capturing runoff off of rooftops and treating that water and bio swells and bio retention and rain gardens before it enters into even these these, underground drains and tunnels, then we're treating those pollutants and taking them out of that water before it runs back into our estuaries.

Herb> The city is trying to adapt, I think, and learn how it can live with water.

And of course, this is a two pronged thing.

The city government has its role, but individual homeowners have their roles.

There are small things that people can do.

Kim Morganello> So we have two rain gardens in the front yard.

Our main rain garden is about 28 feet in length.

Our front yard is actually lower than our street, so whenever it rains, water flows off of the street, runs down our driveway, runs down our yard.

And for the longest time we'd get ponding or, you know, puddles that would sit there.

We had concrete sidewalk.

We had a lot of impervious surface areas that water wasn't able to infiltrate in our front yard.

So we took up that concrete sidewalk, putting gravel and stepping stones.

And then adjacent to that, we installed our linear rain garden.

So the water actually flows, you know, from the street down our driveway into the rain garden.

And we rarely ever have a puddle in the front yard anymore.

In our rain garden, we like to use native plants.

Those are the plants that can do really well with the conditions out here.

These plants are really strong.

They don't need fertilizers.

They don't need irrigation.

They support our local pollinators.

We think they're beautiful.

If more people start to incorporate rain gardens, and we really think about how we manage water on a site level, you know, per home, per business, per school or whatever the structure is, then I think we really can make a difference.

We're really dependent upon our centralized drainage infrastructure.

So we really are sending the water off of our property.

We're sending it to ditches and, and pipes, and that's getting discharged downstream into a local water body, whereas we can reduce the strain, to that centralized drainage system, by managing water closer to the source at the site.

♪ Narrator> Planting and preserving trees can also create a significant buffer to flooding.

Keith> Trees are my favorite topic to discuss because trees have an amazing ability to wick up storm water.

They evapotranspirate water back up through their trunk and out through their leaves.

♪ Susanna> A single mature oak tree can hold up to 40 thousand gallons of water a year.

So when you're seeing development happen and not necessarily in the most sustainable way, you're seeing properties that were once filled with trees completely clear cut.

And those old trees that are holding so much water are now not there anymore.

Keith> Any time we can plant trees and get canopy cover over our hard infrastructure, like our sidewalks and our streets and our driveways, the better off we're going to be.

♪ Narrator> Creating living shorelines with oyster shells is another green infrastructure strategy that protects marshes and property from the damaging effects of waves and storms.

The South Carolina Department of Natural Resources works with volunteers to create new oyster reefs.

Andy Hollis> If you have a large storm coming in and you have a lot of wave energy, just 15 feet of marsh can reduce that wave energy by half.

And a big, important part of keeping those marshes safe is these fringing oyster reefs.

What we have here is an oyster reef that was created entirely by volunteers who, working with staff at the Department of Natural Resources, have bagged shell into individual mesh bags.

They brought them out here and they've stacked them into a regular rectangle, and they've done that during the summer months when oysters are spawning.

And that allows those oysters to then grow here, creating an oyster reef.

This is shoreline that stabilize using hard structures, typically rip rap and seawalls.

Here we have a seawall in the back with rip rap in front of it.

And the issue with this style of shoreline stabilization is that, you know, as you start to get increasing sea levels, eventually it's going to topple over this.

So this is the seawall at the Charleston Battery.

This is a hardened structure, and it's done a great job, at protecting the Battery.

But, you know, as we've seen in a lot of the big storms, it's not quite up to snuff.

You know, something needs to be done.

I don't, I don't know what that is, but hopefully it can incorporate some kind of living shoreline.

♪ Narrator> Rosemont farther up the peninsula is beyond the reach of the extended battery wall proposed by the Army Corps of Engineers.

The city of Charleston is working on green solutions to the flooding in Rosemont.

♪ Kaylan Koszela> The Rosemont community, they are part of this initial study that was done for storm surge on the peninsula.

And just given the nature of where that community exists, they were deemed for nonstructural.

And if you put a structure there, it would require to take homes, which we were not going to do that.

That would potentially be some voluntary home elevations and some flood proofing measures for residents there.

So there's an opportunity for us to do continued engagement with those communities of how we can help them build their resilience as well.

You know what we're doing in Rosemont is something that I almost think of it as a pilot.

Narrator> In June 2025, the city organized a meeting of non-profits and government agencies in Rosemont to meet with community members and share plans for addressing flooding.

Rev.

Christopher Buggs> We just got elected in January, and we've only had like three months to really try to get the planning and everything in order, but our priorities are there.

We just act as a voice for the neighborhood.

It's a myriad of issues here.

We live in an industrial part of Charleston.

The neck is developing.

We've got sewage issues, drainage, flooding, all those water resilience issues that came up lately, gentrification, you name it, we've been placed in a flood zone and a flood plain, and that forces a lot of the residents to have to get flood insurance, which we never had to do before.

So that's a huge bill added on to, you know, the other expenses that come natural in this neighborhood.

Beverly Montgomery> I've been in this community for 70 years.

I'm retired from the VA hospital.

I moved up in North Charleston for a little while but came back home to take care of my mother.

So I stayed in her house on Delano Street.

It's a quiet community.

It's a great community.

A lot of people have died off and left it to their children.

A lot of children have sold their houses, and I think this area is going to be booming.

The Magnolia wants a lot of house because it's waterfront property.

I'm the vice president of Rosemont right now, and we're going to work with each and every person that comes to try to help us.

>> So now, if we want to look at, say this property here, Beverly> We have a lot of little issues with the flooding.

We do.

I know it's going to take time.

And I got patience, but they need to get on the ball with this.

>> Some of the primary issues that I do see is, of course, issues with the water and flooding.

The biggest concern, me and my family have is how it affects the property value.

That is a huge issue.

And also with the Magnolia development that's coming in, that's going to affect the property value, as well.

One of the representatives mentioned there would be low income housing, but I later found out that that low income starts at about $100,000.

You know, (laughs) a year.

And, you know, globally that's not considered low income.

Just ensuring that the community members are educated about what they're bringing and how their presence will prove to be mutually beneficial.

Bryan Cordell> You know why I'm so excited about this effort in this neighborhood is that we have all these stakeholders that are doing slightly different things.

Our organization has a grant from N.O.A.A.

It's a three year grant serving four underserved communities along the coast.

Rosemont is one of them.

And what our grant is allowing our organization to do is a major study of this marsh.

Ultimately, that work will inform restoration activities, and then we will come in and do those restoration activities.

Rodly Millet> I'd like to see a larger population show up at the meetings, learn about what's happening, and most importantly, give us their input.

Unfortunately, communities like Rosemont historically received very little attention in the past.

Robert Mitchell> It's a little better, but it could be better than it is now.

I mean, most people who do come out, they live here and you have to be involved in where you live, but you have the people who is doing these water quality and putting it out.

You need to come, so you can speak with them personally, and they can give you the information.

Gail Pinckney> I can walk to the next corner and see flooding, but in my area I have a little bit of water, not a lot of flood.

But as I learned today, I need to start worrying because I live right on the street, like four doors from the marsh.

I think we need more meetings and more sit down talking and stuff, so we can do better with our community.

This is a very nice place to live.

One time I had a fear that we would lose this community, but I think there's a lot of strong people here, and I don't think we going to sell out, or nothing like that.

>> It's running down.

So this, I'm so happy right now, Just to learn what I learned in there this morning, it really changed my life this morning because I didn't know all of that.

So, knowledge is power.

Tasia> It does make me feel very hopeful, seeing the different organizations come out.

And they came out very prepared, very willing to talk, willing to discuss, willing to educate.

Now we have urban sprawl.

We have kind of racial gerrymandering.

It's, it's just a lot of different issues that are going on in Charleston.

And if the community can be more involved, not just the residents, the powers to be, politicians, corporations that are coming into Charleston, you know, build a rapport with its community members.

Herbert> As far as mitigation, as far as the people who live like on the marsh, they're talking about building their homes up on stilts.

They will move them out, set them up, and then bring them back at no cost.

But for the people who don't want to have that build up, you know, I guess they'll buy them out, you know.

I would like to see that property stay in the hands of the community.

My big anxiety is getting help from developers because my history has shown me.

I've seen it from, Calhoun Street and even going past Calhoun Street, There were Black communities, and now they have been infiltrated and moved out, pushed out, gentrified, and it's like, but where's everybody going?

On the other side of Rosemont, they have cleared the land away for this billion dollar community called the Magnolia.

So what about people who can't afford the Magnolia?

This is prime real estate on the water, on the marsh.

Even if they get a good piece of money, where are they going to go?

So this is the only place left.

We need help here.

We've been need help.

And you know, I look at the residents who was here, back then and what they had to go through, which I don't know.

But as difficult as it is now, how much more difficult was it then?

They survived.

Okay.

They were resilient.

This community is too.

One day at a time, we keep pushing.

We keep pushing.

You know.

Erica> At the core, I believe it's choice.

People having the autonomy to choose if they want to stay in the community or not.

So we create a roadmap for how you can be resilient here on the land.

And whenever you choose to go, you can go opposed to being forced out of the land.

I think that's the core, the core issue here.

Narrator> In Ten Mile, as in Rosemont.

A strong community is vital to the efforts to mitigate flooding and handle new development.

Carla> What a lot of people did, not just in Ten Mile, but in other Gullah Geechee communities, was they used their skills and they helped each other.

And even our church that's in our community, Greater Zion, that was built by the community.

(gospel music) So my grandfathers, great grandfathers, they got together and they used their skills to build the church because at that time people would not help them.

But they knew that this is what they wanted.

One of the central focuses of our community is our church.

As you've seen driving throughout the community, many homes are spaced apart.

You'll also notice that we tend to have a lot more historic trees.

A lot of that is still preserved throughout the neighborhood, but as you see in many subdivisions, a lot of the native trees are cut down.

And so what's often happening is when it rains, the neighbors who've lived here for generations, their yards flood.

Ten Mile is a historic district.

Charleston County, they said they wanted to preserve a lot of the cultural communities within Charleston County.

And so one of the things that they encouraged was for communities to become historic districts.

There's a long process.

It took us years to become a historic district.

And part of the reason we did was because what we're told it would help to prevent a lot of the subdivisions from coming in.

And so what we've seen is many times these developers go to the Historic Preservation Commission, H.P.C., they're denied there.

And then they appeal to Charleston County.

And then what often happens is they sue Charleston County Council.

Charleston County settles with them.

And then they grant them the certificate of historical appropriateness.

Filippo Ravalico> There was a broad coalition of environmental and historic preservation advocates that joined forces with the community.

And yet the recommendation was always to approve, approve, approve.

Carla> We haven't gotten an answer from Charleston County Council as to why does this continue to happen?

But this is something that we've noticed, especially in the subdivisions that developed within Ten Mile, is that this cycle keeps being repeated where they're not getting what they need.

So they sue Charleston County Council, and then they get it that way.

Larry> So that's why it's such a fight now.

But the outlines of what the Historic Preservation Commission can do is there.

We just have to support them Conservation easements, buy the land for greenspace, put it off, or anything that we can do for every square inch.

that's not a national forest to put it off from development.

Every inch we don't preserve that way will be built upon.

And that's my fear.

That's what I want to prevent.

>> This is not something that just the communities want.

This is the broader Charleston County.

And yet, it's like a slow motion... train wreck that keeps happening.

Brandon> We are one of the last areas in Mount Pleasant that you can walk freely and feel safe.

You can walk freely and see the water, but right now, with the more neighborhoods that are being built, the less privacy, the less land that we have, the more gentrification that happens, we are unable to sustain the natural beauty that we have.

Unless we continue to have conversations, what is here now may not be here tomorrow.

Martha> The Gullah Geechee communities, they do have value.

We need to learn more about it ourselves.

Teach our children, so they can teach their children.

We need to teach our newcomers to the area, so they can understand how we feel about the land and our culture.

Because I'm believing that our newcomers come here for the beauty of what they see.

And we can't keep that if we are over developed.

Kaylan> I'm optimistic.

You can get bogged down in the potential heaviness and, you know, impacts of water, but Charleston's natural environment has always been water, and it's why we love it here.

It's our community to solve and work for, no matter your jurisdiction, and get folks engaged to see the solutions that they want to see in the city is what's really exciting for me.

Anna> We're in the teenage phase of our water plan.

I think it was a great start.

We need to figure out now how to implement some of these projects.

And of course, I think we're all a little bit concerned by the availability of federal funding in the near future.

That really drives what we're able to accomplish here.

I am hopeful that we can continue to pursue state level grants, federal grants, and, you know, local efforts to raise money for some of these projects that are so desperately needed.

Keith> There's a lot that other cities can learn from Charleston, and there's some things that Charleston can learn from other cities.

I think that's the other important thing to make sure that we're all learning from one another.

Jonah Chester> I'd like to take a moment to provide some background info that will help frame tonight's discussion.

Charleston is flooding more now than ever before, according to the National Weather Service, our city experienced.

Keith> We're going to be thinking of ideas and putting in place those different ideas, but we might not know how well they'll work or how well we all respond to them for another 10, 15, 20 years, but we need to continually learn and adapt for future generations and for future enhancements of whatever we do.

Narrator> At the Gadsden Creek area, local students are involved in the effort to protect the marsh and their community.

>> I was born and raised in Charleston, downtown Charleston.

I went to Burke High School, which is what inspired my interest into this entire project.

I learned that Charleston had many different tidal creeks stretching all around the peninsula, like tons.

Mayor Cogswell took a walk of Gadsden Creek with scientists, engineers, and residents of the community to hear them out and, you know, listen to their concerns.

The mayor knows, and I know personally, myself, that Gadsden Creek can store up to ten times the amount of storm water that any of the developers planned storm water management systems.

You don't have to be science literate.

You don't have to be a scientist.

You don't have to be a Congress member.

You don't have to be any of that.

All you have to do is care enough to be informed post about it, get the word out to more people who may not.

That's all you have to do to ensure that we may have a fighting chance to help save this community.

♪ ♪ High Low, Do, Re, Mi All these tides are flooding our streets Spring, King Not the same thing It all depends on the Moon's swing We're on a mission.

Not asking for permission Find a solution For our city's evolution Gadsden Creek is filled with trash Now the flooding is a pain in the as-phalt High Low, Do, Re, Mi All these tides are flooding our streets Spring, King Not the same thing It all depends on the Moon's swing Trash in the creek and beneath our feet, didn't stop us from building these streets.

Gadsden Creek is trying to make a come back but the engineers ain't having none of that.

High Low, Do, Re, Mi All these tides are flooding our streets Spring, King Not the same thing It all depends on the Moon's swing because of all the downtown construction Gadsden Creek is facing a reduction When animals leave it'll be a sad day.

Do we let'em go away?

Do we keep'em here to stay?

High Low, Do, Re, Mi All these tides are flooding our streets Spring, King Not the same thing It all depends on the Moon's swing It all depends on the Moon's swing ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ (Dramatic slam) ♪