Obama Orders Rising Seas Built In to Building Standards

Flood risk from sea level rise brought about by climate change will have to be factored into the building standards of any new and rebuilt federally funded construction project, including those built by local governments receiving federal money, according to an executive order President Obama issued last Friday.

The order requires projects funded by the government to adopt tighter construction standards so that scientific projections for how climate change could affect flooding in a given area can be factored into where and how the projects are built.

The executive order is a huge shift for the federal government, which has relied mostly on historical flooding data when determining the location of flood plains, not projections for how flooding may change in the future.

Builders now have several options to reduce a project’s vulnerability to flooding:  they can use the best available climate science to determine the best place in a flood plain to reduce exposure to future floods as sea level rises, or they can construct new buildings two feet above the 100-year flood mark and build new hospitals and other critical buildings three feet above the 100-year flood mark.  Or, they can build all projects above the 500-year flood mark.

The building standards are to be updated every five years using the latest flood risk projections based on available climate science.
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In a statement, the White House singled out the flooding in Manhattan that occurred as Sandy came ashore in 2012 as a reason to rebuild infrastructure to a higher standard so it can withstand greater storm surges and other coastal flooding.

More than $1 trillion of property are at risk from two feet of sea level rise in the U.S., a level that could be reached by 2050, the statement said.

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