Report forecasts more routine floods for Portland
Flooding from high tides is expected to occur more often over the next 15 to 30 years along the East Coast from Florida to Maine, with Portland alone predicted to experience almost triple the number of flooding events by 2030 and more than six times today’s number by 2045, according to a new study by the Union of Concerned Scientists.
The 65-page report, titled “Encroaching Tides,” was released late Tuesday by the nonprofit science advocacy organization, based in Cambridge, Mass.
In a snapshot of Portland, the nonprofit said that with much of its commerce and infrastructure concentrated close to the water in Casco Bay, the city is vulnerable to flooding during high tide, even in fair weather. Those floods can render pedestrian pathways and piers unusable and cause businesses to close.
Portland now sees 11 tidal floods annually, but the study predicts the city will face 30 by 2030 and 65 by 2045.
Jeff Levine, Portland’s director of Planning and Urban Development, told Mainebiz earlier that planners are taking flooding into account in some of the new projects under consideration.
The frequency of future floods surprised the report’s researchers. “The shock for us was that tidal flooding could become the new normal in the next 15 years; we didn’t think it would be so soon,” Melanie Fitzpatrick, one of the three researchers at the nonprofit who analyzed the report’s data, told Climate Central regarding the expected floods on the East Coast and on the Gulf Coast.
The report also concluded that, “By 2045, within the lifetime of a typical home mortgage, more than half of the 52 communities in our analysis could see a 10-fold or greater increase in the frequency of tidal floods, and one-third of them could average more than 180 tidal floods per year.”
Washington, D.C., Lewisetta, Va. and Annapolis, Md., led the list for the highest flood increases in the future.
Despite the big increases in Portland, New England cities nonetheless ranked near the bottom of tidal flooding incidents over the time span. Boston, for example, also has 11 events now, which are expected to triple to 31 in 2030 and 72 by 2045.
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