As part of an effort to protect local cities and towns from the negative impacts of climate change, Gov. McKee and Rhode Island Commerce this month kicked off a new initiative called “Ready, Set, Rhody.” Under the program, the engineering firm Fuss & O’Neill will help municipal leaders determine how to increase the resilience of commercial districts that are particularly vulnerable to severe weather events, flooding and coastal erosion.
Ralph Mollis, manager for North Kingstown, spoke with morning host Luis Hernandez about the initiative and what it means for Rhode Island communities.
Interview highlights
On the details of the ‘Ready, Set, Rhody’ initiative
Ralph Mollis: My understanding is that the state received a grant through their Commerce and Planning departments to receive funding to assist various communities – actually business villages, coastal villages within Rhode Island – to provide some GIS mapping and check out their vulnerabilities, find out which businesses in which areas are vulnerable to flooding from severe weather events and from coastal erosion, and then providing some solutions as to how to help those businesses.
On how this initiative will help North Kingstown
Mollis: Two or three times a year, there’s a major weather event, which basically closes down Wickford village because you cannot safely travel through it. In addition, it definitely affects not only the business, but also the infrastructure because the water is getting into these businesses.
We have a municipal parking lot within Wickford that floods probably a half a dozen times a year. We now are embarked on a multi-million dollar project, which should be done by September, to restore the wall along the municipal parking lot, put some drainage within, so that way the lot will not be closed probably a half a dozen times a year.
We need people who are much more knowledgeable about this than I am, or the business district, to come in and say, “Okay, we’ve done a GIS mapping, we can see how the erosion has grown over the last 10 years. This is what we’re forecasting over the next 20. This is what Wickford will look like. And here are some solutions to potentially resolve that.” Very similar to what we’re going through in the parking lot, where we looked at this issue, we brought in an engineer, spent hundreds of thousands of dollars, and came up with a solution that will hopefully preserve this parking lot for generations to come.
On whether Rhode Island is doing enough to protect its coastal communities
Mollis: I’m not sure. I know that this is something that it seems like we’ve all been talking about for decades. I think at this point, it’s something that a lot of people, potentially myself included, feel that it just may be a natural progression of the climate in that we need to, as a result, prepare for it. No matter what anybody thinks about what is taking place or why it is taking place, we can’t question the fact that it is indeed taking place. Our beaches are being eroded, coastal erosion is happening. This village that I’m talking about, eight years ago when I started, maybe flooded once a year. Now it’s happening two or three times a year. The parking lot is flooded much more frequently. The bottom line is that we are receiving more and more coastal erosion and flooding. What can we do to prepare us?
That’s the difference between our generation and maybe a generation of 100, 200, 300 years ago that may have faced the same thing. We now have the technology to potentially put together infrastructure to help either prevent or delay what is happening, apparently, naturally. Whatever we can do to preserve these unique villages within Rhode Island for my grandchildren and great grandchildren and great-great grandchildren to enjoy, I think that we have a responsibility to do that.
This interview was conducted by The Public’s Radio.
