South Florida Faces Ominous Prospects From Rising Waters
Shannon Kaestle/The Miami Herald, via Associated Press
Storm clouds swirled over downtown Miami last month as Tropical Storm Karen headed toward the Florida Panhandle. By 2100, the sea level could rise five or six feet, or more, threatening the city.
Planners in Florida are realizing that within 50 years, much of Florida will be under water.
“I don’t think people realize how vulnerable Florida is,” Harold R. Wanless, the chairman of the geological sciences department at the University of Miami, said in an interview last week. “We’re going to get four or five or six feet of water, or more, by the end of the century. You have to wake up to the reality of what’s coming.”
Even predictions more modest than Professor Wanless’s foresee most of low-lying coastal Florida subject to increasingly frequent floods as the polar ice caps melt more quickly and the oceans surge and gain ground.
Much of Florida’s 1,197-mile coastline is only a few feet above the current sea level, and billions of dollars’ worth of buildings, roads and other infrastructure lies on highly porous limestone that leaches water like a sponge.
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