Building Resilient Cities

Alan Dodd, Public Works Director, City of Fort Lauderdale

It’s well recognized that South Florida’s climate is changing, and local governments must adapt our infrastructure and neighborhoods for the future. Just as children prepare to return to school each September, it’s become routine for families to build hurricane preparedness kits, stocking water and supplies should another hurricane strike our coastline. From the local through the federal level, we review emergency response plans, develop contingencies, and provide for readiness with robust capabilities to reduce impacts and allow for the quickest possible recovery. Local governments must take the same approach in addressing other current and future vulnerabilities from climate change.

In Fort Lauderdale, climate resilience, the ability to anticipate, prepare for, respond to, and recover from hazardous events and trends related to climate, is much more than simply preparing for hurricanes. It requires us to consider all aspects of how climate change impacts our residents. We have seen close to a 200% increase in the number of days where temperatures exceed 90 degrees since 1970, increasing the risk for the elderly and other populations who are most vulnerable to heat-related illnesses. With seven miles of shoreline and 300 miles of waterway coastline, Fort Lauderdale is particularly vulnerable to the effects of sea level rise as extreme high tides overtop seawalls or flood low-lying roadways through stormwater outfalls. The changing sea level has caused groundwater levels to rise, reducing the ability for rainfall to seep naturally into the ground. We now experience heavier and more intense rainstorms, including microbursts that quickly overwhelm drainage systems and cause short-term flooding. Our infrastructure, largely built in the 60s and 70s, wasn’t designed for these conditions, and we must adapt existing systems now if we are to meet the demands of tomorrow. It’s only through a comprehensive assessment of how climate change will alter climate-related risks that we can take the steps necessary to better cope with these risks.

In local government, infrastructure standards are largely defined by policies, ordinances, and regulations used to inform technical documents. These guiding documents cannot be static and must evolve as conditions and needs change. Following Hurricane Andrew in 1992, the State of Florida unified and strengthened its building code, establishing some of the most stringent wind-resilience standards in the country. Our beach, designed and maintained in partnership with Broward County and the United States Army Corps of Engineers, is engineered to serve as a sacrificial barrier that protects communities from storm surge during hurricanes. In the past five years, Fort Lauderdale established new minimum standard elevations for seawalls to ensure they would not be overtopped as future sea level conditions occur and implemented a program to install one-way tidal valves in stormwater outfalls. Most significantly, the City initiated a $200 million bond program to invest in and reduce flooding impacts in eight of our most vulnerable neighborhoods. The program began with a complete revision of all stormwater design standards, including a change to the desired level of service that will increase the ability to manage rainfall from 3 inches to 7.5 inches in a 24-hour period. Because of rising groundwater, we recognize that swales and exfiltration trenches are less effective in low-lying areas, and we will build eight new pump stations over the next three years to manage stormwater where gravity systems are no longer effective.

“Our beach, designed and maintained in partnership with Broward County and the United States Army Corps of Engineers, is engineered to serve as a sacrificial barrier that protects communities from storm surge during hurricanes.”

While efforts to improve stormwater management are well underway, Fort Lauderdale was put to the test on April 12, 2023, when the City received an unprecedented 26 inches of rain in a 12-hour period, flooding some neighborhoods by as much as four feet of water. This historic thousand-year storm event suddenly challenged City first responders as more than 600 people were evacuated from flooded houses during the initial hours of the crisis. As staff and volunteers set up evacuation sites to care for impacted residents, Public Works initiated recovery operations using in-house and contracted resources, including numerous portable pumps and vactor trucks to drain floodwaters to clear the inundated streets and allow homeowners to start the rebuilding process. Mutual aid agreements with Broward County, the State of Florida, and surrounding municipalities allowed assistance to flow quickly, while robust emergency contracts allowed us to rapidly get supplies and equipment, initiate debris removal efforts, and complete emergency repairs to City-owned facilities. This catastrophic experience reinforced the need for up-to-date, flexible emergency response plans for weather events beyond hurricanes.

The April floods also reinforced that we need to do more and move quickly if we are to be a climate resilient city. We have initiated a citywide vulnerability assessment to assess risk and propose options to mitigate impacts, involving capital improvements, the use of backup generators and redundant systems, as well as contingency plans. The City will increase investments in water, wastewater, and stormwater infrastructure while accelerating the timeline for those improvements to be completed. With this goal in mind, we have initiated the design of seventeen neighborhood-wide stormwater projects in addition to the eight previously funded. In the fall, Fort Lauderdale will break ground on a new $485 million water treatment plant, designed to withstand a category 5 hurricane, to replace the 70-year-old Fiveash plant. While local governments can complete capital improvements in the public right-of-way, there must be similar investments in private properties. As residents and businesses rebuild, they must become better educated about newer materials and design features that can reduce damage during future extreme weather events. While the City can change policies to mandate such improvements, they can only do so with the support of the community that shares their vision for a more resilient Fort Lauderdale. In the meantime, more residents need to obtain flood insurance to reduce their financial risk.

The physical and regulatory changes needed to become a resilient city are not easy, taking a tremendous amount of work by staff, our residents, businesses, and elected officials. Preparing for climate change takes everyone working together to be successful. Most importantly, it takes a good understanding of the risks we face to ensure we make the best use of scarce financial resources and effort once decisions are made. The City of Fort Lauderdale has made this commitment to our residents, and we will be stronger because of it.