The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Choosing between crises on the coast of Georgia
ST. SIMONS ISLAND — The challenges of governing in a crisis were on vivid display this week when I went to Glynn County for the next stop on my Georgia politics road trip.
I’d decided to go back to the South Georgia coast during an earlier visit to Savannah, when local leaders pointed to Glynn County as having among the most immediate problems in the state with climate change and a rising sea level.
On the day I drove to St. Simons Island, news reports were about coming the devastation over the from radio
Hurricane Ida in New York
City, where torrents of rainwater gushed into the subway system and people horrifically drowned in their own basements in Queens.
What if the same kind of storm came to Georgia? Would the state be ready? Could any state be ready?
Climate scientists say the chances of impact are increasing every year, as the climate warms and severe weather events become more frequent and more severe. cane Even in without the last few a major years, hurri- residents in coastal Georgia now live with eroding beaches and chronic flooding from sea level rise. Streets and homes in low-lying areas of Brunswick flood
routinely. Residents on St. Simons Island, the barrier island just across the Torres Causeway, say they used to think their location as the western-most nook on the Atlantic coast largely protected the island from serious threats.
But near-direct hits from Hurricane Matthew in 2016 and Hurricane Irma just a year later convinced them that’s not the case anymore.
“People used to say, ‘We haven’t had these storms for years,’ but within two years we had two major storms and I think that opened a lot of people’s eyes,” said Emily Ellison, the executive director of the St. Simons Land Trust.
The trust works to acquire undeveloped property on the fast-developing island and preserve the land through conservation. It also conducts research on living shorelines and maritime forest restoration, both strategies to help strengthen coastlines against severe weather.
It’s also one of several local nonprofits working to help the area defend itself from rising tides.
Megan Desrosiers, the president and CEO of One Hundred Miles, described the cascading effects that sea level increases are having on residents everywhere in Glynn County.
“I think a lot of people think about sea level in terms of oceanfront homes, but it also impacts groundwater. It impacts the marshes. It impacts the way that stormwater moves underneath your city,” she said. “And it’s getting worse as sea levels rise.”
The effects are worse in communities that don’t
have the resources to deal with them.
An EPA report released Thursday showed that minority communities will bear a disproportionate impact of climate change, a dynamic that Glynn County epitomizes.
While some areas, like privately owned Sea Island, are among the wealthiest communities anywhere in the country, neighboring Brunswick has a 34% poverty rate.
“It’s an economic issue and a socio-economic issue,” Desrosiers said.”And in cities like Brunswick that don’t have a lot of money, they’re not getting on top because they can’t afford to do it.”
The political dynamics on the coast are as unusual as the weather that people are trying to predict.
The entire 100-mile coastline is represented in Congress by U.S. Rep. Buddy Carter, a Republican from Pooler, and, as of January, its senators are Democrats Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock.
Another politically divided delegation represents the area in the state House and Senate, overseen by Republican Gov. Brian Kemp.
Thankfully, the question of whether climate change exists no longer seems to be the prevailing debate here. But what to do about
climate change and how to pay for it certainly are.
“Climate change is real,” Rep. Carter told me on a visit to Savannah earlier this summer.
Unlike some Republicans, Carter not only acknowledges the warming trends in the atmosphere, he talks up Georgia’s leadership as a state in renewable energy even in casual conversation.
He has worked to help flooded-out residents get grants to build higher and got President Donald Trump to take Georgia off the list of states that would allow offshore oil drilling. But he also opposes government regulations to push people or businesses to make major changes.
“The problem is the majority party and their socialist agenda for renewable energy,” he said. “I happen to believe in an all-of the-above-type energy strategy.”
On the Democratic side, Sen. Ossoff has visited low-lying coastal communities like St. Mary’s and requested billions in the Senate-passed infrastructure bill to help the entire coast defend itself.
Ossoff told a group in St. Mary’s last week that the legislation has $12 billion for everything from weatherizing houses and businesses to upgrading local drainage systems and improving evacuation routes. But the measure still has to pass the House.
“As sea levels continue to rise, as tropical storms become more intense, we have to prepare our coastal communities in Georgia for flooding,” Ossoff said.
But in talking to residents in the area, it seems like one of the biggest challenges related to climate change may not be climate change at all.
The highest hurdle may be the patchwork of city, county, state and federal governments that all have to push for progress on the wildly complex issue in the same direction at the same time — even as governments’ bandwidths always seem stretched to capacity.
Bill Brunson is a Republican on the nonpartisan Glynn County Commission. After living for 30 years in the same house, his home flooded for the first time after 16 inches of rain inundated the area during Hurricane Irma in 2017. “Once you have had that issue you know it is at the forefront of your brain,” he said.
But along with practically willing the county to get through hurricane season unscathed, Brunson said he thinks the county has largely done what it can on climate change for now. The biggest emergency to handle is COVID19.
“Our hospital is absolutely overrun,” he said. “You see the numbers and they’re just scary.”
The tone in Brunson’s voice made it clear which crisis is most urgent for Glynn County at the moment. “If we don’t get our arms around this COVID thing,” he said. “We’re not going to have to worry about climate change, because nobody’s going to be here.”