Chief Resilience Officer for Monroe County, Rhonda Haag, joined Good Morning Keys on KeysTalk 96.9/102.5FM this morning to talk about what’s going on with sea level rise and the tides.
Road elevation is a serious issue in the Keys.
Haag said, “The good news is we haven’t lost any of our federal funds. We have over $185 million in federal funds lined up for these road adaptation projects, the seven or eight of them that are in the line. So we’ve been very thankful and we keep our fingers crossed that we’re going to be able to hang on to those. So that’s a lot of money. There’s another 85 million in state funds that we have lined up for these projects. So these projects, they’re very well funded, we don’t know yet, until we bid them out, actually what the shortfall is, and I know we’ve talked a lot about that at the county commission meetings and other public meetings, about the shortfalls and capital assessments, and people don’t want to pay a capital assessment, and I understand and they don’t want to pay an operations and maintenance assessment. I understand that too. It’s extra money out of their pockets, but if we don’t do these road adaptation projects, especially now, we have the grant funding lined up, if we give that money back, we’re never going to get that money back.”
FEMA is under some serious reorganization right now.
Haag said, “They’re putting back the burden on the states and local governments. The whole program of FEMA, how we get funds, is being changed, and we probably will never get that kind of money again. So we kind of want to hang on to what we have and so if we don’t do these projects, the flooding is only going to get worse. Sea level rise continues to occur, especially down in the Keys, it’s a little bit worse than some of the other areas. It’s not just sea level rise, it’s also rain water. So when rain water falls on the road, it’s got to go somewhere, and we don’t have any stormwater systems built into the roads, because they’re all just basically just a flat road. So when the rainwater falls on the road, it’s got to go somewhere, and it can’t just go into the ground, because as the sea levels rise, the groundwater rises also under the roads and so what’s going to happen is the rainwater is just going to continue to sit on top of the sides of the road. It’s going to fall and just sit and get deeper and deeper year by year. The roads are going to continue to deteriorate. They’re going to deteriorate faster. People are going to see all this flooding around, and they’re going to call the county, and there’s nothing we’re going to be able to do. We can’t come out and dig trenches, because that’s not going to work because there’s going to be groundwater so high that it’s going to clash with the surface water. There’s some of the problems that we’re looking at. I mean, you want to turn it down right now, you’ve got to think, even five years in the future, what your front yard is going to look like, and your access to your home. We already see issues in some of the Key Largo neighborhoods, but the Lower Keys, they also have these same type of issues.”
Could any of the funds be taken back?
Haag said, “The state funds won’t be taken back. The federal funds, I mean, there’s still FEMA funds, and there’s still a possibility they could be taken back. I mean, we haven’t heard yet. We keep our fingers crossed. The faster we move forward, the better.”
How does the assessment work?
Haag said, “When you build these road adaptation projects, you have to be able to move the water to get it off the road, and get it off somewhere where you can pump it underground. That’s what we’re going to do with the water. We’re going to pump it underground because there’s nowhere else for it to go. So you have to have a pump station with a big pump. That takes power to pump the pump, and you have to maintain it, just like if you have swimming pool pumps, you have to repair and maintain them. So that takes money. That’s what an assessment is set up for, the operations and maintenance. It’s to run the pump station and do repairs. We also build in a little bit of a reserve to fund parts and materials and the smaller parts. We don’t build in 50 million to replace the whole project, or the whole pump station. Basically, it’s enough just to do the repairs and so that cost is an annual cost of that, and there’s labor included in that. So what we do is we determine which of the residents in that neighborhood are benefiting from this project. It’s typically, you think it’s the people directly on the road elevation project, but each project varies greatly because it’s all by geographical area. Sometimes it’s other residents that don’t live right on a road elevation, but are still getting other benefits, like drainage in their area. So it might be draining from the road in front of their house, even though they’re not getting a road adaptation.”
The annual amount is divided by the number of residents getting the benefit.
Haag said, “That’s what’s called an assessment. And you get an assessment every year. It shows up on your taxes, and there’s no one assessment. It’s going to vary by neighborhood. It’s depending on the size of your pump station, what the annual operations and maintenance cost is, and then how many lots or residents are paying for the benefits. So it’s going to vary quite a bit from neighborhood to neighborhood. I know there’s been some discussion about that. Then there’s the other assessment, potentially, we haven’t decided on it yet. We put that whole discussion off now until September about capital assessment, so that’s a little different. That’s to help pay for some of the actual capital costs. Like, if for instance, we have a project that’s 80 million, and the county has 60 million in grants to pay for it, then the county has to put in 10 million. We might come to the resident and say, can you help pay for some of it. Maybe not all 10 million, but maybe a million or two. It just helps the county fund a little bit more of the work so that we can continue to do other projects. I think where some of the angst is coming from, is some of the capital assessment discussion, because we have thrown out a number for 25,000 and again that divided by yearly amount, it’s like $2,100 a year, which I understand it’s money, but you’ve got to look at what happens if we don’t do the road adaptation, especially in these areas we’ve identified as more vulnerable. The flooding is going to continue to get worse. Your roads are going to deteriorate faster. The county does not have funds to increase its repair and maintenance program, so basically, what will happen over time is we’ll continue to maintain it as best we can, but once it gets to a point where we just don’t have the funds to continue paving over it, we don’t know what we’ll decide. That’s what the policy makers will have to decide. Are we going to abandon it or just become part time road use?”
What other projects are going on?
Haag said, “Our breakwaters are hopefully, probably about to break ground. I’ve got two items on the June commission agenda for the breakwaters, where I’m going to advertise for the inspectors. We hope to finally, after almost four years, get approval from the state on June 4. That’s our anticipated date for approval to finally move forward and spend funds. It’s a very long process. So those are in Tavernier and Key Largo. The canal projects, especially the ones on the Avenues, those five or six of them there, are also moving forward. We just got the signed agreement back, I think, last week, and now we’ll be able to, we’re just wrapping up a design of a couple of them, so we can at least move forward with two or three of those and solicit and get the work underway for the restorations of those. We’ve got a lot of work breaking out here in the next couple of months. We’re having a special meeting about the Stillwright neighborhood on June 17, at four o’clock, and it’s a good meeting for everybody to watch who’s getting a potential road elevation project, because we’re going to review some of the options that the residents asked for, other than the full Resilience Project. So it’ll be a good review of all the type of different options that are out there for consideration and why they will or won’t work, and what it means. We’re going to talk about whether we can get exemptions from the regulatory. We had a lot of discussion about that at our last committee meeting. So that’s a real good meeting, just for everybody to tune into and watch because it applies to lots of the other projects also not just Stillwright. Again, that’s June 17, at four o’clock. They can Zoom on in and watch the discussion and the options.”