Set sprinklers to water the lawn or garden only - not the street or sidewalk.
Use the microwave to cook small meals. (It uses less power than an oven.)
Purchase "Green Power" for your home's electricity. (Contact your power supplier to see where and if it is available.)
Scrape, rather than rinse, dishes before loading into the dishwasher; wash only full loads.
Cut back on air conditioning and heating use if you can.
Turn off appliances and lights when you leave the room.
Hampton Roads, we have a problem. The earth is warming and the sea level is rising.
Melting glaciers and expanding warm ocean water continue to raise the sea level around the globe. Life in Hampton Roads could be greatly impacted if we don't prepare for the rising waters.
Around the globe the average sea level rise is about a foot or so per century. Here in Hampton Roads our ground is sinking or subsiding so the relative sea level rise is even greater.
If you’re looking for the exact numbers, look no further than a tide gauge at Sewells Point. You can see the average sea level rise has been about 1.45 feet per century. At the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel, the rise is even greater... about 2.3 feet per hundred years.
Day to day, you may not have noticed the higher water. But add a tropical depression or even a modest nor'easter like the ones we had last year, and the tidal flooding compares with some of the worst we've seen.
A storm that used to be just a nuisance takes a heavier toll today. And with a conservative projected sea level rise of two feet in the coming century, the same type of storm could inundate the our area in the future.
We ran into Mike Gallen as he was walking his dog near Surry Crescent in Norfolk. He is relatively new to the area but he already knows that the sea level is something he needs to monitor. Some of his neighbors are taking advantage of FEMA grants to lift their homes above potential flood waters.
"You have to deal with it on a daily basis. You watch the tide charts and if it’s going to flood, you move your car,’ said Gallen.
Even at low tide, you can see evidence that the wetlands are coming back. But if you think that the flooding issues and the sea level rise are just a problem for folks living along the waters edge, think again. There’s a lot more to the story.
"Hampton Roads is the largest population center at greatest risk from sea level rise outside of New Orleans," said Skip Stiles, Executive Director of Wetlands Watch. He has been researching the risks sea level rise brings to our wetlands.
"What were trying to do is get people to realize that it’s not going to go away. Were going to have to stand and were going to have to deal with it."
Economically, we are already starting to see signs. Some insurance carriers are beginning to pull out of coastal regions making it harder for property owners to stay protected.
"The other issues are infrastructure, storm water systems that are gravity fed; suddenly you are going to need to put them under positive pressure," said Stiles. "At two feet you can deal with it. You can armor these shorelines, elevate the roads a bit, you can move the houses up a bit. You can buy time."
…Which is great news for Mike Gallen and for all of us.
"We’re just going to have to deal with it. Hopefully, in time, things will change and this will be fixed and it will be rectified. This is the perfect neighborhood," said Mike.
This is an issue we can deal with if we start to take action now. But remember this... if you have your back to the issue or if you’re hiding your head in the sand, when it comes to sea level rise, eventually the tide is going to come in.
Virginia is scheduled to get new high resolution topographic mapping done in 2009. That will help city and state planners better assess the threats to the area, and make decisions on what needs to be done.
