Miami- $300 million for Pumps

What Climate Change Looks Like: Miami’s $300 Million Pumps

The impact of climate change is usually gauged by metrics like fractions of degrees of warming or millimeters of sea-level rise. But the effects can also be measured in cash.

Miami Beach is a case in point. The city, built on a barrier island, is spending $300 million to hold off the sea. Researchers at the University of Miami have been carefully measuring sea levels at Virginia Key, just south of Miami Beach, for nearly two decades, and say that in that time the sea has risen nearly four inches. For Miami Beach, that has exacerbated an existing problem – flooding of low-lying streets in South Beach and other neighborhoods during extreme high tides.

The $300 million will eventually buy 60 large pumps, each of which can throw 14,000 gallons of water back into Biscayne Bay per minute, or roughly the volume of an Olympic-sized swimming pool every three-quarters of an hour.

The $300 million is actually only a small sum compared with the billions of dollars spent to protect New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina and the even greater sums it has been estimated that New York will have to spend as waters rise. And for Miami Beach, as well, it is likely to be just the beginning as more infrastructure will soon be needed.

Source: The New York Times

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• Environment
• Flood Management
• Climate Change Adaptation
• Infrastructure
• Pumps