Climate change could significantly impact lower income areas of Osceola County

Climate change could have a significant impact on lower-income areas of Osceola County but as its effects increase, county sustainability goals are just getting started.

In 2020, the county adopted the Osceola Green Initiative Element plan, which aimed at creating a climate change workgroup that would oversee and implement sustainability policies. The group has not been established yet. In 2021, the county created the Office of Sustainability but didn’t fully fund the office until late 2022.

“We’re already working on some of those things but that working group will help us establish the frame, the phasing plan and the benchmarks for how we move forward,” said Susan Caswell, the director of the Office of Sustainability. “[Establishing the working group] may happen by the end of 2023, otherwise early 2024.”

Caswell said while the county has always been working on sustainability projects, this office provides a designated space to take on more projects, but it’s just starting out.

Her office began by completing an Urban Forest Management Plan that was recently adopted by the board. When implemented, the plan is to plant more trees throughout the county in an effort to reduce heat and carbon emissions.

“We wanted to have strategies for increasing the value in those neighborhoods and sort of protecting communities, and one of them is to provide trees because trees actually increase property value,” Caswell said.

The Office of Sustainability applied for a federal grant to help fund planting between 4,000 and 5,000 trees concentrated in areas of the county that are lower-income to mitigate the heat island effect, Caswell said.

“The heat island effect [is where] the tree canopy is different depending on the income of a community,” Caswell said. “Over and over again in communities, what you find is the lower-income areas have less tree canopy and the heat island effect is worse … so if we have areas that have disproportionate heat and lower tree canopy, we can focus on those areas and plant trees there.”

Buenaventura Lakes, Poinciana, Campbell City and Intercession City are areas where trees will be planted, Caswell said.

While the county is beginning to implement sustainability practices, carbon emissions are increasing across the world.

In 2022, greenhouse gas emissions — gases that trap heat in the atmosphere — continued to increase rapidly, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Carbon dioxide, a gas that is the most important contributor to climate change, increased from 10.9 billion tons per year in the 1960s to 36.6 billion tons per year in 2022, according to NOAA.

Florida is the fourth largest contributor of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States, according to 2021 data from the United States Environmental Protection Agency.

As these emission increase, scientists and researchers like Thomas Wahl, a professor at the University of Central Florida and a member of UCF’s National Center for Integrated Coastal Research, worry about the potential effects on climate.

“One thing that’s happening, with especially tropical cyclones hurricanes, we have a warmer atmosphere because of global warming and a warmer atmosphere can hold more moisture,” Whal said. “So, there’s a higher potential for a lot of rain being released during those extreme events because there’s simply more moisture that can accumulate in the atmosphere.”

Another adverse impact of climate change and global warming is the slowing down of tropical cyclones, which allows them more time to dump more water in concentrated areas, Whal said.

In Osceola County, climate change could mean more rain dropped during a weather event and lead to more severe flooding — similar to what was seen during Hurricane Ian, he said.

The hurricane left hundreds of retirement community members homeless at Good Samaritan; required airboat evacuations for many across the county including Buenaventura Lakes; and left countless others with permanent damage to their homes during a time when getting flood insurance is increasingly difficult.

Local governments have the power to diminish their impact on climate change. It’s important for local governments to be strict during the zoning process and not allow development of vital infrastructure in known flood areas and increase green spaces like Shingle Creek Regional Park to mitigate flooding, Whal said.

The best thing local governments can do is take into account worsening flood risks and climate change when developing, he said.

“More development means more impermeable surface, less green space for rain to infiltrate,” Whal said. “That means more rain will stay at the surface that then needs to be routed through the storm water system, which is already overwhelmed from many of those extreme events.”

Caswell said her office was created to start working on these issues but the speed of which everything gets done is challenging.

“That’s what I’m working towards,” Caswell said. “In addition to being fully funded, I have an item that’s about to go to our board that approves … professional services contracts.”

The Office of Emergency Management is also working on resiliency projects to help combat these issues, too, and will eventually partner with the Office of Sustainability to mitigate climate change impacts, Caswell said.

Working together and partnering with neighboring counties is vital to have a greater impact on climate change, Whal said.

The impact of climate change on coastal communities — especially in South Florida — will likely lead people to relocate to Osceola County as sea levels rise, Whal said.

“So that’s what we call managed retreat,” Whal said. “People understanding that it will be necessary to move out of certain high-risk areas and … people make these decisions after hurricanes individually but eventually we will likely see that happening also at larger scales and in a more managed way to make sure that those people do not longer live in places that repeatedly flood.”