Here’s what might be keeping your NC community from preparing for climate change

Peering past the flowers, hearts and Valentine’s Day gifts on display at downtown Swansboro’s Through The Looking Glass, a visitor can still see signs of the flood from 2018’s Hurricane Florence.

A gap in the historic molding next to the door, for instance, sits exactly four feet off the ground, indicating where owners David Pinsky and Hal Silver cut away sodden sheet rock and tore out damp insulation. And the floors are painted concrete now because it is easier, David Pinsky said, to wash down and repaint concrete than to tear out wet carpet.

“We’re back open and doing like we should, but still that’s a lot to recover and a lot to recoup,” Pinsky said. The store is still trying to replace about $30,000 in inventory it lost during the flood, he said.

Much of Swansboro’s Florence-related damage came after relentless winds damaged roofs, leaving structures unable to keep out the 30 inches of rain. Through The Looking Glass and other businesses in Swansboro’s historic downtown area, though, suffered significant flooding from the White Oak River: The riverside location that once made the Onslow County town famous for its shipbuilding and fishing industries could become increasingly precarious in a world where sea levels are projected to rise one to eight feet by century’s end, depending on efforts to curb emissions.

While cities like Charleston, S.C., and Norfolk, Va., have resilience officers and mapped-out strategies to protect against rising waters, North Carolina’s coast and inland areas most vulnerable to river flooding tend to be dotted with small towns that are focused on maintaining basic services. Local officials and experts said it can be difficult for these governments to gain the expertise to undertake resilience planning or the funds to make those plans become reality.

Some coastal cities such as Nags Head and Swansboro have reviewed their vulnerability as part of land-use planning and started considering how they need to change in the future in order to better protect against flooding. Jessica Whitehead, the N.C. Office of Recovery and Resiliency’s chief resilience officer, helped both municipalities assess their vulnerabilities to hazards in her previous role as a coastal resilience specialist at N.C. Sea Grant.

When Whitehead asked leaders what presented the biggest barrier to protecting against flooding, the answer she invariably heard, she said, was, “Funding, funding, funding. And the challenge is that there’s not a dedicated source for funding, especially for climate resilience, so there’s grant proposals that come up and are available, but you have to have the capacity to apply for a grant.”

Flooding reality in Eastern NC

That reality is one facing Swansboro now. When Whitehead was working at N.C .Sea Grant, she guided the town through its vulnerability assessment as it rewrote its land-use plan.

Now that plan describes a downtown area where flood-damaged buildings will likely be rebuilt significantly higher, an effort to stand above potential flooding and storm surge levels. It also says flood risk should be considered in future infrastructure decisions and that existing infrastructure should be evaluated for the danger of its location, with leaders potentially considering retracting services in some flood-prone areas.

Chris Seaberg, Swansboro’s town manager, said most flooding-related property damage happens during hurricanes, but king tides and nor’easters can bring elevated water levels in low-lying spots.

When Florence arrived, Swansboro was in the midst of the vulnerability assessment, so leaders could use data from that storm to see where they could improve drainage. Seaberg is beginning to determine the extent and cost of restoring 4,600 linear feet of streams, a step town officials hope will allow water to drain faster. Restoration, Seaberg said, will likely include clearing debris and increasing the streams’ capacity.

Others in Swansboro are pushing the manager to assess the town’s storm water pipes, some of which are believed to be hundreds of years old.

“There’s some very expensive projects involved,” Seaberg said. “We’re always looking for potential grants to offset these costs, but when you’re operating on a $4 million budget and some of these projects may exceed that depending on the severity or the complexity of it, that’s difficult.”

About a half-hour north of Swansboro, in Jones County, Hurricane Florence caused the worst flooding in Pollocksville’s history. The Trent River crested at 20.48 feet — more than four feet higher than the previous record crest set during 1999’s Hurricane Floyd.

Jay Bender, Pollocksville’s mayor, said the flooding was significantly worsened by storm surge coming up the Trent River from New Bern, which then met rain water trying to reach the coast.

“I just don’t know what we can do short of building a 20-foot wall along the river bank,” Bender said. “People are coming up with some ideas, but I don’t know that anything has come to fruition.

Bender continued, “I think we’re just going forward and hoping that it doesn’t happen again. While we feel that it probably will, hopefully it won’t be as bad.”

With an annual budget of about $323,000 and four part-time employees, Bender does not expect Pollocksville to take on further resilience planning or flood-control efforts.

“My life is like running around trying to keep 15 plates spinning on top of poles,” he said. “I don’t have anybody to do those kinds of things, and even if you come up with two good ideas to help do it, where is the money going to come from?”

North Carolina’s resilience strategy

State officials are trying to make it easier for smaller governments to protect their residents from flooding. A law overhauling local land-use and planning ordinances passed in July represents one such opportunity.

Under that law, comprehensive plans will be a necessity in every one of the state’s municipalities. Previously, the plans were only required in the state’s 20 coastal counties, according to the UNC School of Government.

“A comprehensive plan isn’t necessarily going to be a nice-to-have, it’s going to be a have-to-have,” Whitehead said. The new law explicitly states comprehensive plans can include strategies to mitigate flooding and other hazards.

To help municipal officials, a team of local planning experts and resilience officials are writing a handbook that will provide template ordinances and suggested provisions that could be part of comprehensive or land-use plans. Norma Houston, a School of Government faculty member and NCORR legal adviser, is among those working on the handbook.

“The state can play a role, and NCORR is working to play a role, in giving local governments a more robust array of tools and options and information from which they can make better informed decisions without usurping their rights to actually make those decisions,” Houston said.

Whitehead and NCORR have also tried to give local governments access to mitigation planning expertise. To that end, the department is wrapping up what Whitehead calls a “resilience quick start guide” for local communities, a document of fewer than 10 pages that helps local governments consider how to build resilience into routine decisions such as infrastructure upgrades or zoning rulings.

A disaster recovery bill introduced after Hurricane Dorian included an effort that has not come to pass, with $1.3 million directed to the N.C. Department of Environmental Quality to fund four resilience planning positions that would have helped the coastal counties. That version of the bill stalled in the Senate, though, and was ultimately scrapped in favor of similar legislation that did not include the resilience funding.

Whitehead said she would likely advocate for similar positions in the future, adding, “We need additional planning capacity for these local communities. A lot of places go, ‘Oh, plans that never get enacted.’ Well, if we actually look at the decision-making authorities that we have and how decisions are made, then we can make implementable plans.”

Florence in Swansboro

For Swansboro Mayor John Davis, Hurricane Florence was a wake-up call. While the storm caused substantial damage in the vulnerable downtown area and the historically heavy rains caused what Davis called “isolated flooding” in some neighborhoods, the town ultimately effectively drained dozens of inches of rainfall.

Davis said, “It caused us to think, ‘OK, yes, we need to be proactive.’ But it’s not a ‘the sky is falling’ activity, it’s more of a, ‘yes, this is part of our land-use plan.’ The land-use plan helps create the direction for future ordinances and how we do things.”

It is unlikely, Davis added, that business owners and residents will retreat from Swansboro’s charming downtown or other low-lying areas near the water. For now, the mayor said, Swansboro’s officials and residents are trying to grasp what sea level rise projections are telling them about the town’s future risks and what might be needed to protect it against flooding.

“It could be years before people really start to believe the data,” Davis said. “If they believe the data and the data is tangible, then people will start to take action. But we are all slow to take new data to heart quickly. You’re talking years of development of mental attitude change, of culture change.”

Some business owners are being forced to take action, though, such as Randy Swanson, who has operated The Icehouse and The Boro restaurants on Water Street since 2005. Technically, the restaurants were two separate structures, with The Icehouse jutting out into the river. At high tide, the restaurant stood three feet above the water.

Then Hurricane Florence came, pushing two feet of flood water into the entire facility and effectively washing away The Icehouse’s frame structure. On a recent day, a blue tarp flapped in the breeze. Before Florence, a wall had stood where that tarp flapped, attached to a building whose general shape could still be seen on a deck.

Swanson moved quickly to repair the flooded Boro, which is housed in a sturdy block structure that once held the original ice house. Repairs included building a kitchen inside that structure, as the Icehouse’s kitchen previously served both restaurants. Swanson also put closed foam insulation throughout The Boro so he won’t need to worry about mold growing on it after future floods.

Other than that, Swanson is working toward rebuilding The Icehouse, which made up about 70% of the facility’s revenue.

“We’re kind of in limbo, living on equity lines and credit cards,” Swanson said.

When the rebuild comes, the new Icehouse will stand 15 feet above the high water level, three feet higher than required by code.

“If we’re going to bring it (to) 12 feet above high water,” Swanson said, “we might as well put a little buffer in there.”

According to the latest bids Swanson has received, the project will cost more than $2 million. He plans to pay for it with a business loan because the insurance payout he received after Florence is almost exhausted after paying for repairs, the demolition of the Icehouse, the plans for the new structure and the required permits.

“There’s virtually no money left over to rebuild the new Icehouse,” Swanson said.

Swanson is quick to credit Swansboro officials with an effective response to Hurricane Florence, noting that they mobilized the local Rotary Club to assist with cleanup soon after floodwaters receded. And there’s not much more they can do, Swanson said, to protect the town against flooding. He noted that the land-use plan — which he helped write — pays heed to storm water runoff and how development will take place in the coming years.

But, Swanson notes, business owners in flood-prone places like downtown Swansboro are likely to make changes on their own that protect against future flood damage.

“I can’t see somebody going through a flood,” Swanson said, “and not repairing in a way that the damage is minimized not if, but when the next flood comes through.”

Note: This story was produced in collaboration with InsideClimate News.

This reporting is financially supported by Report for America/GroundTruth Project and The North Carolina Local News Lab Fund, a component fund of the North Carolina Community Foundation. The News & Observer maintains full editorial control of the work. To support the future of this reporting, subscribe or donate.