##VIDEO ID:ltfALfmAVpI## I am the resilience manager for the north seic office of resilience and sustainability or end sores and I work for the cities of Riv Chelsea and Winthrop thank you so much for coming out tonight for our presentation on Beachmont residence fringing bile Marsh um we're super excited to have this project and this is uh our second public meeting our first was last Wednesday and this is our Zoom version um we're looking forward to talking about this project with you today um and we will go over what presentation will be about so we're going to go over a round of introductions and then we're going to get give you a project overview and then we're going to talk about understanding our vulnerability and then we're going to learn from your experiences so after we give our presentation we would love to hear from you if you have any experiences or any thoughts you would like to share so you know me I will pass it off to Tom who is the Tom if you want to introduce yourself yep good evening everybody Tom skroski chief of planning committee development for the city of Rivier excited to hear this presentation today Justine if you want to kick things off next yeah so Justine Rooney Woodle group Coastal scientist I'm also working with Conor hi everybody I'm Conor Austin also a coastal scientist at woodo group and I'm Ls I'm a climate resiliency specialist at Woodle group and Rebecca would you want to introduce yourself she has a no mic symbol so I'm wondering if she's not able to oh Rebecca I should have given you ability to speak if you'd like to thank you I'm Rebecca Haney I'm a coastal geologist with the mass office of coastal zone management we are funding this project and happy to support it thanks Rebecca yep so Kristen you want me to kick it through so yeah that' be great no problem so Connor is going to start us off by talking about kind of how we got to this project how we got to this area and the other work that is occurring around Bella Marsh thanks Justine hi everybody so there has been work going on in Bel is Marsh for for a long time now but um in real well-coordinated fashion for about the F past five years um Bel is Marsh itself is an open space base Mar reservation managed by DCR state agency and it is bordered by East Boston to the West Beachmont in Rivier to the north and Winthrop to the South and the East and the entire Marsh itself is a very critical resource for the state it is actually designated by the state as an area of critical environmental concern so there is a lot of focus on Bel is Marsh for its natural value and the co- benefits that come with that so there are several um species of birds uh mammals insects there's pollinator species there's Fisheries um there are habitats that are rare in this in especially in the area of Boston Harbor this is really one of the largest remaining um wetlands in Boston Harbor having uh our history having filled in most of the the past Wetlands but that Wetland area we have today is really heavily impacted we've encroached upon it with our development um our dense development of these these cities and towns surrounding um critical infrastructure there's the MBTA and there's Mass do uh there are public schools and cemeteries and pump stations and other really critical pieces that are are in this coastal zone and being right next to a marsh right next to the ocean um we're vulnerable to flooding in this situation so there has been studies for uh looking at the marsh and there have been studies looking at populations and there have been studies at how these populations can live with the marsh and um collaborate with the marsh and create resilient um communities we broke down the marsh uh border into about 13 I think that is segments to try to get a handle on flood risk and vulnerability and where adaptation might be possible there is um in pink are two sites labeled a because these are projects that um have occurred and you might know about from our last year there were MVP funded projects MVP is a programed through um the state EA program that's Brazilian Bennington Street and Frederick's Park to the north and Morton Street resiliency project to the South both of those looking at ways that those critical areas could be uh adapted to sea level rise in the future there is the letter B in the Northwest at the short Beach win through Parkway area that is another ongoing project funded by niwi the national Fish and Wildlife Foundation looking at resilience of critical infrastructure and nature natural resources as well then there is between A&B to the North Sea which is the focus of this project and that's the Beachmont um Pearl a reach essentially of of Beachmont on the South Side so there are two ongoing projects A and B um in the cities of Rivier and borders between Boston and Winthrop uh and and this project C is looking to bridge the gap between the two uh making sure that the the city of Rivier um so that the the folks who live in the city aren't left out in this little Gap here there are other um borders here as well that I'm happy to speak to there's a lot of ongoing work there's a big collaborative group of state agencies and stakeholders Mystic River Watershed Association friends of Bella Al Marsh DCR do MBTA and the municipalities which all get together on a monthly basis to strategize and coordinate these ongoing projects so that they can be supportive of one of one another so uh happy to speak about any of these when we kind of open it up for questions um and I'll hand it Justine thanks Connor um so like Connor said we are kind of Bridging the Gap between those two projects so we have a project occurring over to the East and to the west and this Shoreline here which we're calling the Beachmont area fringing Ben B Marsh was identified of an area of concern that needed additional study so those two projects are listed here above and this project is going to look at the Municipal Road rays and then also the residential areas um so we're going to be focusing on peav Summer Street Crystal LA and winther bav and lanaa is going to show us in a couple minutes kind of what that looks like in terms of the Residential Properties that we're including in our study area um and what's at risk are these Beachmont homes near Bell Marsh due to rising sea levels more frequent and intense storms and sunny days flooding um so when we look at this area there is over topping um from short Beach but this project is going to be focused on the flooding coming from the marsh and lanaa is going to explain for us a little bit more the difference between those two types of flooding um and what we're going to be looking at over the course of this study is near and long-term risk reduction strategies and leveraging our knowledge and experience from other Coastal commun unities and projects so our goal here our aim is to enhance resilience I.E our ability to recover um and to mitigate flooding and so we're here working with the city um in partnership with them so just we're gonna open we're going to describe vulnerability a little bit as Kristen told us in our overview but I just want to identify at the top of this meeting a we're gonna listen to your feedback at the end of the meeting but it's also really important for us to note that this is not the last time that we're going to try to connect with the community and come speak with the residents in this area so we're in January SL right now we're in February for this project kickoff meeting we have done a wetland resource delineation and a topographic site survey those were conducted by woodill group staff and we're conducting now the coastal flood risk assessment and then we are going to be doing a cost benefit analysis we are going to be looking at near-term and long-term Alternatives and that community meeting is going to take place in May and there'll be a final report summarizing all this information so I have this slide again later but Lena is going to talk to us a little bit about flood risk in this area thank Justine so when we think about flood vulnerability we have a lot of different sources of information and I'm going to run through a few of those with you and kind of describe what they tell us and what they don't tell us but I also want to say that the most important source of information that we have especially for a project like this that is looking at mitigating some flooding that we're already seeing is your voices your photos your videos and we've already gotten a lot of great feedback from the community about what you see on the ground um so that's been a really important source for this project in particular but we also have um models and Regulatory Maps so this is the FEMA flood insurance rate map it's um describes you know regulatory zones um that have different elevations attached to them and it's describing trying to describe the present day 100-year storm so the storm that has a 1% chance of happening in a year and it includes all the information that we have all the records we have about past storms um in this area uh it does not look to the Future that's one thing it doesn't include and it does include precipitation um and some different sources of flooding so through the marsh and also over the seaw wall um but it doesn't necessarily capture um some more Dynamic processes that can happen during storms so if we go to the next slide this is an output from the Massachusetts Coast flood risk model this model was developed several years ago by Woods H group for the state of Massachusetts and it is taking into account future sea level rise um past storms but also projected stronger storms that might happen in the future uh it's taking in the best available science um and the output this rainbow that you see is an expression of the chance of flooding for each point on land so in the dark blue you can see the dark blue extends into the marsh and Al but also on the part of pearl have um that part has a 100% chance of flooding in a given Year and that means that it's expected to flood at least once per year but as you go up through the colors it's less likely and that pink color has a 0.1% chance of flooding in a year um which is one in 1,000 um so not very likely to flood at all this is labeled as 2030 and we talk about that as being as soon as 2030 so mcfm was developed with a seal of ARR scenario that is intentionally conservative and we've had more information since then and right now the way we interpret it is um as this could happen as soon as 2030 but it would likely happen between 2030 and 2050 so whenever you see something related to mcfm you can kind of apply a 20-year time range um and the year that you see it labeled as is the start of that time range um and if you're a real in-depth about these things uh this is 1.3 feet of seal will arise from a 2008 Baseline um yeah that's all I want to say next slide um and there's another source of information we have that can help us understand flooding in really lowlevel events or sunny day flooding so the FL that you see that's not related to storms that's just related to high tides where there's certain um Dynamics happening with the Moon and the Sun and the water is getting pulled on more this can also sometimes happen if there's a storm way out at Sea that's influ us influencing us a little bit but is not necessarily causing storm conditions right where we are um these are the projected mean high water shorelines which we're in the process of developing for Massachusetts um that darkest BL blue is the 2008 Baseline it's labeled as present and you can see that it's you know on the marsh where we see it now that makes sense um the next blue color is as soon as 2030 um and it comes right up to the edge of those property lines um as soon as 2050 um the projection has water on the road and then as soon as 2070 you see a flooding extent that might actually be kind of familiar because it's pretty commonly what you would see in smaller storm in this area so this is for this project in particular a great way to understand um flooding that comes from the marsh um and and where it goes first and where those you know kind of um lowest level events are going to cause the most impacts so this is a even though this is talking about um the future it also tells us something about flooding right now um and it's another useful source of information we have when we're trying to bring everything together and um understand vulnerability here and then this extent so this is pink again this is from mcfm and this is the most extreme condition that we have in the model so this is the area that as soon as 2070 with 4.3 fet of SE Rise um would be expected to have a 0.1% or higher so there's areas in here that would be flooded all the time but a 0.1% chance or higher of flooding every year and a stands for annual exceedence probability so that's just another way of saying chance of flooding any year um and we used this extent to get what you'll see on the next slide which was kind of our Focus study area so all of the parcels um that are touched by this extent we kind of grabbed and we said these are the places where we want to Target most for outreach where we want to analyze vulnerability further obviously this meeting is open to anyone one um in the neighborhood and all of our other engagements are as well but looking at that flat extent even though a lot of these you know houses have never experienced flooding or some of them may be elevated um it's a it's a was a good way for us to kind of narrow down um which are the the properties that are um likely to be impacted in now and in the future thanks Ana yeah and I think these properties these show ARS extent of our study area so the reason that's important is when we're collecting additional data or we were out grabbing topographic data we were paying special attention to these project areas and we did hear from some of the residents when we met last week like oh there's no way that that guy over there floods it's not getting there and the way that we did it is if the water boundary even kind of touched the parcel we included it in the study area to be conservative so as we think about this project and what we're doing here the most important part is that we would like to hear from the community um and it was amazing meeting with residents last week to talk about their concerns hear feedback hear goals hear issues that they've been experiencing how they're receiving information so we want to do all of that again today um these are aerial images that were collected during one of our topographic surveys and I think it's it's really important to think about this edge of boundary and kind of where we are along the marsh an important product of the study is going to be under needing to understand that there's not going to be a silver bullet or One Singular alternative which is going to mitigate all of the flooding for everyone in this area everyone has really unique needs and vulnerabilities so part of what we need to do is to provide a suite of information a suite of Alternatives so that we can kind of have touch points of how we could help individuals there's going to be people who are already doing preparedness measures for themselves there are people who maybe haven't thought about that before we want to think through with the community where are you parking your your car during a storm how do you find out about if there's going to be a flooding event who do you trust to hear that information from um but I think it's also important to know when we're designing and thinking about adaptation Alternatives Connor kind of touched on this when he touched base on the marsh but we have a lot of sensitive and vulnerable resource areas that we need to be cognizant of so the marsh as an area of environmental concern carries weight in terms of what are the available measures that we can do related to this resource area so when we think about this Marsh that we have AB budding these properties right here there are there's very limited activities that can take place in the marsh so we're happy to speak to that more but when we're designing Alternatives we need to be sure that we are avoiding impacts to those resource areas so we're happy to answer questions on that um I think the most important thing probably next Kristen is opening it up to the group um I will say again we're g to come be back in May so however you found out about this meeting I would look for the same meaning information next time um whether you're not you saw it online or heard about it through revier TV you can also email Kristen or myself to receive notification when this becomes available and one other important thing I wanted to cover because unfortunately we've all used so many different online portals we've use zoom but today we're using teams there is a hand raising feature so we'd love if you can raise your hand and then Kristen will call on you in order um the best we can do on order but that would be how we' ask that you as to participate so that we can keep things organized um I'm going to stop sharing for now so that we can have a conversation but I'm happy to pull up any of the slides we understand that this is super technical information that is really challenging to understand it's nuanced right you saw the FEMA Maps maybe you've seen those before they relate to your flood insurance but maybe you haven't seen the mcfm maps maybe you have questions about either so we're happy to provide any answers to any questions you have talk more about the goals of the project Etc hi Jim I'm G to give you you're G to go first I'm gon to unmute you so that way you can share um and ask your question okay Jim you should be able to sorry I I just figured out no that's okay that's okay um so thank you for doing all this and um showing us all of this data you know I've been looking I've lived here for many years and I know you're just talking about B Isle but I would say you're dead on with the sea level rise um my one concern is you're using a baseline of 2008 and I'm guessing the sea levels are already much higher than that um we see multiple storms a year where the water is definitely pouring over win through Parkway and the whole Marsh is flooded and I know you're talking about not wanting to mess with the marsh very much and I'm totally on board with that I think it's an important spot for the Wildlife but what types of measures are you thinking about are you thinking about any type of damning structures or anything to control water levels in the marsh during High um impact times yep it sounds like there's two questions there and Jim thank you so much for participating lanaa did you want to speak to that SEO rise 2008 Baseline first absolutely yeah that's I mean that's a good observation and it's one reason why the first mcfm result we showed you was 2030 but um so basically you can't technically you can't know what the sea level R sea level is this year because um there's 19-year title epics they're called and so technically you have to average over 19 years in order to find a sea level so that 2008 Baseline is from the middle of the last available title epic when the model was run in I think 2018 I'm not sure exactly which year was run so that's why they kind of they had to take a baseline from before they were actually running the model um but it is it's what I'll say is it's just it's just the starting point so it's those um projections and those Model results are still very useful um and they we just have to understand you know what we're referencing from and what we're looking towards um and you're right that there has been some sea level rise since 2008 but technically we can't know how much until our current year 2025 is at the middle of a 19e cycle um does that well I appreciate you bringing that up because I've heard other people discussed that before and I think it's important that people do realize these are all also long um term effects that go through changes so thanks for elaborating absolutely yeah and I think it's important to knowe that the mcfm is conservative and it's used for planning so the logic behind it being a conservative approach is that never under planning right we're always thinking about making sure that we understand the full extent and so your second question if I understand it correctly was is there going to be damning in the marsh or were you asking about controlling water levels the marsh was that your second question um I was you know I recently saw something that was more um I guess a pipe dream of an architect or an engineer back in I think the 80s or 90s about essentially damning Boston Harbor to control and help the water levels throughout the whole Harbor but I was just curious if any thought had been given to that with B Isle as you know there's a couple there's really the main Channel where the water comes through and is that something that could feasibly help some of the folks in the area I'm confident Connor has looked into this somewhat I see you unmuted yourself yeah thanks yeah it's a great question Jim and we have talked about it with DCR who manage manages the marsh in the inlet and that question has been raised before um princi ofel I Marsh has raised it Mary Mitchell's on the call here and um I'm really not able to to pull the conversations immediate like directly out of my head but I do know that the idea has been passed around because essentially what you're saying is put to put up some sort of storm surge barrier so that when we are predicting a nor Easter or something along those lines we close off the inlet and that storm surge that is pushed by winds and waves and atmospheric pressure can't go through Boston Harbor and then come up our Inlet here um the feasibility of that is is different difficult um not to say it's impossible but there are really cascading effects of doing so uh especially with regard to the environment so once we start to control water levels within the marsh system Marsh systems are really finely tuned to water levels um the elevation of low Marsh and high Marsh these different habitats and the uses that um different birds make of that um is really all finely tuned in the scale of inches so um you know a proposal like like putting a storm surge barrier on Bell Island Inlet would have significant environmental impact as a result but I do also recognize the significant flood protection benefit um that's desired so one have one thing that that also kind of pushed back on the idea of a storm surge barrier is that the flooding of belile marsh is not coming from Just One Direction there's the Bel Inlet which is of course you know where most of the water is first coming from but with sea level rise especially there are other flood Pathways into the marsh there's the winther parkway like you managed mentioned gets over topped and washes into the marsh those conditions are only worsening water can come up continue to come from that direction and then there's even from Chelsea Creek and over Rivier Beach uh looking out into the 2030 2050 sea leviz scenarios if we look at the flood maps you can see that flooding is starting to come in from three even four directions into B Marsh so plugging one of those holes does not solve the full problem and I think that that is lending us towards looking really instead Inward and Hyper local and you know what is the eff of flooding on your structures on your your properties and your Logistics and how can we address it there I would add to Connor that was really well said I think one thing with this project is that this project is a result of Resident feedback that residents were saying we need help we're being flooded we sometimes do projects where we're telling people about their future vulnerability maybe you haven't seen water here yet this is where the water is likely to go this is an area where we don't feel like we need to convince anyone of their vulnerability they're seeing water backing up they're seeing the the tides come in through the marsh and so a project like floodgates like Connor was just me mentioning are also really long-term projects they're expensive they take a long time to permit so some of the things that we're looking at during this study are near term Alternatives they could be as simple as sandbags right we talked about this in our public meeting last week but we did a project across the marsh over on Morton Street which faces similar issues in winth and when we met with residents similar to how we're doing with this project we were looking at raising the road and what that would do to reduce flood vulnerability and when we got there and we spoke with residents they said that's great but we'd love some sandbags in our backyards and so for us that was kind of a a changing moment of thinking about what are some smaller adaptations that could potentially take place that could reduce some flooding that could feel like they help alleviate that impending doom for some smaller storms so I think that's the feeling with this project and I think it's great to think about all of these Alternatives but I want to reiterate that we want to be able to look at some near-term options that are lower cost potentially easier to implement have a smoother permitting pathway Etc any other appr yeah thanks Jim any other questions perh just take feedback on experiences as well yes and if you have any like pictures or videos that you want to share um we're also more than happy to receive that as well and Tom I'm going to take you off of mute uh in just one second so that way you can ask her a question okay Tom you should be able to unmute whenever you're ready and if you're also having any difficulties unmuting feel free to also use the chat button and I can read out what you'd like to say as well Justine thanks for putting in my Coast would you want to talk a little bit about what my Coast is and how people can use it as well yeah my Coast is an awesome platform which was developed by czm um it includes opportunities to upload photos of flooding events and observations um it also includes it allows us to see where there are flooding hot spots and it h it's a great place to have a repository of photos for any given area Rebecca did you want to I don't want to put you on the spot but did you want to add anything else about my Coast sure there's a couple different Tools in there you can use um so the king tide tool is one that you would use for sunny day flooding it's not a storm just extra high tides or storm water flooding um and then during a coastal storm the storm reporter tool H ask for more information about the details of what you're reporting the impacts that you're seeing um it's very easy to sign up for an account um and if you have any questions you can always reach out thanks Rebecca I'm gonna share what um residents put in the chat I know that the bottom half of pearl a sandbags do not help as all four of our houses and Below flood with over a foot of water so would love help to mitigate the flooding we face at the bottom of pearl that's one to two to to 3 feet deep depending on how badly the marsh is flooding and thank you for the amazing presentation thank you for sharing your experience um I don't know if you guys would want to go off mute and talk about that at all um Pearl TV also just added yes same for us we are also by winr AB in the bottom and flood terribly L did you want to add anything about kind of the flood pathway that exists down there yeah I mean the area you're describing is definitely Ground Zero the lowest lying part of pearl a um and something that's interesting about that is obviously in 2018 you all saw bad flooding and you know when waves are washing over the seaw wall you might see um even worse conditions but I'm sure you've also seen days when there are no waves washing over the seaw wall and water's just creeping up from the marsh um so we're hoping that there's something that we can do to help with those days at least those days of um of what we call Sunny Day flooding oh Tom did you finally unmute yes I did sorry I was trying to unmute on the smaller one and then I just noticed up the bar up above that I could do it up there thank you for your no worries um I was listening to NPR a couple of weeks ago and there was a resident in Provincetown that was getting flooded and it really his house and they came up with one to three feet of water um that is really you know uh getting getting in the way um so I think that's something we can definitely explore here we'd have to look at um where exactly they could go to connect high points um and I think there's a challenge here that um most of the most of the area that my brain immediately goes to as a designer for where you could put a structure like that is private property um so it might require quite a bit of collaboration between you all but from what we've heard you're already collaborating quite a bit and you've got a a group chat of of warning each other about flooding and you're helping each other out so it's great to see that um you're kind of coming together over this um but yeah that's a great a great point and something that we're definitely going to explore as as a possibility for this project yeah go ahead Tom thank you I I just think think it should be like a 5050 uh project with between the homeowner and the city and that the city isn't expected to do the whole thing and there where the private homeowner definitely is bearing the risk and should bear some of the expense because in a way uh this is going to be a continuing mounting problem that uh you know and we can't keep insuring and bailing people out who are choosing to live in either water encroaching or in Cal case of California and fire hazards I mean there's got to be some there's some personal choice and expense involved yeah thanks Tom for that comment um I think that your comment also connects really well to uh residents and pearl TV when we think about and Len I kind of touched on this there are going to be larger storms that over top the seaw wall there these actions that we're talking about are not going to be able to prevent that from happening but when we look at I know you said that four of the houses um you are using sandbags one thing that we are going to look at is it might need to be more than four right how many properties would you need to line up those sandbags along the back um there's not this is the type of area where one person implementing a solution in their backyard isn't going to help mitigate or alleviate that flood p pathway it's going to continue to take that neighborhood collaboration and so part of this work and this project it seems like this is a really exciting opportunity because like lanaa mentioned there's already some grassroot efforts to communicate with one another but part of our work here too is connecting neighbors together and having these conversation and Bridging the gaps and thinking about how we can work with one another um because for example the flood pathway that's impacting the lower AV a peav is stretching across I believe it's eight or 10 homes so these are things that will be outlined in the report and Tom we're definitely going to look at those Deployable flood barriers um and think about how those could get implemented and like I said I keep mentioning flood Pathways but we're going to look at areas where you need to well we need to bridge the gap Len maybe you could explain this better than me but places where we need to think about the stretch of where that action needs to take place uh we had another comment Kristen did you want to read that or did you want me to yeah I can read it um per live resident shares that I do not flood from the marsh but all the neighbors across on the even side do and we flood on the odd side from the underground stream from Brad and Crescent or the ocean when the water comes over the seaw wall the entire bottom of our street becomes a pool of water as it gathers since we are at a lower elevation than Crescent Endicott and the surrounding roads yeah someone had mentioned the stream in our last meeting as well I think Leno was exploring a little bit about maybe where that's coming from um but the elevation component is definitely something that we're exploring here yeah and this kind of gets at something that we didn't touch on in the presentation but that I'm sure you're seeing which is that the ocean water and the rainwater are combining in a lot of cases and in a lot of events to cause flooding issues so the there might be some opportunities in the storm water system um to relieve a little bit of that pressure where you have rain coming down and pooling in the same areas where seawaters coming up a question I would like to ask the audience is when it floods are you guys moving your cars how do you know when you should be moving your cars and if you do move your car where do you move it to I don't know if anyone wants to share their experience but we would love to hear this type of feedback too so that way if this is a major issue that you're experiencing this could also go into some of our recommendations on something that the city can do to like help you guys with your cars because we know that's a huge damage and expense when that does happen Pearl TV shares that they move their car from the driveway to the top of the hill that's an answer we heard last week as well another Pearl La resident shes that they pray there's a spot open by the playground is that the playground by the Beachmont school and residents say same do you feel like you know in advance or you have ways of finding out in advance when there might be flooding or do you kind of you know get the text message from someone who sees it starting and you have to scramble yeah that's another great question residents also shared that they hope there's a spot by the playground it's at the top of pearl AB by Orchard Street yes Jim if you want to unmute I think you should still be able to thank you I was just curious I know we're talking about prolab a lot here but um obviously part of reier and Beachmont is also the Beachmont School the park there um any thoughts on trying to help out that situation is that situation in dire need I know the VFW parking lot seems like it's flooded pretty consistently and um you know even just having access to actual the actual Bell Marsh hiking trails is nice as well but they're also pretty close to water level so over time you know what's going to go on there I guess are some thoughts that's a great question Connor did you want to touch a little bit about that is one of the projects that is taking place now yeah absolutely the BFW and that corner of the beach playground is really one of the lowest points along the marsh um so it's one of the first parts to get flooded especially when we have the winds coming from the south um or east or west I mean um the ongoing project there is called the Bennington Street and Frederick's Park resilience project it's led by the city of Boston and city of Riv in Partnership and the project is ongoing funded by um the municipal vulnerability prepared preparedness program they are in I think preliminary design phase this is not a project that we're a part of so I I can't speak too fully as to you know what the plans are or if they've identified a preferred solution but they are working towards one and there is going to be actually a joint public meeting for all of this work that's going around um B Marsh on March 3D I think that's a Monday evening um yeah yeah the city will be sharing sorry to cut you off Connor the city will be sharing information about that marketing um shortly and Tom project fully planned out and implemented in the next few years thanks for sharing Tom I'm also gonna share some of of the comments in the chat uh thanks everybody for a great presentation as always Connor and folks from Woods Hole have really helped the whole area surrounding the marsh understand current and future conditions let's continue to work together to to protect homes and the critical salt marsh thanks everybody thank you Mary for sharing that um residents share that I'm in a street sweeping chat that texts me about flooding also another Resident shared texting neighbors um and pearl TV shared that they rang a few neighbors doorbells that I saw their cars were still at the bottom and I'd say 39 out of 40 and Below to let them know they should move their car so they wouldn't be destroyed that's amazing yeah this is really great to hear yeah one of the things that we'd like to explore as part of this is we know that cars can be parked in different places during storm events but looking into are there options when they're also flooding events so these these are things we're hoping to explore with these near-term Solutions and and what do you do if you park your car uphill but then there's flooding all around your house do you just get soaked and try to get back indoors or do you stay away until the tide recedes I'm also going to share residents other comment in the chat we already barely have parking on our street as many houses are multif family or rent out their homes and then the renters have friends that live with them and have three to six cars per house so when it floods it's terrible as then those with driveways even move out of their driveway so it adds more cars onto the street that's something else we heard last week as well that there's not enough parking and then when there is a flood warning there's even less spaces to work with and people have to walk a far away to get to their car and Tom is putting a plug in the chat saying feel free to share this video with the neighborhood text their attend you also might be interested cuz the um is streaming on R TV's YouTube channel right now so thank you all for being a part of this I'm also curious if anyone else has any experiences thoughts or questions they would like to ask yeah I think another one of our question was too just to prompt the the conversation and Len kind of touched on this is how do you know when to expect flooding are you listening to the radio are you hearing the news what are the sources that you use and Trust to find out about when flooding is coming I think what we heard a week ago at the inperson meeting was that generally people don't necessarily know until it's happening is that true for you all as well residents share that they look at the new stations to find out when there might be a flood and pearl TV shares text chain with neighbors it's great to see that there's such a strong bond between neighbors I think that's really unique to this neighborhood and pearl Al resident shares that they check Facebook groups of rev and winth which is great and this is kind of weirdly specific but in those text chains or in the Facebook groups is it it kind of people saying look flooding is happening right now or is it people saying I looked at the tide chart and I think flooding might happen at this time good question lanaa Proactive or reactive Jim shares that they use a free version of an app fishing points that shows tide levels for the area I haven't heard about that app that's pretty cool Pearl TV shares that in our group chat usually photos are being sent saying flood is starting and pictures being sent and if I am not home my neighbors check how bad it is or we check for each other and uh another Pearl AB resident also shares people post photos of weather predictions in groups it's awesome to see how much like information sharing is going on between neighbors I think that's really special I have a question that we also talked about last week um I'm curious to hear everyone's thoughts about the financial burden of flooding like have there been like any extreme instances where it's been like a major cost um and yeah like anything you would like to share please feel free to put in the chat or in the groups res say whenever the new news predicts rain or snow then I know it will flood resident share that has not happened to me but I know neighbors that have had electrical and heating destroyed we also heard about that or like how people had to kind of make sure all of their things that they wanted in their basement or their seller had to be lifted off the ground to make sure that there was no permanent damage or anything that was really valuable they can't have in the basement Pearl TV shares that they that has happened to our home in the past as our systems are at ground level in the crawl space another comment in the chat is yes many homes at the bottom half of the street on the marsh side have been destroyed I've also heard from residents and also when I went out door knocking that there's been a lot of new development like new homes being built um I'm not sure if that's something that you guys have considered like trying to I know like one of the new homes have been raised up I'm not sure if that's something that's also been considered for you guys um only two I believe are fine as one is rais and one is a slab of 5T than the home um another comment is looked into that but it seemed very expensive to raise our home for1 to2 00,000 yeah it is quite expensive yeah having the money to do that is expensive and you also like you would have to have a nice chunk of change to just have for that to do it on the side one answer same we'll be moving instead yeah this is all great feedback and we're appreciative to hear about everyone's experiences because I think it helps inform our understanding of the complex nature of the problem another comment that was shared is yes we have three pumps going and still manage to flood sometimes that's a lot of pumps we only have two but always slide so maybe we should look into two more of them would you say it's common in your neighborhood that many homes have multiple sump pumps the answer to that question is yes multiple people have multiple homes have multiple Sun Pumps another comment that was shared is also cars at bottom of street are parked at top of the street or on win AB so the flooding salt water does not get into the car motor and ruin it I heard last week from some residents that they have had some cars destroyed by that especially from the 2018 floods that happened um and another comment in the chat is agree the folks in our group chat everyone has one to two but we have three the salt flood destroys car so it gets your car moved as fast as possible and it's very expensive electric bills I can imagine Justine are there any other questions that we were asked last week that you think we should talk about also in this or any other questions that we've been talking about internally that you think we should share with the group the only other question we had last week that we haven't shared yet is have you made any investments in your own preparedness or taken any preparedness actions so I think we're curious about emergency kits I think the flood pumps sound like they are an action that individuals are taking but obviously Connor kind of touched on this but you can move your car or maybe your home is above the water but then the roadway can be flooded which makes it hard for you to get out so are you storing emergency supplies in case the power goes out extra food Etc a comment that just came up in the chat is realistically do you think there's anywhere that they could go building a parking garage that is around half a mile or a 10-minute walk from us the bottom of pearl a to be able to park that would fit 50 to 100 cars I think it's I mean I for my knowledge this is an incredibly dense area so that does sound like it would be challenging to find I think it's a good comment to put in the chat so that we can definitely think about it from what I've heard through other discussions I think the first step is exploring existing locations um I believe it was one of the t- stops where cars are allowed to go during um snow events the Wonderland Train Station yeah is open for like nor EAS or like major snowstorm events but that is also very far away and if that's your one car like that's difficult to get to and from your house from yeah we're definitely going to have a big kind of brainstorm around parking to see how how we might be able to suggest something that could help out with this issue definitely a challenge in such a dense area a comment in the chat is um everywhere in Beachmont floods by us and unless they destroy the park at the top of Pearl by Orchard Street and create a 20 Level parking garage which would not work in a space too small so maybe there's something around getting people to and from existing parking resources for free that we could um look into yeah I was just thinking that l is there if transportation to and from these Lots is a problem we could we could put that as a note a comment in the chat is yeah Transportation halts when it's bad weather abely besides uh the 119 does not come past the senior center livings a question I'm curious about and would love to hear everyone's thoughts about are besides some pumps are there other measures that you guys have like thought about and looked into I know one resident share that they looked into maybe raising their house but it was really expensive like are there other lower cost options I know everything is really expensive but has there been any other options you guys have considered uh comment that was sh in the chat is that they've looked into French drains some people already have those and another comeon is nothing helps well hopefully we can change some of that and have some answers that could potentially help you even though I know that each home is also unique in how they face flooding and what are the specific challenges to each property more specific questions are uh is that flooding and where the sub pumps I assume are in basements is the flooding contained to basements or is it reaching first floors that's a great question Connor another comment is moving hopefully five years as every flood is terrible and do not want to see the next one that wipes out the entire bottom of pearl La Marsh side again that sentiment is also something we've heard at last week's meeting as well but yeah I don't know if you guys want to share your some pump locations and if it's just contained to your basement or the Celler or if you've experienced it anywhere else as well e are there any other thoughts questions experiences that you'd really like to share or emphasize with us one of the comments in the chat shares that we are a great neighborhood just the flooding is hard especially if you're not expecting it I've also heard from some longtime residents last week that uh the flooding has gotten worse over time as they've uh in their experience interesting just you want to share the comment in the chat yeah another one of the comments was we just lost renters last winter that only lasted two months due to flooding that was another one of our questions that we had kind of anecdotally asked is we were interested in how many individuals are um living in their homes that they own or if they have renters uh one of my thoughts would be that renters would have um less knowledge of the historical flooding in the area so your comment is interesting to think that you lost out on renters because of flooding impacts as well I would assume the renters also aren't in that handy dandy group chat either not finding out about the flooding many homes have renters in the entire home or some live in the home and then rent out other rooms as shared living okay good to know yeah and one thing that we anticipated is that you know some renters might have flood or some homeowners might have flood insurance some renters might not have any form of renters insurance or anything that would help them involve their possessions are lost in a flood um and the comment the same resident said if they stay long enough sometimes but usually they move after a winter or two which I would assume is another economic hardship ship if you have a rental property and you can't retain res uh tenants that sounds extremely sh that sounds like another challenge one moved away after we had sunny day flooding when it had just rained and we had high tides at the same time yeah I think that's that gets back to kind of our point of it's not just we don't want to think about the biggest bis storms right where you're seeing that over topping over short Beach we know that that sunny day flooding is also impacting the community and so we want to kind of look at the impacts from that sunny day flooding as one of the primary focuses of this study another com in the chat is that it's the worst when it floods when it's nice out someone had made a comment earlier that they know they knew if it was going to rain or snow to expect flooding but to that point maybe the sunny day flooding is a little bit harder to expect when it's coming those rainstorms can come and go so quickly I was on Street just across the marsh for a public meeting just like this and it just poured on us for 10 minutes and the water came rushing down the streets and pulled at the B base and the road was flooded flooded out for I don't know we left before we saw it disappear so I was going to reiterate it seems like the comment are slowing down that we're going to be available via email um but that we will also be coming again in May to review some of the results of this study and some of the things that we've uncovered in part as a result of your feedback um so we'll be back in May and there will be a report that's accompanying this study as well um and at any point we can review any of the materials that we've covered we also can answer any questions I know it's really hard sometimes when information is coming from so many sources to understand who to trust or where to get information um so Kristen put her email in the chat that's a the number one place to reach out if you have any questions or maybe you'd like to know when more information is going to be made available but we will definitely be looking to hear from you again this will not be the last time and we will definitely be coming back to you with all of the information that we find yeah and if any of you guys have any questions comments you want to share any experiences or any concerns you have definitely feel free to reach out to me my email is K as in kangaroo H as in house o as an octopus M as in monkey e as an elephant y as in yellow e as an elephant are as in Rhino r.org if you have any questions or want to send any pictures or videos CHR I thought you going to do the whole email in animals I was going to be really impressed unfortunately a y animal does not come to mind right away but I should maybe a yak that'll be the next time I do it be a yak um but everyone thank you so much for taking the time out of your busy schedule to make it to this meeting we really appreciate it um just before we go one quick question I'm seeing in the chat is how long do you think that it will take until the marsh wipes out 440 443 39 and Below you referring to 44 Perl and 39 Perl I believe so yeah this is so I feel like we get this type of question pretty often on projects where people say okay well when is the big one going to come what when is this going to happen and that's the the hard thing one of the hard things about all of this is that we can't really know when that storm is going to come that's going to change everything um and you know maybe we get you could call it lucky and don't get a big storm for many many years and then it's just um that people have to make decisions based on how often that March based flooding is coming um and how often the sunny day flooding is coming and um and you know hopefully there's options and resources for people by that point so yeah there's it's part of this the difficulty of of climate change and the trauma of it is the uncertainty you know we can't really know um when things are going to change um and how fast and all we know is um is that there's going to be some degree of loss it's just how yeah like someone just said in the chat could be this winter or in a 100 years i' say maybe not in 100 years I'd say it could be this winter or in 20 years me or 50 years if were really lucky um but that's that is what I say to people like about hurricanes you know it could be two this September or not another one for 20 years you you just can't know with the the lower probability events I also think if you're waiting for those larger events it's ignoring you know that Death By A Thousand Cuts of that every that sunny day flooding and I think Connor brought this up at another point when we were discussing this project that you know one thing we've identified through this collaborative work around the marsh is that there are a lot of individuals who'd like to understand when this flooding is coming especially that sunny day flooding so it's something that we need to think about how we can help as practitioners in educating what to look for helping with the helping the cities identify how to notify residents or get that information out there uh Pro TV said doesn't flood insurance only cover up to 150k but moving buying new home is way more or rebuilding you cannot put a price tag on memories um and yes my flood only covers that and no content yeah no content correct so I'm assuming mean no contents of the home none of your possessions um yeah we understand that just leaving this community doesn't feel like the right answer to everyone right if you have connections to place to space to the individuals in your neighborhood I will say though um there are current ly exist some um bio programs and the state is working on um the possibility of a state level bio program that could possibly um you know make it more financially feasible to move um so just so people know that you know people are thinking about this it is in the works so if people do want to make that decision to move but financially can't handle it it's it's more of a possibility for more people but we're definitely not here to tell you that that is what you should do in this scenario really anything would be voluntary yeah it would be it would be 100% about if someone wants to make that decision making it actually possibility versus currently it's financially unfeasible uh peab resident says rev does not care about us they just want a new subject downs and that is where the money is it's not going to flooding look at how much they put into the development because it brings money and it's not helping our homes and being destroyed I don't I don't want to minimize your experience in any capacity but I would say we are here in response the city councilors um helped ring the bell on this neighborhood El Baker Tom so we are here this is important to the city that's why we're all spending our time working on this um I can say us at woodold group we also deeply care about trying to find um find some solutions that work for all of you especially if you want to stay in your homes in your in this community uh fixing our homes doesn't bring in Revenue like construction of all those new apartments and businesses slated to be built and then we have thank you so much for everything so again we're taking in all this feedback we're taking notes we're going to come back to you we hear what you're saying um yeah thank you everyone for taking the time again to join this presentation and talk about your experiences we really appreciate it and if you have any questions again feel free to contact me and um I look forward to meeting you all again in May when we have some more uh discussion points to talk back with you about but I want to thank everyone again and I hope everyone has a great rest of their night thank you so much everyone this possible without you