Sea-level rise prompts Mass. board to make building change

By Thomas C. Palmer Jr., Globe Staff

"What's going to happen to all of our wonderful seafront property when sea levels rise -- not if, but when?"

Judith Nitsch, president of Nitsch Engineering, kicked off a seminar this week on the topic, sponsored by New England Women in Real Estate and attended by about 30 people.

At "The Rising Tide in Boston: The Impact of Climate Change on Coastal Flooding," speakers described the shrinking landscape that Boston and other coastal residents will experience if average sea levels rise, continue to rise, and keep rising more rapidly.

"Whether it's human-driven or not, sea levels are rising and are going to continue rising," said Lowell L. Richards III, chief development officer of the Massachusetts Port Authority, which happens to operate runways at Logan that are among the lowest spots in Boston.

Even he was shocked to hear something another participant, Kurt Gaertner, said. Gaertner, from the state Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs, said that an advisory committee on coastal issues recently recommended to the Board of Building Regulations and Standards that in certain hazardous coastal areas the construction requirement be changed to two feet above the so-called "100-year-flood elevation."

The board accepted that, bumping construction two feet up from where it used to be -- and that can be a long distance on a sloping beach.

Under the best case scenario, said Ellen Douglas of UMass Boston, sea levels will only rise about 5.5 millimeters by then, which will still drown some valuable property. If the worst-case scenario among current projections occurs, sea levels will rise about 37 millimeters.

Douglas then showed a scary map of Boston with water over Congress Street behind City Hall (hey, Mayor Tom Menino wants it on the water, doesn't he?) and every Back Bay Street inundated. It's a view of what the Hub would experience in 2100, during one of those floods that happens on average every century.

Between 1961 and 2003, levels rose an average of 1.8 millimeters a year, Douglas said; but since 1993 they've come up 3.1 millimeters a year.

Nitsch, whose firm is emphasizing green solutions and which does work in Worcester, alluded to the perpetually underused airport out west, high on a hill next to the city. "Maybe this is an answer to the Worcester airport problem," she joked.

So there's room for humor in the global-warming discussion. And there's even a little reason for optimism, at least in the real estate world. "In the last five years you've got the user community -- the tenants -- saying, 'Tell me how green you are. If you can't show me a building that's at least LEED Silver, I'm going to a different region'," said Massport's Richards.

"I would never personally have predicted the dramatic change that's happened assiduously in the last 3-5 years in our area," Richards said.