Originally published in The Municipal Magazine
Cape Canaveral is a small beach town of about 10,000 people in Florida. Climate change is a monstrous and growing global calamity. The two meet at the water’s edge.
Thanks for reading The Florida Journal! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.
If NOAA predictions are correct, sea level here will rise about eight feet by 2100. At that time Cape Canaveral will all but cease to exist. But the small town is not backing down. “Humans are a very stubborn bunch”, says Zachary Eichholz, the Cape’s Resilience Director.
For a small town Cape Canaveral is ambitious in implementing programs that will help the community sustain itself for as long as possible. Think: David vs. Goliath. The effort is called “Cape Canaveral 2063”, to coincide with the city’s centennial.
The city is on a barrier island, fronted by the Atlantic Ocean and the Indian River Lagoon on the backside of the island. Several inexpensive steps are already being taken to bolster those shores.
On the beach volunteers have planted thousands of sea oats, which protect the dunes from erosion. They held up well during two hurricanes in 2022. Along the lagoon, property owners are being offered free mangrove trees to plant at the water line, protecting against rising lagoon waters.
“We want to be the example, the change agent”, says Eichholz. He says the city’s pace has picked up in the last two years.
On a relatively low budget, under $2 million for the entire resiliency program so far, the city has begun transitioning to solar power on city buildings, and street lights. The city car fleet is slowly changing over to electric vehicles. They plan to be total EV by 2035. He says it makes budget sense as nationally the return on investment in resiliency work is rated as high as six-to-one.
Being on the coast, hurricanes and strong gales are a way of life. Power outages can occur frequently. Eichholz says the investment in solar, with a diesel backup, enables the city to retain power while off the grid.
Stormwater flooding in low lying areas is a frequent occurrence. The city is redesigning streets in flood prone areas to provide for runoff into what they refer to as “rain gardens” located along the streets. The gardens allow the water to soak into the porous Florida soil more rapidly. There are also stormwater chambers installed under city hall. Residents are being encouraged to install free rain barrels to catch runoff from their roofs. All of this serves to reduce the runoff into a storm sewer system that often was overwhelmed during storms.
The city has mounted lightning arrestors around a number of city buildings, including a very exposed wastewater treatment plant. Since they’ve been installed not a single lightning strike has been recorded. All exterior lighting at the plant is now solar. The plant has a 2.5 million-gallon holding tank. In the plant’s two stormwater ponds the city has installed Beemats, which are floating mats with aquatic vegetation to filter out nutrients in the system. Other aspects of the treatment plant are being upgraded with sustainable features to avoid overflows during storm events.
Low impact development measures are used at Canaveral City Park. There are hundreds of pollinator friendly trees, shrubs, and plants to absorb rainfall. The parking lot is permeable so as to allow runoff into the soil. A system of 4,000 linear chambers that can hold over 900,000 gallons of runoff are installed under the park’s two largest fields. The community center at the park is equipped with solar panels that is expected to save the city $242, 500 in electric bills over their lifetime, estimated at 25 years.
Much of this effort was started during the pandemic. “We saw the need to prepare for any emergency,” says Eichholz. The Resiliency division was officially designated as part of the city’s Community and Economic Department in 2022. There is a small staff headed by Eichholz, plus interns from area colleges.
Along with the resiliency measures the city has undertaken outreach to encourage the residents to get involved. Free plant a tree, free plant a mangrove, and the free rain barrels all are done with citizen participation.
“All of this adds up,” says Eichholz, “it has long term ramifications for the betterment of the community.”