Giving Compass' Take:
- Jena Brooker discusses how flooding has the potential to obliterate American infrastructure, particularly on the coast and in high-risk areas like the Pacific Northwest.
- How can we improve infrastructure in a way that will combat the current climate crisis?
- Learn about how we can build around climate change.
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Flooding is already the most expensive natural disaster in the United States, costing the country more than $1 trillion in damages since 1980. And it’s only getting worse due to climate change.
A quarter of all critical infrastructure in the United States, 36,000 facilities including airports, utilities, and hospitals, is at risk of becoming inoperable due to flooding today, according to a new report from the First Street Foundation, a New York-based research group.
In addition, 2 million miles of roads, nearly 1 million commercial buildings, and more than 12 million homes are also at risk of being shut down or severely damaged by flooding.
“As we saw following the devastation of Hurricane Ida, our nation’s infrastructure is not built to a standard that protects against the level of flood risk we face today,” Matthew Eby, founder and executive director of First Street, said in a press release, “let alone how those risks will grow over the next 30 years as the climate changes.”
As global temperatures rise, “an additional 1.2 million residential properties, 66,000 commercial properties, 63,000 miles of roads, 6,100 pieces of social infrastructure, and 2,000 pieces of critical infrastructure will also have flood risk that would render them inoperable, inaccessible, or impassable,” the report found.
Read the full article about flooding and infrastructure by Jena Brooker at Grist.