It’s been nearly a year since Kaua’i County, Hawaii, made a paradigm shift in how it protects private property from rising seas driven by climate change.
Instead of relying on historical flood hazard data to inform construction standards, Kaua’i County looks to the latest science on projected flood risks for the year. 2100, with the aggregate effects of sea level rise. Thanks to an ordinance past in October 2022new and substantially renovated buildings in certain areas must be elevated to support these projected flood hazards, based on University of Hawai’i models scientists the rules made the county one of the first in the nation to “commit to using scientific model projections as a basis for building and planning standards,” according to the university.
“It’s our first attempt to use … predictions about the future and incorporate them into a regulatory framework for development,” he said. Alan Clinton, Kaua’i County Administrative Planning Officer. Housing buildings are bound to be elevated 2 feet above the highest flood elevation above sea levelwhile non-residential structures must be elevated 1 foot above this level.
The ordinance intends protect residents and buildings of the worsening impacts of flooding. But in an area where Clinton said the coasts have been “almost monopolized in many places by some of the richest people in the world,” the rules also aim to save taxpayers money in expensive flood control projects and ensure that those living in risk areas take responsibility for their actions.
The county knew it Policy needed to be combined with high-quality visualization and communication tools, Clinton said. “With so much data, so much information to share, it really wouldn’t make sense to try to do a bunch of PDF prints to implement and use this policy,” Clinton said. That’s why the region used technology from software company Esri to create what he calls “Sea Level Rise Constraints District Viewer”: A publicly available online map showing the predicted flood elevation due to sea level rise that builders must meet.
“In the world of land-use planning, we try to get away from being labeled arbitrary and capricious in our decision-making,” Clinton said. “We want to get to a point where we can say this is the data. This is specific to your structure and specific to your batch, and it’s based on [on] the science and models produced by our academic partners”.
He added that the county hopes the University of Hawai’i will, in the coming years, publish higher quality models even as his team may slide into the policy and project process. “It’s much easier to adopt new data than to pass a brand new policy,” Clinton said. He called the solution high transfer, noting that as long as an area has the necessary models, they could take an approach similar to what Kaua’i County did.
the county also developed an app that allows people generate a PDF report showing whether a proposed structure is subject to regulations and the maximum depth to which it is exposed.. The report can be printed and attached to applications to the county planning department, Clinton said. “This is not an example of us exporting a potentially difficult management task to do in-house and putting it on the architect or engineer who will be presenting the plans,” he said.
Those digital tools made it easier to pass the ordinance, which was unanimously approved by the county council and signed by the mayor after two hours of presentations and discussion, Clinton said. “We’re crediting that to the process we went through to legally verify this program, with scientific experts, as well as the tools we use to prepare and communicate the information and data.”
Clinton acknowledged that while the county is proud of the ordinance, “it is considered an abject failure in the eyes of our community.” Kaua’i County is populated by people who have two divergent views on how the government should manage the coasts, he said. There are those who do not want any new construction near the coast and those who believe that additional regulation is not necessary.
“This is an interim solution that is workable,” Clinton said. “But it certainly doesn’t address all the concerns of many of our community members.“
