And you thought Sea Level Rise was a big problem?

And you thought Sea Level Rise was a big problem?

 

by Dr. Kioni Dudley  --  Honolulu Star-Advertiser May 17, 2013

Yeah, sure. Global warming is a joke. Greenland, frozen for a millennium, is turning green again. For the first time in recorded history there is an unfrozen passage from the Pacific to the Atlantic at the north pole in the summertime. Glaciers across the globe are disappearing; some have completely melted. Frozen ice shelves--one larger than Delaware--have warmed and fallen off of Antarctica. Oceans are warming dramatically, even to their deepest regions. The low lying island nation of Tuvalu is one foot from being covered with water and is asking Australia to let its 10,000
people move there as an independent nation. Yet none of these realities is a really valid sign that global warming is actually happening, right?

Wrong. Most of the people in the world today accept that climate change is a reality. The European Union, China, and Japan are all aggressively dealing with it. Why is our City producing county and regional plans that assiduously ignore it?

Within the lifetimes of current young adults and children, rising seas will erode our beaches, and flood low-lying streets and roads around the island. By the latter part of this century, portions of Waikiki, Mo'ili'ili, Ala Moana, and Kaka'ako will stand in sea water at high tide. Key thoroughfares
and intersections in urban Honolulu and around the island will be below sea-level. (See map below)

But Sea Level Rise is just the start of our problems.

A research paper by UH professors Kolja Rotzoll and Charles "Chip" Fletcher in the prestigious scientific journal Nature Climate Change discusses another hidden, unexpected, and potentially more massive problem: groundwater inundation. (See Pg. 3 at
http://www.soest.hawaii.edu/coasts/publications/Rotzoll%20Fletcher%20NCC%202012.pdf

The coastal plains of each island, created by lava flows and ancient coral reefs and then covered by layers of sediment, are a massive array of porous geology. In low-lying areas, the water table (the sub-surface level below which the ground is completely saturated with water) lies just below the
surface. There, fresh water, which has seeped down, floats atop salt water which has worked its way in from the ocean. This salt water, which is generally at the same height as sea level, rises and falls with the tides.

As the sea level rises in the future, it will cause this salt water to also rise permanently, pushing the fresh water above it up through the ground. Once the water pushes up above the surface, it will have nowhere to go, and will just sit there. Rain will add to the problem. As the accompanying map
shows, groundwater flooding will put far greater parts of Waikiki, Mo'ili'ili, Ala Moana, permanently under water, along with much of Kaka'ako where the 700 foot high rises are planned. Low-lying areas in Leeward, and in numerous other places around the whole island will also be flooded. This groundwater inundation will begin to be a problem before mid-century and will continue to grow and spread as the seas rise, for centuries to come. Being inland groundwater, pushed up through the land surface, it cannot be stopped by dikes.

In light of all of this, does it make sense to build skyscrapers in the Kaka'ako floodlands? Should we really construct more buildings in Waikiki? Is it logical to build a rail line from Kapolei to Ala Moana, if much of the route, and all of the Ala Moana area, lie deep in the future flood zone? Are we currently set to spend billions on rail, sewers, water mains, and roads, that need to be re-directed in the future?

There are other devastating facets to climate change. Changes in sea temperature are also affecting fish, causing those that thrive in cool water to move north. Meanwhile, acidification from carbon dioxide is imperiling reefs, and also plankton, a crucial food source for fish. These changes are
disrupting the whole food chain in the ocean, as well as our food supply.

Wind patterns are changing. Over the last forty years, we have gone from 291 days of trade-winds, which bring clean air and rain, to 210 a year. Vog, all but unknown on O'ahu until the last few years, will become much more common.

With trade wind loss, rainfall has decreased in recent decades. Experts predict a continuing trend of declining rain, and an increase in frequency of drought. Rain is the only way to replenish our aquifers. With far less rainfall seeping down, there will eventually be far less to drink, and to
irrigate crops. Experts warn us to not expect that desalination will save us. It is far too expensive and greatly pollutes the environment.

The first concern in the old O'ahu General Plan was the need to control population growth. Given our projected future, is it moral to invite, and build homes for, unsuspecting malihini, as we are now doing? Is it wise to keep expanding tourism? Is it fair to our own descendants to bring in more
people who will draw down their declining supply of drinking water?

Worldwide, costs to accommodate sea rise will push up prices on everything, making imports, including food, far more expensive. We will need to grow much more, if not all, of our own food. Isn't it suicidal to sacrifice today's highest producing farmlands for unnecessary housing projects?

We will also need to save vast tracts of open space for possible farming of bio-fuels. And we must begin to manufacture many of our essentials

Where are the county plans to guide all of this?

In 2012, the State legislature passed Act 286, which directed that all county general plans (like the O'ahu General Plan) and county development plans (like the 'Ewa Development Plan) must engage in focused research to produce models of future climate changes and their impacts, and must include in the plans steps to address those impacts. That is not happening.

Developers, construction unions, banks, landowners, and others who profit directly from development have enough friends in the right places that, instead of addressing climate change, the City is moving to get as much anticipated development through the approval gate as possible, before the populace wakes up.

It's time to stop all County plan approvals, to take all the plans back to the drawing boards, and to spend the necessary time to really study the intermediate and long-term ramifications of sea level rise and groundwater inundation for the whole island, and to work out steps to address them, as
Act 286--state law--requires.

(For greater understanding of the problems discussed here, see the site "Sea
Level Rise Hawaii," created by UH Professor Chip Fletcher at:
http://www.soest.hawaii.edu/coasts/sealevel.)