PRESENTATION ITEM
FROM: Grover C. Robinson, IV, Mayor
SUBJECT:
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PRESENTATION - FLORIDA DEPARTMENT OF ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION (FDEP) RESILIENT COASTLINES PROGRAM - ERIN DEADY
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REQUEST:
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That City Council receive a presentation from Erin Deady regarding the Florida Department of Environmental Protection (FDEP) Resilient Coastlines Program and Resilience Planning Grant received by the City.
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SUMMARY:
Northwest Florida is threatened by sea level rise, record-breaking heat indexes, increasing frequency and long durations of extreme heat and drought, heavier rain events, wildfires, inland and coastal flooding, storm surges exacerbated by stronger hurricanes, and decreasing freshwater availability. Historical water level records from Pensacola, Florida National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) tide gauges have established a representative long-term historical SLR trend of 0.73 ft/century.
The City of Pensacola and its regional partners, including counties and other local governments, are pursuing an aggressive and overarching climate-planning objective to address underlying climate change threats. The City of Pensacola has the opportunity of ensuring more detailed and new planning initiatives to ensure the community is resilient to climate change. The first step is to better understand what changes are likely at the local (and regional) level and to prepare for these future impacts.
Resilience Planning Grant (RPG) 2116 was secured by the City’s Planning Department to further these initiatives. This grant scope of work advances five (5) key tasks that include identifying coastal risk from sea level rise, linking coastal risk to FEMA’s Community Rating System (“CRS”) program, developing a technical basis to plan for future sea level rise (with mitigation and adaptation strategies) and communicating future sea level rise risks to the public. The City is currently a Class Rating of seven (7) in the CRS program and data completed as part of this scope of work will serve as a strategy to improve the City’s Class Rating during its next CRS cycle. The City also has an excellent opportunity to move its vulnerability planning to the next step building on work previously completed by the Climate Mitigation and Adaptation Task Force (CMATF) and other local and regional partnerships.
This project includes reviewing existing policy guidance, best practices and case studies to determine the most current approaches for complying with the Peril of Flood (POF) amendments. The efforts of all of these initiatives provide an immediate opportunity to update the City’s Comprehensive Plan and bring it into compliance with the Peril of Flood statutory requirements. A portion of this grant scope of work is to draft amendments to comply with these new comprehensive planning requirements. This grant does not require adoption of these amendments at this time, but there is an urgency since this is a Chapter 163, F.S. requirement that the City must ultimately meet. The other portion of this grant work includes a vulnerability assessment for which the City has also completed an initial set of Climate Action Recommendations building upon the data and outputs from this assessment and previous climate-related work to date.
Current data that was incorporated into this effort includes: previous CRS submittals, city-owned areas (including city-owned parcels & “city” right-of-way, or may just be “city” right-of-way), sewer and components, water and components, some stormwater information and streets. This data will serve as the basis for a Preliminary Vulnerability Assessment to launch a more data-driven approach to resiliency planning for the City.
PRIOR ACTION:
August 13, 2020 - City Council approved and authorized the Mayor to execute the acceptance of the Florida Department of Environmental Protection Grant R2116.
STAFF CONTACT:
Keith Wilkins, City Administrator
Kerrith Fiddler, Deputy City Administrator - Community Development
Sherry Morris, AICP, Planning Services Director
Cynthia Cannon, AICP, Assistant Planning Services Director
ATTACHMENTS:
None
PRESENTATION: Yes