The threats faced by the Keys are shrugged off by some of its wealthy retirees who view the situation with a certain fatalism, while others in this Republican-voting bastion openly question the science. “The islands will gradually disappear into a higher ocean, potentially leaving a ruined landscape of leaky underground storage tanks, old pipes, and flooded road segments behind to pollute the water.”Ī sign reads ‘Salt Water No Wake’ as ocean water floods a street in Key Largo in October 2019. “Without a change in strategy, parts of the Keys will become accessible only by boat,” said Hill, adding that the islands could have to resort to floating structures and navigable canals to remain viable. “The Florida Keys are one of the most vulnerable places to flooding in North America,” said Kristina Hill, an environmental planner at the University of California, Berkeley, who warned that the islands would face growing road and pipe maintenance costs, more pollution leaks and harmful algal blooms. Human-caused global heating means an extra 17in of sea level rise by 2040, according to an intermediate Noaa projection used by the county.Ĭompounding this problem, the islands’ porous limestone allows the rising seawater to bubble up from below, meaning it just takes high tides on sunny days to turn roads into ponds, while global heating is also spurring fiercer hurricanes that can occasionally crunch into the archipelago. The pancake-flat Keys are in jeopardy from rising seas that are, as a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa) scientist told the county commissioners in the Monday meeting, accelerating upwards as the vast ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica melt away. Homes on a canal that frequently gets flooded, in Key Largo on Monday. It’s very difficult to have these conversations with homeowners, because this is where they live. “Some homes will have to be elevated, some will have to be bought out. “The water is coming and we can’t stop it,” said Michelle Coldiron, mayor of Monroe county, which encompasses the Keys. If the funding isn’t found, the Keys will become one of the first places in the US – and certainly not the last – to inform residents that certain areas will have to be surrendered to the oncoming tides. The lives of Keys residents – a mixture of wealthy, older white people, the one in four who are Hispanic or Latino, and those struggling in poverty – face being upended. The string of coral cay islands that unspool from the southern tip of Florida finds itself on the frontline of the climate crisis, forcing unenviable choices upon a place that styles itself as sunshine-drenched idyll. L ong famed for its spectacular fishing, sprawling coral reefs and literary residents such as Ernest Hemingway, the Florida Keys is now acknowledging a previously unthinkable reality: it faces being overwhelmed by the rising seas and not every home can be saved.įollowing a grueling seven-hour public meeting on Monday, held in the appropriately named city of Marathon, officials agreed to push ahead with a plan to elevate streets throughout the Keys to keep them from perpetual flooding, while admitting they do not have the money to do so.
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