Above: An image from a flooding event shows the impact to the Port Norfolk waterfront near Venezia restaurant. City of Boston photo
When it comes to climate change and flooding, Dorchester’s Port Norfolk is always at the center of the conversation. It makes sense, then, that the seaside village is now the focus of a city pilot program offering free home assessments to about 40 or 50 property owners starting this month.
Boston’s Planning Department and the Office of Climate Resilience explained the initiative during a virtual meeting last week. Members of the project team will also discuss the project with members of at the Port Norfolk Civic Association on April 21 at 7 p.m. in the Port Norfolk Yacht Club.
“This is really the first move from a decade of planning to a decade of implementation,” said Chris Osgood, director of the Office of Climate Resilience. “At a high level, this is a pilot project that is providing free optional assessments for Port Norfolk residents to be able to take steps to learn the consequences of flooding on their homes.”
The pilot is aimed specifically at properties that fall within the boundary of a one percent chance of an annual flood scenario with nine inches of sea level rise predicted by the 2030s. It is funded through a $250,000 line item secured by Rep. Dan Hunt using funds that originated with federal American Rescue Plan (ARPA) dollars.
Delaney Morris, a senior project manager for the city, said a third party engineering firm, Tidal Basins, will conduct the assessments for homeowners who sign up for the program. They will be provided with a free certificates of elevation for their homes, which can be very helpful for those in the flood insurance zone.
Tidal Basins will also produce a report with recommendations for each home as a blueprint for possible but not required improvements. Some of the common suggestions might involve adding sump pumps, flood proofing the foundation, raising up the house, adding certain landscaping, or moving utilities up from the basement, Morris said.
“This project is helping to empower those residents and that neighborhood with more information about their risk and learn about what they can do and understand the retrofits recommended,” said Morris.
John and Maria Lyons were the first to sign up. Maria said they have been contemplating home improvements but are “anxiously awaiting” their flood assessment before moving forward.
“It will be interesting to see what they say because we are hoping our house is up high enough we wouldn’t have to raise the elevation because that’s a huge undertaking,” she said. “Maybe it’ll be a good idea to move the utilities out of the basement and maybe flood proof the foundation. We want to put an addition on the house and build a porch, but that’s all been put on hold until we learn what they say.”
Morris said the project has its roots in planning for the Tenean Beach resiliency project. One of the mitigation tools contemplated for that was to close a flood corridor on Conley Street running under the Southeast Expressway.
Many in Port Norfolk worried water might be displaced into their neighborhood as a result – bringing the flooding and resiliency concerns in their area to the forefront.
“The proposed project at Tenean Beach was found not to have displacement issues in Port Norfolk but those neighbors did have memories of stormwater and coastal flooding there,” Morris said. “We want to acknowledge the fact that data is useful, but lived experience is really important. That’s what spurred this project.”
A secondary concern is with the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP), which establishes flood zones and requires homeowners within those zones to purchase costly flood insurance. Many, but not all, of the homes in Port Norfolk are subject to flood insurance, but with this project and many others, Osgood said, they hope to “increase insurability” of properties on the Boston coastline.
He said they have staff at the Inspectional Services Department (ISD) working on that aspect of the effort right now, with the possibility of flood zones being recalibrated.
“The city does expect to formally apply to the Community Rating System (at NFIP) this year. There will be a timeline, but our ISD folks are hard at work now on that effort,” he said.
Rep. Hunt said that the pilot in Port Norfolk may have implications elsewhere in his district.
“For a majority of my district, it is low-lying and adjacent to the ocean, and I certainly have it on my mind to ensure continued resiliency in anything that comes before us in the Legislature for Dorchester and the tangential impacts for the whole area that is low-lying and not just near the coast,” he said.
More information on the project can be found online at bostonplans.org/planning-zoning/planning-initiatives/resilient-port-norfolk.
