Collaboration seen key to facing climate change threats - The Salem News

Collaboration seen key to facing climate change threats | News | salemnews.com

SALEM — The catastrophic flooding that wiped out roads and decimated communities in Central Massachusetts Monday night was a stark and scary backdrop to Tuesday’s “Preservation in a Changing Climate” conference at the Peabody Essex Museum.

Joann Vieira, director of horticulture for the Trustees of Reservations, drove to the conference from Princeton and along the way saw evidence of the flooding that mandated emergency evacuations and road closures.

“The changes we are seeing are so rapid and unpredictable, they make it so real for everyone,” she said.

She told the 50 conference goers — including climatologists, city leaders, environmentalists, architects and preservationists — that in recent years the Trustees, which oversees more than 100 properties throughout the state, has been dealing with dramatic weather, new pests and botanical diseases that favor warmer and wetter conditions, warmer winters punctuated by rapid drops in temperature, delayed spring warm-ups, and “more tornadic events” that undermine infrastructure, damage trees and wash away trails.

Striking a chord that resonated throughout the daylong conference, Vieira stressed that nonprofits and state and local agencies cannot address these climate change impacts alone and must collaborate for the greater good.

“When our gardens are flooded, (our neighbors’) basements are flooded. They are impacted in a very personal way,” she said.

The idea of collaboration was underscored by Neal Duffy, Salem’s director of sustainability and resiliency, who talked about “Resilient Together,” a 2020 initiative that paired Salem and Beverly for public education about solar power, home heat pumps and other efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions. The cities produced a combined climate action plan in 2021.

“There were a lot of good reasons for this natural partnership to have occurred,” said Duffy, pointing out the adjacent coastal cities are similar in size and face the same threats.

With the highest proportion of carbon emissions coming from construction, heating and cooling of buildings, he said, Salem is focusing on encouraging insulation and retrofitting of buildings.

Salem, with many structures built before 1900, is a good example of the challenges facing an older, historic community. On the plus side, existing houses are already built, so they are “embodied carbon,” not carbon released into the atmosphere. But they also must be properly insulated, heated and cooled in ways that save energy, ideally with solar, wind power or other renewable sources.

First period houses built in the 1670s present even more challenges.

Susan Baker, collections manager at Salem’s House of the Seven Gables, said a $510,000 grant from Coastal Zone Management is helping her staff address multiple problems created by rising seas, in particular. The seawall at the foot of the property “is our first line of defense,” she said, and “there is great concern about what’s going on with that main barrier against the rising ocean.”

Theoretically, she said, the height of the seawall could be raised to protect the 2-acre site and its historic buildings, but that would push the rising waters onto neighboring properties, further highlighting the need for collaboration in dealing with the problem.

The House of the Seven Gables also faces saltwater infiltration, which is undermining the seawall and threatening utilities, which are in the basement of the house. Other challenges include protecting historic documents from mold and dealing with rotting sills and framing of the 350-year-old house and other buildings due to excessive moisture.

The Coastal Zone Management grant is helping pay for soil borings, creation of monitoring wells and storm and tide projections, among other things. Baker said her staff is exploring rain gardens for storm overflows in the public parking area, which is closest to Derby Street, elevating utilities on the property, and possibly moving some buildings to higher portions of the property, which she termed “a managed retreat.”

Like the North Shore, Cape Cod also is up against rising seas, storm surge, and saltwater infiltration of groundwater supplies. Sarah Korjeff, historic preservation specialist with the Cape Cod Commission, outlined a guidebook for flood adaptation for the 15 communities served by the commission. In some cases, houses or other buildings can be moved to higher ground, she said, “but as preservationists, relocation is not the ideal option.”

The guidebook includes ideas for elevating properties to allow flood or tidewater to flow underneath and suggestions for elevating all properties along a street to maintain visual harmony.

Mary Bergman, executive director of the Nantucket Preservation Trust, talked about the unique challenges facing the island, where construction and development are already highly regulated. She said she often encounters people who resist change, who say “Oh, that’s the way it’s always been.”

But with rising seas and increasingly powerful storm surge never far from the door of most Nantucket homes, Bergman said, more people are working together to face the future.

“The hardest thing to adapt is your way of thinking,” she said.

The conference marked the third annual event organized by the city of Salem and Salem Preservation Partners as a forum for sharing ideas to address the changing climate.

For more information, go to www.preservingsalem.com; resilient-together.org; and www.capecodcommission.org.