Guest Column by Michael Italiano and Brian Davis
New Jersey coastal properties are experiencing more flooding including from accelerating sea level rise. Battery City in lower Manhattan is constructing $4 billion in protections to prevent a repeat of Hurricane Sandy which forced the closure of buildings
for months, with tenants fleeing to higher ground. Massachusetts issued about $4 billion in sea level rise flooding protection bonds, Miami Beach and Miami about $1 billion, and San Francisco about $4 billion.
Massive Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets are melting at a record pace adding to the costs with the largest global contributor to sea level rise Thwaites in Antarctica about to collapse as documented by NASA JPL with 25 years of ice-penetrating aerial imagery. Subsurface ocean waters 3.6ºF above freezing at Thwaite’s base caused “explosive and disturbing” melt as described by NASA, identifying protections from 2’ minimum of sea level rise flooding by 2030 to preserve commerce and national security as published by 26 news entities: https://www.theinvadingsea.com/2022/06/16/upgrading-our-building-standards-for-flooding-from-sea-level-rise-will-let-us-finance-resilient-construction-with-private-sector-green-bonds/
Architects and engineers are in a bind with their insurers’ resilience policies requiring the design of structures to the 2’ minimum of protections by 2030 even if their clients can’t pay –– an untenable position since just one lawsuit can bankrupt any design firm.
Fortunately, New Jersey’s calculated $90 billion in protection costs are available and ready to deploy. The Investor Network on Climate Risk has over $47 trillion of such assets with a priority for green affordable housing. Using his valuable private capital markets experience, Governor Phil Murphy is evaluating a proposal to deploy these funds for New Jersey. Familiar with the proposal, NJ State Senator Bob Smith said “we need to thoroughly explore potentially viable private sector means before resorting to taxpayer financing, but most importantly, we need to stimulate and protect New Jersey’s economy.”
New Jersey experts in real estate finance and environmental protection are being enlisted to help deploy the financing, and are participating in the Sept. 29, 2022, national resilience standard public meeting. Additional experts may participate by writing mts@sustainableproducts.com.
The authors are environmental attorneys Mike Italiano and Brian Davis affiliated with the nonprofit Capital Markets Partnership. They have over 60 years of combined litigation and regulatory experience with federal, State, and local government, companies, and private practice.
