Federal officials advance plan to brace Boston from sea level rise

Boston Globe

22-05-2025

This week, the Corps launched a series of public meetings in Boston neighborhoods to get early
feedback on exactly where those barriers ought to eventually be built.
The flood projects will likely cost north of $10 billion — assuming the estimated price tags to protect other similarly sized coastal cities such as San Francisco and New York are indicative of Boston's future. They will also require congressional approval and funding, a possibly unpredictable endeavor given President Trump's dramatic cuts to federal funding.
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The agency anticipates completing the Boston study and requesting funds from Congress between 2028 and 2029. The construction of the projects likely won't be finished until about 2040.
Years ago, a
specific geographic challenges and can be built piece by piece until the whole city is protected.
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That strategy — called 'Climate Ready Boston' — provided the basis for the federal government's involvement, said Jeff Herzog, a program manager for the US Army Corps of Engineers and lead planner for the agency's Boston study.
'It's going to be a neighborhood-by-neighborhood solution,' Herzog said during a meeting Tuesday night in Charlestown.
The city has already begun to build berms and elevated parks on city-owned properties, focusing on areas that are currently at risk of flooding or will be within the next 10 years.
The cost of fortifying the entire 47-mile-long coast for the rest of this century, however, requires more financial resources, as well as regulatory authority,
than the municipal government can provide.
'The Corps has been looking at the risk that Boston faces due to increasing sea level rise and storm surge,' said Chris Osgood, director of the Office of Climate Resilience for the City of Boston, during the Charlestown meeting. 'It's that report that unlocks the opportunity for federal funding to be able to advance those projects in the 2030s and beyond.'
Both the city and federal strategies will design barriers to withstand at least 40 inches, or more than 3 feet, of sea level rise by the end of the century. That would likely protect the city from sea level rise in 2100, assuming about 2 degrees of global warming, according to a
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However, there's still a chance 40 inches won't be high enough: Depending on the planet's ability to cut climate-warming emissions and depending on how glaciers in Antarctica react to continued warming, sea levels could be higher by then.
In Charlestown, the federal government is considering flood barriers along the shoreline by the Navy Yard, near the Little Mystic channel, and near Ryan Playground in north Charlestown. The flood protections could be a mound of earth, a raised harborwalk, a vertical floodwall, or an elevated roadway.
The neighborhood's development pushes very close to the water, so there is not enough room for 'nature-based' protections, such as planting or protecting a marsh, Herzog said.
Neighborhood meetings will continue through the end of the summer. By early next year, the agency will draft a plan for what and where to build.
The public can weigh in on those plans, and eventually, the proposal will be submitted to Congress as a request for
funds. Most large national engineering projects like this are typically 65 percent funded by the federal government and 35 percent funded by local entities.
The Trump administration has cut huge amounts of funding for climate initiatives, and several other coastal cities are similarly developing multibillion-dollar requests for coastal infrastructure projects. Still, Herzog said he feels confident that such engineering projects will continue to receive bipartisan support.
'The administration has invested heavily in coastal storm risk management,' Herzog said. '[They have] demonstrated over the years — on a bipartisan level — that they are committed to community resilience.'
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While the Corps' study will focus on engineering projects, Herzog said that the federal government would also consider relocation for high-risk areas of Boston, a strategy known as managed retreat.
'It would be irresponsible for us not to [consider retreat],' he said at the Charlestown meeting.
After presenting the early plan for Charlestown, the Corps will turn its focus to Dorchester, East Boston, South Boston, and downtown later this summer.
Erin Douglas can be reached at