Florida Keys face reality: roads under water

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MonarchMom
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Interesting article about the Florida Keys facing financial decisions on which roads can be raised, and which may have to be abandoned. Many homes may be accessible only by ferry in the coming years as the sea level continues to rise. Florida is especially vulnerable as much has been built on coral reefs and porous limestone. The water can percolate upwards in the roads as well as flooding along the coast.

While some who have homes there are wealthy vacationers, many have lived there for generations. Like many Americans, their home is their largest asset and if it is uninhabitable they have few alternatives.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/florida-keys ... 05781.html
Officials in the Florida Keys announced what many coastal governments nationwide have long feared, but few have been willing to admit: As seas rise and flooding gets worse, not everyone can be saved.

On Wednesday morning, Rhonda Haag, the county’s sustainability director, released the first results of the county’s years-long effort to calculate how high its 300 miles of roads must be elevated to stay dry, and at what cost... and those numbers show that some places can’t be protected, at least at a price that taxpayers can be expected to pay.

The results released Wednesday focus on a single 3-mile stretch of road at the southern tip of Sugarloaf Key, a small island 15 miles up U.S. Highway 1 from Key West. To keep those 3 miles of road dry year-round in 2025 would require raising it by 1.3 feet, at a cost of $75 million, or $25 million per mile. Keeping the road dry in 2045 would mean elevating it 2.2 feet, at a cost of $128 million. To protect against expected flooding levels in 2060, the cost would jump to $181 million.