- Oct 17, 2011
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Another high tide, and retired Navy Capt. Terry Bragg wades from his office into a flooded parking lot in the rain boots he always keeps close at hand.
In barely half an hour, it is a foot deep or more in places. The water has consumed hundreds of parking spots and created an obstacle course for anyone trying to navigate to the visitor’s center of the historic Battleship North Carolina, which for more than six decades has been anchored here, across the Cape Fear River from downtown Wilmington.
“This is climate change,” Bragg, the site’s executive director since 2009, says as he stands ankle deep in floodwaters that inch higher by the minute.
The hulking battleship behind him is many things: a floating museum and one of North Carolina’s most iconic and visited tourist sites; the most decorated U.S. battleship of World War II, with 15 battle stars; and an enduring memorial to the more than 11,000 North Carolinians who served and died in that war.
The museum’s leaders have documented a more than 7,000 percent increase in tidal flooding at the site since it opened to the public in 1961. The changes in the past decade or so alone have been dramatic. In 2011, the battleship site recorded about 20 flood events. In 2022, ... the site experienced nearly 200 days of flooding.
“If I can’t sell tickets and provide parking, I can’t keep the battleship open,” Bragg said of the site, which is overseen by a state commission but receives no regular government appropriations for its operations.
[Since 1935] sea levels at that spot have risen roughly 9 inches, although the rate of rise has accelerated over the past decade. Scientists project that they could rise another foot by the middle of the century.
...
Instead, they would look for a way to live with the changing landscape around them, even if that meant doing what many places are not willing to do: surrender land back to nature.
There are plans to restore much of the flood-prone parking lot to a tidal creek and wetland similar to what would have been there generations ago. That will mean tearing out acres of pavement and other impervious surfaces and replacing them with a more natural landscape meant to capture, hold and ultimately direct tidal floodwaters back to the Cape Fear River.
[A living berm... marsh plants.... planting trees...]
In barely half an hour, it is a foot deep or more in places. The water has consumed hundreds of parking spots and created an obstacle course for anyone trying to navigate to the visitor’s center of the historic Battleship North Carolina, which for more than six decades has been anchored here, across the Cape Fear River from downtown Wilmington.
“This is climate change,” Bragg, the site’s executive director since 2009, says as he stands ankle deep in floodwaters that inch higher by the minute.
The hulking battleship behind him is many things: a floating museum and one of North Carolina’s most iconic and visited tourist sites; the most decorated U.S. battleship of World War II, with 15 battle stars; and an enduring memorial to the more than 11,000 North Carolinians who served and died in that war.
The museum’s leaders have documented a more than 7,000 percent increase in tidal flooding at the site since it opened to the public in 1961. The changes in the past decade or so alone have been dramatic. In 2011, the battleship site recorded about 20 flood events. In 2022, ... the site experienced nearly 200 days of flooding.
“If I can’t sell tickets and provide parking, I can’t keep the battleship open,” Bragg said of the site, which is overseen by a state commission but receives no regular government appropriations for its operations.
[Since 1935] sea levels at that spot have risen roughly 9 inches, although the rate of rise has accelerated over the past decade. Scientists project that they could rise another foot by the middle of the century.
...
Instead, they would look for a way to live with the changing landscape around them, even if that meant doing what many places are not willing to do: surrender land back to nature.
There are plans to restore much of the flood-prone parking lot to a tidal creek and wetland similar to what would have been there generations ago. That will mean tearing out acres of pavement and other impervious surfaces and replacing them with a more natural landscape meant to capture, hold and ultimately direct tidal floodwaters back to the Cape Fear River.
[A living berm... marsh plants.... planting trees...]
