A cottage teeters on the shore at Roy Carpenter's Beach in South Kingstown, Tuesday, Oct. 30, 2012. Credit: NBC News 10

What do the 2010 March Floods, Hurricane Irene, and Tropical Storm Sandy all have in common? These three 100-year events (meaning there is a 1% chance of this type of storm happening once a year) have all occurred within the past two and half years.

Failing to change how we view significant storm events (e.g., it’s just a fluke), affects how well and whether we plan for future storm events. Viewing these storms as “just a bad run,” or “ a freak storm” denies the reality of a changing climate and its effect on weather, precipitation and the severity of storms. In this way, our point of view can threaten our ability to change our approach to development and planning in a way that preserves our assets for future generations. Ultimately this short-sighted point of view is used to justify an unwillingness to move away from static planning concepts, like planning for a 100-year flood, which, to be sure, allows for more development short-term, but, is of little use when planning the life expectancy of coastal development or construction already along our river banks and in our flood plains.

After the March 2010 floods submerged and disabled three major municipal sewer treatment facilities for more than a week, wiped out dams and bridges, destroyed homes and business built along the banks of the Pawtuxet River, and pushed massive areas of pavement up with surges of water from swollen rivers, and, after incurring hundreds of millions of dollars in damages, what did we do? We left our sewer treatment facilities where they were; continued to plan for and permit development for 100-year storms; rebuilt the bridges; repaved the parking lots that were built within the flood plains of major rivers; talked about how we could get environmental regulations out of the way of job creation and economic development, and; tried to get back to normal.

We did the same after Hurricane Irene (a category 1 storm that left half of state’s residents without power, many for more than a week, and which resulted mandatory evacuations for low-lying communities including Charlestown, Narragansett, South Kingstown, and Westerly over storm-surge related concerns. We fixed the roofs, removed the trees, restored power, and petitioned the coastal management agency for the construction of 202 foot seawall (price tag, about a million dollars) in Matunuck to guard against storm surge and erosion.

The goal always the same:  just try to get back to normal as quickly as possible.

Piles of sand plowed from Matunuck Beach Road, South Kingstown, Tuesday, Oct. 30, 2012. Credit: NBC News 10

In the immediate aftermath of Tropical Storm Sandy, our third major storm event in less than three years, and a storm that resulted in more serious damage in some of our coastal communities than was experienced during the Hurricane of 1938 (portions of the seawall in Narragansett dislodged; homes and businesses shattered all along the coast; infrastructure, like the bath house and boardwalk in Galilee, washed away; mounds of sand covering roads throughout South County, and breakers compromised) – maybe we should start asking ourselves, “What is normal?”

Because to “get back to normal” under a planning regime and system-wide frame of mind that does not understand, appropriately consider, or strategically plan for the effects of climate change on our coastline, our natural resources, our communities and our economy; well, that is not  “normal” at all. If all we’ve learned as a result of these past three storms is to get milk and water, buy a generator, install a sump pump, get flood insurance, trim down branches and trees that might fall on power lines; and bring in more line and more contractors to assist with power outages, then we haven’t really learned anything at all.

Does it makes sense to rebuild infrastructure, at a significant cost to the taxpayers, in areas that we know will continue to be vulnerable? Should we seize the opportunity to undo a past planning decision that undermined the ability of a natural system to absorb flooding or protect against storm surge and erosion, like removing parking lots that were paved over marshes, and wetlands, or removing hard shoreline structures that accelerate erosion along the beaches? Should we be planning for 500-year or 1,000 floods (the Netherlands and Japan protect their residents against a 10,000-year flood)?

We cannot continue to plan and build according to standards that don’t contemplate climate change and its effects on our built and natural environment. Ignoring the policy and economic conversations that need to happen about the costs of coastal protection versus costs of land-use relocation as well as the potential for movement of populations and infrastructure is irresponsible and will come at a great price.

Last night, in the Town of South Kingstown, Rhode Island, the State’s coastal management agency met to hear the Town’s plea to reclassify Matunuck Beach –a natural headland bluff and coastal beach – as a manmade beach. This reclassification, the Town argued, would allow the business and home owners in the village of Matunuck to defend themselves against the rising sea and the erosion that is eating away feet of beach weekly by allowing them to build a sea wall along the beach. With less than three feet between the ocean and the state road, the Town argued that without the reclassification, the peril to its citizens and to the road, which has been there since the late 1800s, was imminent.

Many supported the reclassification and some opposed it. Legal arguments, policy arguments, and economic arguments were all advanced over the course of four hours. But, shortly before 10 p.m., the second to last public witness, advanced an argument that brought a hush to the room of hundreds.

A young woman from Matunuck approached the podium from the back of the auditorium in her jeans and flip-flops. When she began to speak she was visibly nervous and apologetic for not being as comfortable as others who preceded her. Her hands were shaky, her voice unsteady, but her point was resoundingly clear. She had lived in Matunuck for twenty-five years. She loved the village and the people in it. She had grown up playing on the south coast’s barrier beaches. I waited for her to express her support for the reclassification of the beach and the construction of a sea wall to save the town, but she expressed something else.

She thought the Town’s approach and the whole conversation we were having reflected an incredible short-sightedness and that the solutions proposed were short-spanned. She found it hard to believe that people were actually talking about trying to save a house or a road or a business on the grounds that it had been in Matunuck for 50 or 100 years. “The beach and these bluffs and this ecosystem have been here for millions of years,” she said. She expressed her genuine concern that if we allowed for the construction of a wall on this beach that we would destroy the entire barrier beach system and the hope that these beaches would be here for our children.

Here this woman stood, courageously arguing against her neighbors, and perhaps even her own self-interest to save the beach for the future. I remember thinking to myself, “so this is what climate change and sea level rise looks like when we add people to the equation.” It is people, not policies, that will have to make the hard choices between the long-term interests of a community and their own private interests. Neighbors from close-knit communities will disagree on both solutions and outcomes. Governments will have to balance long-term economic sustainability with immediate financial crises.

If we wait to respond to the inevitable, these scenes will begin to play out more often throughout our New England communities. But, if we’ve grown tired of waiting for the choices to be thrust upon us, there is something we can do about it.

We can begin to identify the strategic solutions that allow for bearable economic costs, minimal and organized relocation, and sustainable resource protection measures. We can protect our own interests and the longer-term interests of a broader community.