Improving coastal resilience with ASBPA’s water level observing network
In the midst of last week’s National Coastal Conference in Fort Lauderdale, ASBPA Executive Director, Derek Brockbank, was able to join the House Transportation and Infrastructure (T&I) Committee’s Roundtable in Miami to launch the Water Resources Development Act (WRDA) 2018. The Roundtable had nine members of Congress including T&I Committee chair, Bill Shuster, and the chair and ranking member of the Energy & Water Sub-Committee, Reps. Garret Graves and Grace Napolitano, and nine stakeholders.
The Roundtable was, not surprisingly, very Florida-centric, with lots of discussion about Everglades projects, and Southeastern Florida ports (the event was hosted at the Port of Miami). I was able to get in on the act and mention Broward County’s federal shore protection, which had just won ASBPA’s coastal lifetime achievement award, as a great example of flood risk reduction project that also provided habitat and recreation.
With this event, we think T&I Staff will start digging into writing WRDA in the next couple months. ASBPA was happy to represent the beach and “natural coastal infrastructure” community.