Climate ChangeGreenovateRenew Boston

TOP 3 TAKEAWAYS: CLIMATE READY EAST BOSTON OPEN HOUSE RECAP

By October 23, 2019 No Comments

If you missed the open house for Climate Ready East Boston, read on to learn what it was like and what the project team learned.

Climate Ready East Boston is one of the first neighborhood climate resilience planning projects of the Climate Ready Boston initiative. Last week, we co-hosted an open house with our project partners to connect with the community about the project’s goals, and to hear their initial concerns and feedback about protecting East Boston

The open house was hosted at Excel Academy in East Boston. The Neighborhood of Affordable Housing (NOAH), a local community organization, and the project design team (Kleinfelder and Stoss) co-hosted the interactive event with the City of Boston.

Participants had a chance to learn more about East Boston’s risks from climate change — mainly, near and long-term coastal and storm surge flooding due to sea level rise and extreme weather. Residents were then able to provide feedback on a variety of protection measures that have been used in other places. In addition to just flood protection, the project team is taking into account the neighborhood context so the project best serves East Bostonians.

Here are a few high-level takeaways from the open house interactive exercises:

  1. Residents are concerned with flooding on the Greenway today, and the need for increased waterfront access and public space in East Boston.
  2. Residents preferred flood protection options that also provided a social or environmental benefit to the neighborhood, such as a raised path and wetlands or a seating wall and amphitheater — rather than just a flood wall.
  3. Residents are glad the City is taking a proactive approach to preparing for climate change in East Boston, but want more information on when and how solutions will be implemented.

The project team will be diving deeper into these results and the design recommendations in the next few weeks, and will provide a detailed update at the next community event in mid-July.

You can get involved in these important ways:

  • Provide your input to the project team for the East Boston and Charlestown projects
  • Attend the next community event to hear how input has influenced designs options and resilience measure options (July date TBA — will be announced via Greenovate website, Facebook, and Twitter)

Climate Ready Boston is a key initiative to help our City address climate change. Our science-driven approach to addressing the most challenging impacts will increase our City’s safety, contribute to reducing emissions, and build community resilience.