Massachusetts Climate Chief Melissa Hoffer met with local officials and community leaders on Friday to survey recent storm damage and learn about efforts to fortify vulnerable waterfront infrastructure from worsening climate change impacts.
The group toured State Street Landing, the area around Hammond Park, Tucker’s Wharf and Front Street to witness the battering that aging seawalls and other structures have endured from intensifying storm activity.
“Getting out and seeing real communities, real people and what they’re dealing with … it’s always important to us,” said Hoffer as she stood on the State Street Landing. “It’s important when we’re going to help municipalities, in particular, deal with a range of coastal resiliency issues.”
Recent tidal flooding in Marblehead has eroded infrastructure never designed to withstand such storms, officials said. A pair of storms early in the year wreaked havoc on Front Street, collapsing harborfront walls, crumbling sidewalks and flooding out roadways. Bricks on the State Street Landing have succumbed to sinkholes.
‘It’s extremely frustrating’
Harbormaster Mark Souza explained how recent storms have smashed dock infrastructure and swept tangled masses of lobster trap lines. A Tucker’s Wharf municipal pier is desperate for replacement, he said, while another requires constant maintenance just to remain marginally functional.
“The two piers have taken a tremendous amount of punishment from the storms,” Souza told Hoffer. “Our department has to be resilient enough to keep maintaining public safety.”
The commercial fishing industry relies heavily on these failing piers and other harborfront facilities, he emphasized.
Souza said constant repairs and maintenance drain available resources. He noted FEMA can be slow to reimburse, so money used on unexpected repairs gets tied up until federal reimbursements arrive.
“We’re still waiting on FEMA money from the last couple storms,” he said. “We paid for repairs out of pocket.”
Town Administrator Thatcher Kezer chimed in on the importance of staying on top of FEMA reimbursements and other available grants.
“We are trying to figure out how to have a dedicated staff — not necessarily a new position — trained up and focused on just processing FEMA paperwork,” Kezer said. “It’s so onerous to pull together.”
Souza agreed.
“It’s extremely frustrating because of the sheer number of man hours you put into it,” he said. “The frustrating part is when you’re told you’re going to be taken care of through a reimbursement.”
He noted these processes pose obstacles that can significantly delay project timelines.
Meanwhile, Fire Chief Jason Gilliland said he has never seen tidal flooding of the caliber in recent years.
“I’ve seen places that never got flooded get flooded — it’s definitely changing,” he said. “Foster Street over here never flooded. We’re getting water up on Boston Street. Water on Front Street has definitely gotten higher. Grace Oliver’s gotten higher. The area around Preston Beach gets flooded out.”
A pair of recent storm surges shuttered the causeway from the mainland to Marblehead Neck.
“I’ve been working for the town for 40 years and never seen that,” Gilliland told Hoffer.
Inaugural climate chief
State Rep. Jenny R. Armini, D-Marblehead, arranged Hoffer’s visit. Gov. Maura Healey signed an executive order on her second day on the job to create the cabinet-level position of climate chief.
Healey tasked Hoffer with putting the Bay State on track to meet the statutorily required target that it be net zero by 2050. To that end, Hoffer published a nearly 90-page report, outlining dozens of recommendations.
Her suggestions run the gamut from having Massport look at limiting the amount of “short hop” flights in and out of Bay State airports to reduce aviation emissions, decarbonizing new public school construction, and developing a Climate Service Corps to prepare young people for jobs in clean energy and climate resilience.
A cornerstone of Hoffer’s report is a call for an economic analysis of the state investment needed to achieve greenhouse gas emission reductions mandated by the Clean Energy and Climate Plan. State officials have made some effort to move toward these goals, but there is no comprehensive analysis of an important aspect of the journey: how much decarbonization will actually cost.
Hoffer praised Marblehead’s residents and leaders for efforts to curb carbon emissions, including creating the Green Marblehead Committee, producing a road map to net zero, conducting carbon emissions reports, hiring a sustainability coordinator and installing geothermal heat pumps at Abbot Hall.
“It says a lot about how much they prioritize this issue, and that they really understand it,” she said. “They really see that it is important to everything that we care about — our families, our communities, economic development opportunities, housing, transportation.”
She underscored that regional coordination will prove essential as communities like Marblehead confront complex, costly infrastructure projects. Towns can share information and resources to stretch limited funding. Regional collaboration can also help align adaptation strategies.
“It doesn’t make a lot of sense for each individual community to be planning how it’s going to address a problem when it has a problem that’s pretty similar to its next-door neighbor,” said Hoffer. “And that’s very true on the coasts, so regional approaches help us extend our resources.”
Her office hopes to facilitate greater knowledge shared among municipalities across Massachusetts, so all can benefit from the expertise of those proactively working to bolster climate defenses.
“The level of knowledge that people have here about what the projected sea level rise is, what the impacts are going to be, how that affects storm surge,” she said. “These impacts are going to be with us for a while … and that means you gotta be planning for the long term.”
