'Flood Management Is Our Reality'

(Photo by David Caraviello)

There are the exterior plates of earthquake rods that reinforce the frames of older buildings, the cobblestone streets composed of ballast from old trading ships, the stone blocks outside the front doors of some historic houses that once assisted visitors arriving on horseback. And to all these elements so unique to downtown Charleston, now add another — the metal brackets lining the sides of ground-floor doorways and windows on modern buildings.

The brackets are designed to hold a series of stacked aluminum panels, which thanks to gaskets and set screws become watertight when fully assembled. It’s the latest weapon in the battle against the flooding that’s become so endemic in downtown Charleston — not just on stormy days, but also on sunny ones when the tide gets too high.

“I grew up here, and I don’t remember the number or the severity of these crazy high tides like we’re having now,” said Wes Chappel, a former city of Charleston employee who founded Lowcountry Flood Solutions, which sells and installs mitigation devices like the acket-and-panel systems. “And this isn’t the end-all solution — it’s allowing you to buy time. You install these panels, you’re giving yourself time until that water goes back out.”

It's all part of a new way of life in downtown Charleston, where flooding driven by climate change is a real concern even outside of hurricane season. The sea level in Charleston Harbor has risen over a foot since record-keeping began in 1921, according to the city. Low-lying areas of the peninsula now regularly flood at “king” tides, which are high tides that reach 7 feet or higher. And that’s all without the help of recent tropical systems like Irma and Matthew, whose wind-driven waters have resulted in some of the highest tide levels ever recorded in Charleston.

“Flood management, water management, is our reality, whether it's on the macro or the micro level. I see a number of properties that actually keep their storm barricades in place on Calhoun Street — they never take them out of the brackets. They're always, always there,” said Mike Seekings, a city council member who represents the southern and eastern parts of the Charleston peninsula.

“Micro protections work for small projects and small areas and individuals. I think we as a city collectively need to think a little bit bigger than that, and make sure we move water away from buildings, homes and other places, so you don't need those micro protections.”

Indeed, a few downtown buildings — such Rutledge Tower on the campus of the Medical University of South Carolina, which sits along a particularly flood-prone section of Calhoun Street — keep their ground-floor flood shields in place all the time. The city around it has undertaken an ambitious flood management project that’s included the construction of new pumping stations, the addition of “check valves” that prevent seawater from backing up, and relining the interior of old brick stormwater tunnels prone to crumbling and sediment accumulation.

And then there’s the biggest project of them all — a proposed seawall that would wrap around the perimeter of the peninsula, and provide increased projection from water driven by storm surge. In a city that prides itself on beautiful scenery, it’s been controversial from the start. The cost, according to the city, would be $1.3 billion. The seawall’s path and design are yet to be determined, and both have to be approved by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The threat, though, is real and constant to a fragile peninsula surrounded by water on three sides.

Charleston Mayor William Cogswell has stressed the urgency of the seawall project. Kaylan Koszela, director of resilience for the city, estimated it could be “two, three years, max,” before shovels hit the ground. “We really don’t want to linger or have any setbacks to this work that we know is critical to our city,” she added.

Proof of concept

The Charleston peninsula is only about eight square miles in size, but its gardens, parks, churches, and historic homes are what define the city. The peninsula is home to Charleston’s most famous restaurants, its most popular nightlife districts, and its most visited cultural attractions. Protecting that small, vulnerable patch of land from the threat of rising water has been a serious undertaking in Charleston for more than a decade.

That effort ramped up in 2017 with the onset of the Dutch Dialogues, an analysis of how the Netherlands — much of which lies below sea level — lives with the water, and lessons Charleston could take from its experience. As it pertained to the peninsula, final recommendations published in 2019 urged decoupling shallow drainage systems from deeper tunnels, filling dips and swales in streets where stormwater can accumulate, and ensuring any perimeter protection is “multifunctional and beautiful.”

That last one, of course, has been a sticking point. “The backstory of this is so long and sordid,” Seekings bemoaned. The first step toward the seawall was a “3x3x3” approach — three years, three levels of review, costing $3 million — in which the Corps of Engineers would, with Congressional approval and funding, determine the feasibility of building a seawall around the peninsula. The plan the Corps ultimately proposed included a 12-foot-high seawall, using storm gates to accommodate pedestrian, vehicle and rail traffic.

The Corps would share the cost “of visual and cultural mitigation measures that will help to blend the storm surge wall with the city’s visual character,” it wrote in its final feasibility report, issued in 2022. “The City of Charleston can opt to pay for additional betterments that would help achieve desired aesthetic standards.”

By Charleston standards, that hardly sounds beautiful. “What they came back with might be feasible on paper, and it might be feasible to the Army Corps,” Seekings added, “but it’s completely not feasible in Charleston, South Carolina.”

Given that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers would pay approximately $855 million of the project’s $1.3 billion cost, it holds substantial influence on the design. The Charleston District of the Corps of Engineers originally said it would respond to a series of written questions for this story, but a spokesperson later said the Corps would be unable to provide answers due to the federal government shutdown that began on Oct. 1.

But before the shutdown, Cogswell, Seekings, and a delegation from Charleston traveled to Washington to meet with Maj. Gen. Jason Kelly, the Army Corps’ deputy commander for civil and emergency operations, trying to find common ground on the seawall’s alignment and design. On the latter issue, the city has transitioned to an idea known as the “Battery extension,” which is just what it sounds like — an extension of the Battery, the seawall and promenade which has fortified the tip of the peninsula in some form or fashion since the early 1800s.

“We need to do infrastructure that fits our public realm. And here in Charleston, it's kind of simple, right?” Koszela said. “We already have this proof of concept with the Battery where we have protective infrastructure. And 364 days out of the year when we don't have that big storm coming, it's a public promenade. It's bringing the public closer to the waterfront. So it just was kind a no- ainer to pivot more toward that. To get people to understand the importance of this project, they can visualize a proof of concept that they live with today.”

It's certainly easy to envision, given that the Battery is among Charleston’s more iconic features. Thanks to a nearly completed $64 million improvement project, the entire length of the existing Battery — which stretches from the end of East Bay Street on one side, to the U.S. Coast Guard station at the end of Murray Boulevard on the other — will be at a consistent height of roughly 9 feet above sea level. The idea of having that promenade extend up each side of the peninsula, offering opportunities for walking, jogging and fishing in addition to storm surge protection, can be a tantalizing one to say the least.

“That’s exactly what we internally have agreed needs to be the solution,” Seekings said. “I’ve been kind of chirping in the wind about this for a long time, but now with Mayor Cogswell in there, he’s a huge proponent of it. When we were with the Army Corps in the general's office, we called this project the Battery extension, and we gently asked them to do the same. And as we were leaving, they were doing it. So that's a start, right? That's a start, but we need to really put pen to paper.”

‘That is not functional’

The meeting in Washington, though, did give city of Charleston City Council enough confidence to approve entering into a design agreement with the Army Corps. The decision released $13.3 million in federal funds for the project, according to the city, and greenlit the beginning of the seawall’s preconstruction, engineering and design phase. That step will include surveys both above and below the surface to determine where the Battery extension could be located.

But differences remain. In addition to design differences, the city and the Corps have yet to strike an agreement on the seawall’s proposed routing. “They zigzag Lockwood Boulevard three times, four times,” Seekings said, referring to the Corps. “We're not going to put massive gates like they've got in New Orleans on land across Lockwood. That is not functional. We're not going to build T and combo walls, which they have in their report, which are just not part of the aesthetic and the culture of who we are.”

According to the Corps’ final feasibility report, the 8.7-mile structure on land would be a T-wall (a concrete barrier with a wide base, resembling an inverted T, and frequently used to fortify military camps) and in the marsh would be a combination wall (vertical piles on the storm surge side and pipe piles on the other, topped by concrete). “The construction of a storm surge wall would change views of the water from land and conversely of the cityscape from the water,” it wrote, acknowledging that alterations could be made in the PED phase of the project.

For now, preliminary work continues as both sides work to get on the same page. City of Charleston leaders have urged the Corps to consider designing the project as a whole rather than in phases, to give it a more comprehensive look and feel. Charleston has also hired its own designers and engineers, led by the locally based firm of Black & Veatch, to pursue the city’s goals in the PED phase.

“This project has evolved, and that has been because of the need to make it fit and be right for the city of Charleston,” Koszela said. “In order to do that, the city on its own has begun some initial optimization of the alignment, which is the location of the structure, as well as the design and aesthetic, and that will be integrated with the work we’re doing with the Army Corps.”

Charleston sees the seawall project as essential to preserving its $13 billion tourism industry, particularly in the face of projections by NOAA which call for East Coast sea levels to rise nearly a foot over the next 30 years. But no seawall will stem the tidal flooding that plagues the peninsula on a far more regular basis, even on days without a cloud in the sky. On that front, the city recently pledged $1 million to continue work with the Corps on a tidal and inland flooding risk study while also continuing work on projects like Calhoun West, a network of pumps and deep tunnels designed to store water from heavy rain or high tides.

“No perimeter protection, no matter what we come up with in terms of design, will work without an allied project behind it to move water that comes out of the sky or comes from higher tides,” Seekings said.

For now, though, residents and city officials work to address the problem structure by structure and street by street. Oct. 10 was among the most recent days to bring heavy rain to the peninsula, leading police to block off downtown’s more flood-prone streets. And buildings continue to implement their own countermeasures, like flood shields — which can cost around $3,000 for one doorway, Chappel said, and won’t work on every type of structure found downtown.

“In a perfect scenario, you could just go and install thebrbracket without having to make any modifications to the entryway. But we need a really flat, smooth surface for it to be as watertight as possible,” he said. “We really need like a masonry structure. A lot of the Charleston single houses with wood siding, this type of system can't help.”