April 2022 - Parks & Recreation - 36

CLIMATE CHANGE
Many national corporations,
including financial and insurance
companies, are engaging analytics
firms to conduct climate-risk
forecasting to better quantify the
physical, economic and transition
risks of climate change. While
some cities, counties and municipal
governments have begun to engage
in developing climate-risk scenarios,
few park and recreation agencies
have done so to this point, despite
mounting evidence of substantial
climate risk to parks, facilities,
shorelines and built infrastructure.
The reasons why agencies have
not begun to plan for climate risk
are many - a lack of urgency,
competing
priorities,
insufficient
budget, and worse, the unwillingness
to see the gravity of the risks.
Seattle Parks and Recreation is
a good example of an agency that
is taking climate change planning
seriously. Its report, Climate Resiliency
in Seattle's Parks and Recreation
System
(tinyurl.com/78x9ber8),
released in January 2022, is an excellent
model for how park and recreation
agencies can assess vulnerabilities,
evaluate possible climate
scenarios, and prioritize resources
and courses of action for budget
planning and policy direction.
Finding Solutions
In Hampton, Virginia, nuisance
flooding and sea level rise are serious
climate change threats. Carolyn
Heaps, resiliency officer for the city,
says they are currently updating their
park master plan to integrate resilience
and climate adaptation features
along with other priorities. " We are
looking at the realities of the future, "
she says. Scott Smith, senior civil engineer
for the city, says, " As an older
urban city that is largely built out and
subject to recurrent flooding from
sea level rise, we don't have a lot of
spaces to store stormwater. We have
to come up with innovative ways to
create new stormwater storage and
the handling of floodwaters. "
To prove this concept, the city
Pergolas sit along Georgetown's
waterfront in Washington, D.C.
The vines planted to grow up and
over them for shade " were a little
harder to train than we originally
thought, " says landscape architect
Ignacio Bunster-Ossa.
Matheson Hammock Park
5.
The areas in red show
the extent of so-called " sunny-day
flooding " from king tides in MiamiDade's
Matheson Hammock Park.
36 Parks & Recreation | APRIL 2 0 22 | PARK S ANDRECRE AT ION . OR G
is applying innovative green infrastructure
principles to retrofit Honor
Park, a memorial park near city
hall, which honors fallen heroes of
Hampton. The city's goal is to create
additional stormwater capacity in a
developed urban area. Engineering
consultants Brown and Caldwell
suggested constructed wetlands, a
stormwater overflow area into an
amphitheater, and bioretention cells
to slow and hold water, along with
tree plantings, benches and special
soil amendments. " This is a pilot
for us, that if successful, will show
what can be done in other parks and
public areas, " says Smith.
They are applying the same
principles to the retrofitting of Big
Bethel Blueway, a largely overgrown
stormwater floodway. " Water
quality is a priority for us as
well, " says Heaps. " In both parks,
we are meeting the regulatory goals
for water quality and getting mulPHOTO
COURTESY OF MIAMI-DADE PARKS, RECREATION
AND OPEN SPACES
PHOTO COURTESY OF IGNACIO BUNSTER-OSSA/THE COLLABORATIVE
http://www.tinyurl.com/78x9ber8
April 2022 - Parks & Recreation

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