R4R MAY NEWSLETTER
Advocating for Resilience
through
EDUCATION - COMMUNICATION - ADVOCATION - COLLABORATION
Hello Residents for Resilience!
I want to start our May R4R Newsletter with a Big Thanks to all of you who helped to make our first Live Water-Logged event a big success! Our audience was so impressed will all of our Marine Expert Speakers as well as with our special guest, speaker, 11year old Cruz Yturraide, who spoke on his scary experience contracting 2 forms of salmonella poisoning from enjoying fishing on our local Fort Lauderdale canals. See below. Bravo Cruz on a great job, and thank you!
I also want to thank Harry Rozelle and Larry Yturraide for co-sponsoring this event along with Katherine O’Fallon, Marine Research Hub and the Fort Lauderdale Museum of Discovery and Science! For those of you that attended, wasn’t our panel awesome? 👏👏👏 Thank you Keith Van de Riet, David Punchard, Esber Andiroglu, Stacy Brown, and Linda Sunderland!
Missed our event? Well, visit our new “Missed our Event” page to see pictures and video clips. And I’d also like to thank Pat Roth, an R4R member, who wrote a brief recap of this enlightening evening- CLICK HERE. We look forward to our next Water-Logged symposium which will be announced soon!
Our R4R team also wants to say a big thank you to Mike Lambrechts, Vice Chairman, Coastal Conservation Association Florida President, CCA Broward Chapter, Stacy Brown, from Urban Farming Institute, South Florida Community Coral Nursery and South Florida Association of Environmental Professionals, and Erik Neugaard, MS, AICP, CFP, CWB, GISP, PWS Environmental Resiliency and Sustainability Program and Broward County for their awesome Earth Day Celebration;
BUILD AN OYSTER ROPE!
1 oyster filters 50 gallons of water a day, just think what 1 million oysters could do! Scientists estimate at least 85% of the world's oyster reefs have been lost. Isn’t it time we try to reintroduce our little filtering friends back into our waterways? For more information on this event CLICK HERE. We’d also like to thank Hollywood Vice Mayor Caryl Shuham, Church by the Sea, David Punchard from the Oyster Institute, and Suzanne Bailey, aid to Commissioner Lamar P. Fisher who attendance and supported this event.
"We envisioned creating different solutions for different areas to maximize the potential for homeowners to participate in this program and for SFAEP/UFI/CCA to help the homeowners get permitted or possibly add their address as a site under our permit if allowed by the agencies (permits being the main obstacle for most homeowners we felt), stated Stacy Brown.
She added, “Long-term, we want this to develop into an oyster restoration initiative and this permitting is the 1st step in the process along with community discussion and input into where to create the oyster restoration zones.” For more on Stacy’s projects CLICK HERE.
Collaboration at work!
Community Outreach
It’s Hard to Care About What You Don’t Know About!
With so much data on critical water issues being continually revised, it hard to know what we presently need to be concerned about, so you may want to check these presentations from the various resiliency meetings some of us have attended that contain some alarming information. Tricia Halliday shares her thoughts on a very interesting meeting we attended with the Department of Environmental Protection, DEP. Can you beilieve they even discussed if we may have to raise our houses?
On May 2nd, 2024, Suzee Bailey and I attended the Florida Department of Environmental Protection’s second quarterly meeting of the year. There were several noteworthy presentations that are listed below. However, what caught our attention during the discussion was Adrian Santiago Tate's commentary about how difficult it is for homeowners to find out information about their flood risk and what can be done to mitigate their circumstances. Mr. Santiago Tate is a self-proclaimed flood nerd who explained to the audience that he was concerned for his grandfather, who owned a home in Palm City, Florida. After Hurricane Ida came through it was difficult to find any information about sea level rise, flooding and mitigation efforts. He mentioned a resident essentially had to be a detective to find the data! Hence, the emergence of HighTide.ai and Arkly with their team of engineers, geophysicists, software developers and sustainability experts.
Arkly has a free tool for public use based on NOAA data analysis. It is currently available in Florida and Puerto Rico. As their maps and data indicate, this is not just a coastal issue, as many of you have sadly come to realize. Visit their website here: https://hightide.ai
We hope you will visit the site to see what they have to say!
I also want to thank Samantha Danchuk, Ph.D., P.E. of the Climate and Coastal Resilience Lead for inviting me to Join the Florida Adaptation Planning Guidebook Stakeholder Workshop on April 30. I appreciated the opportunity to contribute some of the critical water concerns of our residents for their updated Guidebook. TO VIEW ADAPTATION GUIDEBOOK!
On April 23, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) Norfolk District alongside its non-federal sponsor Miami-Dade County released the Miami-Dade County Back Bay (MDBB) Coastal Storm Risk Management (CSRM) Feasibility Study Integrated Draft Report and Environmental Assessment for a 30-day public review and comment period.
The Study Draft Report explores opportunities to develop alternatives to protect Miami from coastal storm surge risk, including a detailed summary of the coordination, plan formulation, and alternatives evaluations for addressing risk for the highly vulnerable communities of Miami-Dade County. The Draft Report reflects the extensive collaboration with Miami-Dade County, municipalities, stakeholders, and environmental resource agencies that contributed to a set of tentative recommendations for improving coastal resiliency more quickly while additional study efforts continue.
Comments, feedback, and/or additional input on the Integrated Draft Report and Environmental Assessment can be provided online at https://www.saj.usace.army.mil/MiamiDadeBackBayCSRMFeasibilityStudy/
It is so rewarding to see the difference our R4R organization has made this past year when it comes to community outreach and we could not have progessed this far without our amazing Board of Directors and Expert Advisory Committee! As the liaison between government leaders, scientist and marine experts and our residents, we now respectfully receives invites to many City, County, Neighboring City and County, State and Federal Resiliency Meetings and are very appreciative. And we share many of these invites and the information we receive with all of you!
Always remember, knowledge is power!
I’d like to extend a warm welcome to all our new members, whose numbers are growing daily. Our team is thrilled to now include voices representing communities from Naples, Boca Raton, Deerfield Beach, Pompano Beach, Lauderdale-by-the-Sea, Miami, Hollywood, Stuart, Davie, Fort Lauderdale, and beyond! If your city isn't mentioned, please inform us, as we are eager to include everyone. Collaborating with our neighboring cities, we are committed to advocating for the
four critical water issues that impact us all.
LET YOUR VOICES BE HEARD!
We invite you to share our newsletter with your friends and family. If you are passionate about advocating for critical water issues, please let us know. Committees are currently being established, and we welcome your ideas and input.
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contact us at:
res4resilience@gmail.com
