 All right, so we're gonna get started. This is our last portion of the day. We have decided to have everybody up here as a panel. We also have our Georgetown crew virtually participating. So we're all here for answering questions, but we're gonna start off. So we thank you all for participating in the breakout sessions. I heard that there was some really robust conversation in every single room. So we're sorry that it couldn't last for three hours, but we, in the interest of getting you out on time, or at least close to on time, wanted to come back here. And I've asked each of our presenters and leaders of workshops to think about two different questions and share those with us here as a group, sort of as a little bit of a report out from your sessions. And then we're gonna open it up for questions. So the two questions I posed to them ahead of time were what was one major takeaway from your group? And then what was one big question that came up in your group? So theoretically they could have been the same thing and they could have been different. So I will open it up to whoever would like to jump in first. We can start. Dina's gonna do the report out for our group which was the state and local plans group. So just kind of top level report out. I think one of the major themes that came up for us in major takeaways was how important community engagement is in this whole process in terms of creating a positive vision of what spaces could be with local communities, the importance that there's state funds available and federal funds available if you have community engagement and for the success of projects in general for a BIA program to have that bottom up support. And kind of a related question is we had a big question was where's the line between making structures more resilient in place versus helping folks relocate and the importance of community engagement in both of those processes and working with the severe repetitive loss properties. This came up in doing a buyouts that had kind of the top down strategic engagement of where it was most intelligent to do a buyout and to do it collectively with blocks of homeowners so that you could get ecological restoration and avoid blight and also though to have that bottom up support. And I think another question that came up was even when buyouts are the preferred option how you engage a constituency that might not be interested in a buyout, people who for no other reason than they don't wanna move, even if that is the decision that as a local government you've made or that you've prioritized this area as being well positioned to accept buyouts, how do you work with people who are not interested in participating? We can go next. So our breakout group was looking at integrating climate resilience into codes and standards and similarly a takeaway was how important it is to motivate and get the right constituents in the planning board meetings and how it matters to have regular citizens in those boardrooms talking about what they care about and what motivates them in addition to the standard nonprofit groups that show up in favor or other lobbyists that show up in against projects. And multiple people reference the Consensus Building Institute as a great resource that had either funded projects to enhance conversations, community conversations around climate change or just as a resource for doing those kinds of facilitations on your own, apparently their website is a great resource. A question, it was hard to choose, although a lot of questions came up but something I took away was that people are interested to tap into what behavior really motivates people because ultimately as important as laws and regulations are and I'm a huge advocate for them as a lawyer, ultimately many people are just trying to figure out ways to get around them and so really thinking about what behavior, what motivates people and then tapping into that is something that we need to be doing more on the horizon. And just to follow up on that, looking at what some of the effects of the more forward-looking ordinances and regulations that we have put in place, for example, requiring boards and commissions to get education here in Rhode Island, what will that have an effect on what the decisions actually are? I think it's a really big question for us to look at as we've moved down the road. Very good, I took more from our discussion that I was gonna, we were gonna do one question. In our group we discussed the infrastructure and some of the legal liability and interestingly what came, one of the main issues that kept cropping up again and again was really a lack of local government capacity on the part of many of the 39 different local governments in the state to be able to have the staff and resources to really dive into these projects and into these inquiries even because it was noted there is quite a bit of data actually available but who has the time to use it? And so I think there was all, a plug was put in for Rhode Island's Sea Grant and the legal program. You were wrong, and Roger Williams. But you've got your work cut out for you. Were there any other, Thomas, in your group with that sort of lack of local government capacity, did anybody identify partners that they had used that had been, that it had been very helpful to engage with to help build capacity? One of the things that was discussed and I thought this was great was kind of a some budding potential work between Rhode Island's Sea Grant and the League of Cities and Talents. And I think that's a great idea because we were kind of talking about who are some of the actors that might be useful in trying to bring together some resources and maybe increase the collaboration to some degree between local governments to help overcome some of the resource scarcity on the staff side. I didn't plan that question. I didn't know he was going to say that. So we want to open it up to you guys to ask any questions that you have remaining for the day. We have all of our panelists here, so it's also a good time to potentially ask a question for a breakout group that you weren't able to attend. So if there are any questions, just raise your hand and our folks will come around. We are going to try to get you on mic just because we are recording. I was just kind of wondering, is there one state or one community that really seems to be at the forefront or a model to look forward to on these issues? I think that that question would be really well handled by our Georgetown folks. Did you guys hear that question? Oh, oh, oh, I think you're muted. Hi, can you hear us? Yeah, can you hear us? That should. So is the question, what is a good locality or state with the model for community engagement specifically? Yup, and I'm thinking about how you have your adaptation clearing house and that you probably have some ideas. So I would say on a broad scale, and it's also included in our clearing house, the example in Louisiana, the LA SAFE program that we shared is a really sort of bottom-up process and their website as well includes a lot of guidance on how they sort of conducted a long-term community engagement process, processes with different series of meetings, ways to engage sort of underrepresented communities. For instance, by holding meetings in different locations so people would have access to them, having translators, making meetings really interactive. So that's a good model that's getting a lot of traction in the adaptation community which is part of the model. I think the challenging part on the community engagement side is that the LA SAFE program was done through one of the National Disaster Resilience competition grants where they specifically required local governments and state governments that received those funds to do engagement and they gave them the flexibility with the funding sources to be able to do robust community engagement processes. Oftentimes that funding is not available. Like local governments can't pay for things like translation services or food. It's difficult for them to post meetings and off hours because of staff constraints. So I mean, I think that's the big next challenge is how do we take these best practices for engagement that we're learning from some of the NDRC and RBD projects and actually apply them in the real world and find the funding sources needed to do that kind of deep community engagement where community is actually driving the project results and they're seeing the outcomes of their engagement because that's the quickest way to lose trust with community is if you're promising them that you're gonna do something and then you don't actually implement what they, the vision that they say that they want. Those would be the kind of caveats I would put on using LA Safe as a model is that there oftentimes is not that luxury to do that kind of community engagement and they don't have the funds to do it. So yes, use it as a model but you gotta figure out how you're gonna pay for it. Thomas, did you wanna add anything about like your work with community engagement? I guess, yeah, I might wanna mention a small town in the state of Florida because I know a lot of the towns here are not very large so we've been working with a small community called Satellite Beach and it's 10,000 people. It's a barrier island they've got no place to move to and they have done a great job. They've done a really wonderful job of engaging their community and they've got a handful but maybe five key people both in the state in the local government and community members that have really been a driving force and I think that really goes to show that for community engagement the presence of just one, two, three, four key people that have some energy can really be an impetus and so we were able to work with them to get some funding streams, some modest funding streams. They put a lot of that into community engagement and that really helped them actually move forward and now we're looking at drafting some policy recommendations for them and with any luck I think they may actually adopt some of the most long term forward thinking ordinances in the state of Florida and within the next year I hope but yeah, public engagement has been a key part at one point about three or four years ago they had a public media and they advertised in big bowl letters outside the community center climate change meeting and nobody was doing that at this time and they did that, they had a couple of people show up that tried to make it sound like there's all scientific hoax and kind of one, we've all run into these people but at one point the community actually just started clapping to basically shut them down because they kept trying to interrupt the meeting and it was actually beautiful because it was two people out of 70 and the rest of the crowd essentially finally just got tired of letting them take over the time and shut them down. Okay, we had other hands, yeah. No, sorry, yep, go ahead, sorry. Okay, I'm Steve Long with the Nature Conservancy in Massachusetts, so one of the strategies we use with the communities is using nature-based solutions, restoring floodplains, removing dams, making sure wetlands are functional and working on loading shorelines but we often run into legal challenges and I find that laws or ordinances will either inhibit or prohibit or sometimes encourage nature-based solutions so I just wanna hear people's thoughts on that. I know there are no silver bullets but how do we go about making sure that those barriers and inhibitions are addressed and removed? Let's just start. I mean, I can talk about that from the Florida perspective. Again, there's been actually one champion that's really made a big difference in the state of Florida but a lot of the challenges, it's not intentional, obviously. I mean, like the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, it's a lot of their rules that have been real impediments to greater use of living shorelines in the state of Florida and also Corps of Engineers and again, it's not intentional and with the Corps of Engineers now, there is a general nationwide permit that makes it easier at that level if you fit within certain circumstances and that was done expressly to promote the use of living shorelines but there are actually permitting concerns. For example, if you've got an eroded shoreline, you tend to have an escarpment and for a living shoreline function, you need a long, low slope. Well, so what are you gonna do? From the Department of Environmental Protection, or DEP's perspective, they don't want to allow that property owner to bring in a bunch of fill and create a long, low slope from the current escarpment because from DEP's perspective, that's state-owned land you're filling. Why should we be giving property owners state-owned land? So there are some issues there of public interest but again, I think Florida DEP and many departments are working to try to find some ways to address what you're talking about. I would just add that another tactic is to look at state-revolving loan funds and how those monies are spent in capital improvement projects, money to expand it so that it's not just brick and mortar concrete projects but nature-based investments can also be funded through that money and I know in Vermont, they just passed a law last session where basically capital money from the, or sorry, state-revolving loan fund money that is going towards a project, they can tag on a natural resource-based project for basically zero interest. I don't know the specific details but just an idea of. I would add that a couple of years ago we did a project with your colleagues in Connecticut actually looking at local ordinances and state laws in Connecticut related to living shorelines and in Connecticut, the state has specifically endorsed the use of living shorelines where appropriate but permitting is still a challenge for those. In part, my understanding is because the permitting agencies and the folks there don't have as much experience understanding whether and where it's appropriate and evaluating engineering designs for a particular project on the one hand and from a project proponents perspective, finding an engineering firm that can move from a gray infrastructure to a green infrastructure perspective has been a challenge as well. So it does feel a little bit like a teething sort of situation where it's gonna be rough for a while even after you get it into the law before sort of models start to be accepted by everybody in the supply chain as it were. Woman in blue has had her hand up for some time so let's make sure you get her question. Thank you. So I have volunteered as a committee member for two towns on Cape Cod and working on these issues and so my experience has been that either coastal property owners or people who are looking to own or develop coastal property have a lot of money and a lot of resources to hire lawyers and so for the town perspective the threat of litigation is a deterrent to engaging in an adaptation or a retreat project or new ordinances or codes or even holding to a controversial order of conditions under the Wetlands Protection Act. And so I'm wondering are there organizations that can help back up towns when they make a determination so with either funding or help with legal expertise or even just hand holding like helping them put that particular case in context with what's going on and adaptation issues across the state or the region. This came up at a symposium I was at a year ago and everyone was thinking, wow that would be such a great thing a sort of community defense fund to be able to hire lawyers to back them up. I don't know of, I don't know something like that. A lot of the resources available here are kind of like non-advocacy and so it's hard for a lot of the university related resources to step into that role but it is a need that I have heard voiced before. Yeah, so I'll just echo Elena's comments. Most of us represent institutions that engage in non-advocacy or engage in advocacy in very specific arenas. We are available for some of the questions about understanding some of the background of the issues but we wouldn't be able to get involved when it's actual litigation that you're about to be looking at but that's certainly something that we can take note of to keep our eyes open if that is a resource that's available that we could point you in the direction of. So now we're training all these good law students? Well, we are also training lots of great law students who can become your attorneys. Any other comments on that? Does anyone know? Surf writers has helped different... You guys hear me? Yeah. Surf writers has stepped in on a couple of the cases like the Texas case on their rolling easement statute. They were an intermediary but unfortunately the Pacific Legal Foundation is often on the other side and providing support to the landed moneyed interest to help them sue and have help to get some of this negative case law on the books that is serving as the big hindrance. But the other thing that I would point to is there may be clinical programs at local universities that do more of the litigation. I think most of the people in this room are more on the law and policy side. We don't litigate but there are clinics that a lot of the state universities that do environmental litigation and that could be a potential place to look for assistance on the litigation side if it comes up. Yeah, I would agree that's a fabulous point, Jessica. The one thing I would encourage is in something this controversial, if you can find a clinical program that's preferably at a private university, you're much better off because the state university clinical programs, they have to be careful because the legislatures control their budget and as you noted, very often you are dealing with property owners that are very well connected. So and that has happened in some with environmental clinics at state universities on frequent occasion where their budgets are threatened or programs eliminated due to the litigation they've engaged in. We have time for a couple more questions. Hi, Tracy Sylvia, CRMC permitting section. One of the, a few speakers today brought up some of the permit re-openers or rolling easements and different ways to look at managed retreat. I'm thinking of some of the cases that have gone on with the wetlands mitigation banks and other issues as to what legal concerns are there and at what level would these types of things be envisioned to be put in? Has anyone actually done them as far as sea level rise impacts and moving things back other than just recommending you do it in your permit review? Has this actually been implemented? Have there been lawsuits from it? Has anyone familiar with any of that? And is it better at a local level, a state level? Both. So you're looking for specific examples of managed retreat rolling easements. Is that a good? Yeah, if people are actually doing that related to sea level rise, and I'm speaking specific coastal development, sea level rise and taking out a sea wall if X amount of, we have performance standards in the permits that we issue, and then at certain times they may have to do something, but as far as literally saying you need to pick up and move back or take out, I don't see much of it yet. And it's been managed, it's been listed as an adaptation option in some of these policy discussions and plans that cities and towns should look for. Is anyone actually doing it yet? And if so, where, at what level, and if not, why? Katie, did you want to weigh in? I know you've done a lot of research and work on managed retreat. So in regards to specific examples of sort of rolling easement programs that would sort of be tied to any environmental factor, like for instance inland migration, I'm not aware of any sort of specific examples in practice. The State of California Coastal Commission, they currently have some draft, so it's not obviously final residential guidance for their local coastal programs to consider how specifically for residential development, how they can incorporate sea level rise into their planning. And they have a specific sort of component of that that would look at, encourage local governments to create like a managed retreat program. And sort of the driver of that would be sort of a beach width trigger, so based on erosion. And they would ultimately, in this draft guidance, sort of tie the potential removal of structures to a minimum beach width that would go forward. So there's concepts of that that I've seen like in draft guidance, but I'm not personally aware of any sort of actual examples of that in practice. Thank you. Tracy, I just add, as you know, Roy Carpenter's speech might be one of the better examples of this, and that suggests, and for those who don't know what I'm talking about, this is a privately owned beach association where they've been moving their homes back over time. And it suggests that private beach associations might be a way to get at some of this through taking government out of it. And not that that's super easy to do, but. Thanks. I had a question, I think sort of threading together a couple of comments about sort of what motivates people and some other themes that have come up. And so I was thinking back to the question of sort of where do instances of liability or potential liability come up and thinking about in communities where they might be providing, the municipalities might be providing tax incentives or doing any site prep work to try to draw development into their communities, whether or not there's anything, any examples people have seen where that's been raised as an issue or something that might be able to be used to encourage municipalities not to provide tax incentives in certain areas or not to do site prep work or anything like that that might be inadvertently drawing development into areas where they probably shouldn't be. So we get hard questions. Complex question from MIT. I don't think this, I'm not sure if this addresses your question, but we are seeing some legislative efforts to get governments to have to disclose where grant money is going and do some analysis of whether that is a climate smart investment or not. And so it's just sort of like public right to know theme and where are tax dollars going? And if we're giving money to build structures in hazardous places, we want to know that. And also requirements in RFPs put out by government entities and specifying that climate change has to be a component of the proposal and you have to consider an X, Y and Z way. I think Alaina's right, we've seen it more on kind of the other side, which is you have to let us know whether or not you're considering climate change, not you have to consider it. And I want to just add that from Florida for many, many years we've had in our state planning law and it's required every local comprehensive plan that there be language included to the effect that we will not subsidize development in high hazard areas. Great language. Don't see implementation of it for the most part. And it's been there, like I said, in state and every local plan for decades. Let's see the implementation, then I'll be happy. I'm gonna ask our speakers to remain up here but I'd like to thank them all for their presentation and rather having them shuffle off and do concluding remarks, we'll just do them from here. We want to thank you all for coming out today, especially with our first snowstorm of the year. You guys are the strong and the mighty and you guys are the ones that made it through the entire day. We heard from some really amazing speakers about some really challenging issues and we're definitely not stopping this work and we hope that you aren't stopping it too. So we want you to know that we are here and we are resources in different capacities. You'll be getting a follow-up email from us that will have a link to our webpage with presentations from today from the speakers that wish to share them and also a link to the video. So if you missed the morning portion, you'll be able to see those presentations and please keep us in mind as you're moving forward with thinking about your climate adaptation and your resilience plans. I'd like to thank our co-sponsors, the Law School, Rhode Island Sea Grant and the Georgetown Climate Center, especially the Georgetown Climate Center for staying on all day. Thank you also to our two law student volunteers, Carly Romano and Cody Catterford going up and down with those microphones. And a big thank you to the team here at Roger Williams that really put this on. So Reed Porter, Melissa Shalik, and especially Sarah Matherson and Chelsea Horne who are not in the room right now. They're doing all the behind the scenes stuff here. And a big huge thank you to all of you for actually coming out and spending the day with us and thinking that the issues that we think are really, really important are really important to you as well. So with that, I have one other tiny little point which is that we noticed that there are a lot of Roger Williams Marine Affairs alums in the audience. So we'd like to invite you to a formal, an informal happy hour at Aden's at five o'clock tonight. Everybody else is welcome as well, but you're just gonna have to hear about how great our program is if you show up. And so with that, thank you so much for coming out. We really enjoyed the day.