 All right, guys, we're going to get started. Please have a seat. Welcome back from lunch. It's great to see that there are so many conversations going on. I'm glad that everybody got a chance to connect over lunch. We're now going to turn to our co-sponsors, the Georgetown Climate Center, to walk us through some opportunities for institutionalizing resilience approaches and local laws, ordinances, regulations, and policies with a focus on strategies for facilitating retreat. We have them here up virtually, and we have tested the system, so everything is going to work smoothly, I know. Jessica Granis is the adaptation program director for Georgetown Climate Center and is a staff attorney and adjunct professor at the Harrison Institute for Public Law at Georgetown University School of Law. Jessica oversees staff and student research and analysis of federal, state, and local adaptation efforts. Prior to joining the Harrison Institute, she was the staff counsel for the California State Coastal Conservancy and the Ocean Protection Council. She holds a BA from the University of Chicago, a JD cum laude from University of California Hastings College of Law, and an LLM with honors from Georgetown Law. Joining Jessica is Katie Spidliari, an Institute associate at the Georgetown Climate Center, where she provides legal and policy analysis on adaptation projects at the federal, state, and local levels. Her work focuses on adaptation in the coastal sector, including evaluating land use and other tools and strategies, such as managed retreat, to adapt to rising seas and flooding. Prior to joining the Climate Center, Katie worked at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and state environmental agencies in Maryland and North Carolina. Katie graduated magna cum laude with a JD from Cleveland Marshall College of Law and the University of Virginia, where she received two degrees with distinction in history and an interdisciplinary environmental thought and practice program. So welcome, Jessica and Katie. Thank you all. I'm sorry we didn't make it. The travel gods were not with us. So we're sad that we're not there in person with everybody, but glad that the Marine Affairs Institute and Roger Williams are so resilient and adaptable that they were able to pipe us in with them. But we are going to be talking about the happy solution side of the house today after all of the scary talk about liability early this morning. We're going to talk about what you can do about it. But for those of you who are not familiar with the Georgetown Climate Center, we are an institute based at Georgetown Law School. We tend to be lawyers and policymakers. And we were created by the states to be a resource for the states on climate policy, both preparing for the impacts of climate change, adaptation, and also reducing the greenhouse gas pollutants that cause climate change or mitigation. We provide legal and policy support to state and local governments to help them address the legal and policy considerations they need to navigate to implement solutions on the ground. And you've heard a lot today about the impacts of climate change and sea level rise. So I'm not going to belabor that. But these pictures of flooded communities and damaged infrastructure and eroded landscapes are all becoming all too common. We're seeing more and more of these impacts, more severe storms hitting our shores and flooding our communities. In addition to those storms, the future also has impacts in store as well. In the Northeast region, you're looking at an additional 71% chance of extreme heavy rainfall events, according to the last National Climate Assessment. You're also looking at more intense heat waves. This is a low emission scenario where you're likely to see three to four additional degrees of average temperatures. And that is much more bleak under a high emission scenario where you're looking at upwards of eight to 10 degrees change in average temperatures. And that means more heat waves. For example, in Boston, they're estimating that by the end of the century, they're going to experience 90 days over 90 degrees as compared to 10 days currently. So that is pretty scary. The other thing that we're going to see more of is more flooding because of the sea level rise projections that are in store. These are the sea level rise projections from the last National Climate Assessment. And as you can see, that we are on the low end of that trajectory that's only going to get worse into the future. And what we do on mitigation is going to drastically affect how much more sea level rise we see in the future. This climate assessment estimated between 0.7 to 6.6 feet of additional sea level rise by 2100, but more recent updated numbers are looking at rapid ice sheet melt scenarios that have projections up to 9 or 10 feet of additional sea level rise. And so this is old maps of the Northeast coast that look at what would be inundated with 1 meter of sea level rise, a little over 3 feet of sea level rise. And that's a large portion of the coast. And it doesn't account for what happens in those big storm events where you get storm surge on top of additional sea level rise. Hey, Jessica, I'm going to interrupt you for a second. We're actually not seeing your slides. We're seeing that very first slide. Can you try to? I know it was working before. OK. Maybe go now to the slide that you're on. Now we can see them. OK. So this is 1 meter of sea level rise along the Northeast coast. And then we also talked about some of the legal aspects in terms of the National Flood Insurance Program, but just to put a finer point on how difficult it will be to adapt to those increasing rates of sea level rise. This is a flood insurance rate map for Shadyside, Maryland. The area in blue shows what's currently in their 100-year flood plain. So this is where homeowners will have to design their structures to be more resilient to flooding and carry flood insurance in case they are impacted. And this is what the state projects will be permanently inundated with 5 to 10 feet of sea level rise. So if you look back, you'll recognize that all of the people in that white area are going to have structures that are not built to withstand flooding. And they're not going to be carrying flood insurance because they're not required to for the most part. And so at a local level, this makes it particularly challenging to adopt flood plain regulations that account for these future increasing risks of flooding that we're going to be seeing in our communities and are already seeing today. And that is because the flood insurance rate maps that we use for regulatory purposes are based on historical data alone. And in many cases, that data is decades out of date. So what do we do about it? In the coastal context, we talk about three different strategies for preparing for impacts. You can take your protection approach, which is building your seawalls and your levees to keep floodwaters out. And this is traditionally used in denser developed areas where you have a lot of tax base to support these big infrastructure projects to keep floodwaters out. In less dense development areas, you have the accommodation approach or the house on stilts. So you elevate structures so that floodwaters don't damage them as much during these extreme events. And then there's the retreat approach. So moving, relocating, development out of harm's way, enhancing natural systems to provide natural flood buffers. And Katie's going to talk more about what those retreat options look like. When thinking about your types of solutions, it's important to recognize that there are a couple, lots of legal questions that local governments in particular need to ask to determine whether or not they can implement something. So the first question is authority. What authority do you have at the local level to zone and plan to implement different adaptation options? Where has the state agencies taken over those rules and that no longer gets regulated at the local level? Actions have to comply with a variety of different state laws, including state coastal management programs, floodplain requirements, wetland regulations, historic preservation requirements. It has to also comply with federal laws, so the National Flood Insurance Program, Clean Water Act requirements, the Americans with Disabilities Act, and then you have your constitutional questions. So will this regulation impose a taking on private property? Does it comport with substantive due process requirements that requires teachers be implemented? And in the coastal context in particular, it gets very tricky because you have three layers of entities regulating. So in the upland, you have local governments regulating through floodplain ordinances and zoning ordinances. In that intertidal area, you also have state agencies that have a regulatory role through coastal management laws and wetlands laws. And then in your open ocean and wet beach area, you also have a federal role through Clean Waters Act, Rivers and Harpers Act. And they also affect what we can do along the shore, including things like living shorelines and hard armoring protection projects. So what does that look like in our cartoon village? So in the accommodation area where you're using that House on Stilts approach to common regulatory barriers that crop up our historic preservation laws that don't let you make visible exterior changes to a structure. So it can be very difficult to elevate or change a historic structure. The Americans with Disabilities Act also requires that public structures remain accessible to people with disabilities. So you can't have a structure that requires stairs to enter. You need to think about elevators and ramps and other ways to access those elevated structures. Clean Water Act can limit what you can do in terms of armoring and living shorelines. And then in the retreat context, that's where you come into challenges with taking law and grandfathering provisions of coastal management. Statutes often require local governments to allow existing uses to be rebuilt, even if they're damaged in a storm event. So it's very difficult for local governments to phase out existing development where that development is protected by grandfathering provisions. And then you have the policy considerations. So in your retreat zone, hard armoring is costly to build. It needs to be designed with future sea level rise, which only increases the cost. And it also has environmental impacts to coastal ecosystems. And as Thomas was pointing out, oftentimes, that armoring can be overtopped. And it can exacerbate the damage that you see in the event of these large events, like we saw in New Orleans after Katrina when the levee system failed. On the policy considerations for your retreat zone, here we're dealing with issues of social displacement. So if you're buying out communities, what happens to those communities? Do they lose their social networks and their community that helps them maintain their lives and livelihoods? But there are environmental benefits that can be achieved through retreat policies. You can restore and enhance those natural floodplains. So just to truncate this social displacement environmental benefits from retreat, but public acceptance needs to be a strategy designed with community in concert with community and not a top-down approach. So the good news is that there is action happening at the state and local level. The blue states here are states that have comprehensive statewide adaptation plans. This is from our state adaptation tracker, and then we've updated it to include Rhode Island. So you guys should be dark blue on our new map. This is old. And then the black dots are local governments that have adaptation plans. And then the light blue states are those that have some planning that is happening at the state level. And we're gonna talk about some innovative local examples of state and local governments that are doing things to prepare for the impacts of climate change. So at the local level, planning. Planning is an important first step to understanding what your risks are and developing the strategy that you want to take to prepare your community for impacts. This is the city of Baltimore's hazard mitigation plan where they did a combined hazard mitigation plan and adaptation plan and identified strategies for not only addressing sea level rise and flooding, but also addressing stormwater overflow flooding and inland flooding, as well as urban heat islands, which is a big risk for them. Some of their recommendations include increasing urban tree canopy, increasing the resilience of critical infrastructure, and using the 500 year flood plan to make decisions about the development and design of buildings. And they implemented that approach. So when they received revised flood plain maps in 2011, their revised flood plain maps actually shrunk their flood plain and it took areas out of their flood plain that would be subject that were no longer subject to flood insurance or flood plain regulations that areas that had flooded during Hurricane Isabel. So what they did to hold that old line was extend flood plain regulations to the 500 year flood plain. And as a result of that effort and other efforts that they took in terms of preserving open space and enhancing green infrastructure to manage stormwater, they were able to enter the community rating system that Dina was talking about earlier and entered as a class five community, rewarding them with I believe 20% discounts, maybe 25% discounts on insurance premiums for residents and businesses in their community, which is huge for a densely developed older urban city like Baltimore that's relatively unheard of. They're the first. Also in Norfolk, Virginia, they used planning as a tool and what they did was took a longer planning timeframe. So rather than the standard 30 year planning timeframe that many comprehensive plans use, they looked out to 2100. And they also use this as a way to think about how they want to shift development patterns to address future sea level rise. So this map shows how they designated different areas in Norfolk. The red are their economic engine areas where the port is and the base military bases. And these are areas where they wanna build up, densify and protect because they know these are their critical economic assets. The yellow areas are their adapt or accommodate zones where they wanna limit major investment to reduce development pressure, but also help their landowners recoup the value that they're going to lose in their land to the water and educate those property owners about what future sea level rise holds for their investments. The green areas are new urban development areas. These are their high and dry corridors. And this is where they want to invest and drive future growth in the region. In the purple areas are areas that are currently underdeveloped where they also could benefit from better connections to transit and other areas where they could build future communities that will be more resilient to flooding. And similarly, Norfolk took action to implement these recommendations from their plan. They recently adopted through a zoning ordinance change or resilience quota system to help the city enhance the resilience of the built environment. And the way that the zoning ordinance works is that it requires construction in the 100 year flood plain to have three feet be elevated three feet above the base flood elevation. And also requires that construction in the 500 year flood plain be elevated or flood proof to 1.5 feet above the 500 year elevation. They created a coastal resilience overlay zone to include additional provisions to reduce stormwater runoff through stormwater infiltration requirements. And they created an upland resilience overlay areas outside of flood hazard areas where they want to encourage redevelopment that creates transit oriented walkable bikeable communities. And then the quotient system depending on the size of the development they have to earn a certain number of credits to receive a permit. And you can earn credits in different categories like risk reduction. So rewarding things like elevating mechanical equipment or using impact resistant construction. They can earn credits for energy resilience measures like installing onsite solar and backup power. And then stormwater management strategies like green roofs or pervious paving systems native vegetation and trees. Boston has a similar approach through their adaptation checklist where large scale new development is required to assess potential impacts from sea level rise and other climate change impacts and then install measures to reduce risks from those climate change scenarios. And this is a spalding hospital which was built before the checklist provisions were put in place but demonstrates what you can do at a site level to prepare a structure for future impacts. So this hospital includes things like locating critical equipment on the roof. It's elevated to the 100 year floodplain but based upon sea level rise projections out to 2085. It has operable windows so that if power goes out you can maintain cooling in this building by opening the windows. And then it also includes landscaping features like berms in the landscaping that dampen storm surge and green roofs that provide insulation and manage stormwater. Another example of our more rural community a smaller community. This is Durham, New Hampshire and they created an advisory climate risk area which is shown here in pink. And these are the areas outside of flood hazard areas or the 100 year floodplain that have risks of flooding given future sea level rise scenarios for Durham. And in those areas they're not requiring any additional flood resilience measures but they are advising that new development and redevelopment in these areas incorporate flood resilient design standards. And so they'll use this as a way to educate and work with homeowners and developers to help them understand what their flood risks are and how they can implement building measures to reduce risks. Some local governments are raising revenues to help them implement projects to reduce flood risks. So this is a measure AA that they passed in the nine County San Francisco Bay Area where they assessed a $12 per year parcel tax to support marsh restoration and coastal adaptation projects. It was approved with 70% of the vote and it will generate 25 million annually they estimate and 500 million over 20 years. And then the District of Columbia is doing a lot to implement green stormwater management approaches to reduce urban drainage flooding from those more heavy rainfall events and green infrastructure also helps reduce urban heat islands. So they have a stormwater credit trading system in the district. So they have stormwater retention standards that if you're building or redeveloping you have to retain 1.2 inches of rain on a site. And if you can't retain on site you can purchase credits through a stormwater credit trading system for 50% of that retention which creates monetary incentive for other landowners to go above and beyond the retention standards on their own site and then use the money they can gain on the market to maintain and keep those systems functional. But local governments as we've heard are not in this alone state government has a role to support and fund and help them take this action these actions that they need to take. And some examples of where states are intervening is in California they recognize that local governments need the data and tools and other examples of jurisdictions that are taking action to help local governments understand what their risks are and develop strategies to adapt. So they have the Cal Adapt tool which is a one stop portal where local governments can find the data and resources and science and assessments that have been completed for the state to help local governments take action. In Maryland they are getting their own house in order by setting the CoSmart construction guidelines that require that any state investments in infrastructure or facilities be designed with sea level rise in mind. And these inform local investments as well to the extent that local governments are using state funds to implement a project. And some of the counties in the eastern shore are looking at the CoSmart rules as a guideline for changing how they do capital improvement planning so that they're factoring in future sea level rise as they do capital improvement planning. In Connecticut after Hurricane Sandy they had bond funding that they used to set up the shore up Connecticut program that provided low interest loans to homeowners to help them elevate above the base flood elevation and retrofit their homes to accommodate future flood risk. In Hawaii they're using a hotel tax to pay for beach restoration and shoreline enhancements to reduce flood risk. And in Iowa after their catastrophic flooding in 2008 they set up a flood mitigation program that uses sales tax revenues to fund flood mitigation projects and one of the projects they implemented this is Cedar Falls that has catastrophic flooding and Cedar Rapids, sorry, that had catastrophic flooding in 2008 and the flood mitigation program funded buyouts and a greenway restoration project in the city to reduce future flood risk and create recreational amenities along the stream. Another thing that local governments can consider is developing disaster recovery plans. So thinking about what you want your community to look like after a disaster hits and when you have those federal dollars coming your way to help you implement mitigation and adaptation projects. And this is an example of a project that was funded through the National Disaster Resilience Competition and Rebuild by Design in Bridgeport, Connecticut where they took a systems wide look at their community and thought about infrastructure and assets and vulnerable populations and how they could implement a variety of different projects that could work together to enhance community resilience. So everything from elevating roads to make sure that there's access out of these communities during storm events to living shorelines and burns to keep floodwaters out to resilient hubs to make sure that people that are left behind have a place to go to support emergency services and recovery efforts. And there were a whole series of projects that were through the Rebuild by Design competition that show what you can do in the aftermath of a disaster to take a more system approach. And it's showing that our internet connection is unstable again, so I'm hoping we don't lose you. But Katie's gonna take it over now so I'll talk to you about retreat. That's what I think, Jessica. And hello, everyone. I'm Katie Spilieri as Julia did a wonderful job of pronouncing my last name. We're gonna take a more focused look now at some options that local governments can explore for looking at managed retreat as one strategy to adapt to sea level rise. That's not to say that it's the only or always the preferred option, but it's becoming more and more of a hot topic and a necessity in some communities, particularly as additional sea level rise projections and flooding is becoming more available in addition to more frequent and intense natural disasters that we're experiencing on both coasts. So I'm gonna start by looking at some tools that local governments can consider to implement retreat in their own jurisdictions. And then from there, we'll look at some legal policy considerations that should be part of sort of a holistic decision-making process to promote sort of bottom-up community-engaged processes that also incorporate other factors like ecosystems that should be taken into account. So one of the main strategies that people can use is local governments can incorporate adaptation measures like retreat into their comprehensive plans. Resilient Edgemere is one example of those. Resilient Edgemere is a small urban community in New York City on a barrier island in the Rockways in Jamaica Bay. Prior to Hurricane Sandy, the city was looking at investments in Edgemere to try and do things with a lot of vacant land the city owned and also to encourage economic development. After Hurricane Sandy, those challenges were exacerbated by storm surge and other impacts from Hurricane Sandy. So the city worked with the community in a bottom-up process over the course of two years to flesh out what this community's vision would be for Edgemere. There are multiple components to the plan, but managed retreat does factor into that. If you look at the difference between the short-term and long-term visions at the bottom, you'll see that as a result of the longer-term vision for Edgemere, the city would like to buy out approximately 16 acres near the shoreline, working with homeowners to incentivize their movement into vacant land that the city owns into higher areas that are less vulnerable in the city and then turn the coastal area into open space so that way residents throughout the community can have a closer access and benefit of being near the water. But in addition, the open space along the coast wall, also reduce flood risk for the entire community. The city would seek to accomplish this by creating a hazard mitigation zone overlay district and then once voluntary or if voluntary property biodes occurred in that zone, then they would put deed restrictions on the land to prevent future residential development in that area. Jessica mentioned some state buyout programs, but Charlotte Mecklenburg County in North Carolina has an innovative local buyout program. If you see it, you can compare the images on the left and the right over a nine-year period. This area experienced three significant floods and as a result of that spent $15 million to conduct a series of voluntary biodes in the flood plain. One of the most unique features of the buyout program is that the city doesn't just rely on federal disaster recovery dollars to be able to buy out these properties, but they also have leveraged local stormwater fees to be able to do this. So this has been official because they can be proactive with buyouts when they're interested homeowners and also be able to reach out to homeowners that are ineligible for buyouts based on sort of requirements from the federal emergency management agency. This program has shown that with the $15 million that the city put into things, there have been estimates that future flood damages would have cost up to 400% times the 15 million that they put into it. So it's showing to be a good return on investment in addition to enhancing green space and other recreational amenities in the flood plain. So those are two strategies that local governments can consider to acquire vulnerable development, but retreat doesn't just consider what you can do with what's already there, but how you can proactively plan to limit development or redevelopment in vulnerable areas. In Hawaii, the island has one of the most stringent setback requirements in the nation. The county relied on a scientific-based erosion study to be able to cross the setback line so that way development couldn't move seaward as a result of the baseline. The baseline is set by erosion-based limits, as I mentioned, and there's a minimum 40 feet setback from that baseline in addition to either 70 to 100 times the annual erosion rate depending on a building's footprint. In Massachusetts, as was mentioned earlier this morning, there are opportunities for overlay districts to place additional restrictions on development in areas that are vulnerable to sea-level rise and other climate-induced threats. Although they're a little bit different, both Chatham and Oak Bluffs in Massachusetts have overlay districts included in their local ordinances to prevent residential development from occurring in the 100-year flood plain, and only limited uses like recreational activities are allowed and also coastal-dependent uses like ports that require a special use permit. All right, moving from the tools into different legal and policy considerations that should be a part of a holistic managed retreat, decision-making process or program, one of the biggest that we've seen today is the need for local governments to consider potential takings liability, whether they're acquiring new development or limiting, acquiring old development, limiting new or redevelopment. So I'm not going to spend too much time going into some of the facts that we already talked about today. Here, again, one of the biggest things that comes into play are regulatory takings, whether you're depriving a property of all economically viable uses or whether you're sort of restricting a person's uses based on sort of that Penn-Central three-part test. But I think the biggest takeaway is that as governments craft these strategies, while there's a low threshold for plaintiffs to be able to bring a takings claim, generally, and again, it's going to depend on jurisdictions, there is sort of a higher bar that plaintiffs have to be able to prove for taking so governments may be a plus libel so long as there's a legitimate public interest served by the action that they're taking and there's a reasonable connection to the restriction that they're placing on the plaintiff's property and ultimately the outcome they're trying to get. Another big area of law that affects managed retreat is receding sea levels rise in the coastal area as local governments need to consider state coastal zone management programs and see how the two can sort of align to support local action. This past year, Rhode Island passed the nation's first ever shoreline change special area management plan or beach stamp. And the idea with this plan is to account for climate change impacts facing the coast in Rhode Island and provide guidance and tools to local governments to be able to plan for it, particularly through the permitting of development projects so that way applicants are aware of the risks that they may be encountering. The SAM includes managed retreat or relocation as an option that developers and local governments should be aware of although it doesn't prescribe or elevate one adaptation option over another. It encourages people to think about this proactively as they're creating site plans or planning what they're going to do on a particular property and maybe consider relocating out of areas that will be exposed to sea level rise or if you're creating and installing infrastructure designing for the lifespan of that infrastructure over the longer term and not just a short term. At the local level, the island of Lanai in Hawaii we're moving from a special area management plan to a special management area where the boundaries of the special management areas in Hawaii according to their coastal program are endowed with enhanced restrictions based on trying to protect the coastal environment and the tourism that it brings to the state. This past year Lanai updated its special management area for the first time since the 1970s to include impacts from tsunamis, sea level rise and also coastal erosion to ensure that these areas are getting increased management attention and efforts. All right, so we've been talking a lot about the different types of development tools local governments can use, but there isn't sort of just a hard non-living component managed retreat strategies as Jessica alluded to also impact ecosystems and humans. So we're going to take sort of a look at how managed retreat considerations can factor into the living element of these. Coastal ecosystems in response to sea level rise are being impacted by a phenomenon known as coastal squeeze where sea level rise and other coastal hazards are moving sea, landward and development can be moving seaward. So coastal ecosystems like marshes that are unable to adapt to these changes are often getting degraded or being completely lost. In the state of Florida, this legislature passed a law that basically allowed local governments to include what are called adaptation action areas and their comprehensive plans which are essentially overlay districts that will focus on increased planning, investments and attention to areas that are impacted by sea level rise. In the state, traditionally a lot of the examples of adaptation action areas being implemented have been used to look at sort of impacts to infrastructure, but in the town of Yankee town they've taken a different approach. Yankee town is a small rural community on the coast of Florida and they sort of pride themselves on and they are well known for their salt marshes and also their forests there. As the community has witnessed impacts to and loss of those ecosystems, they added to their comprehensive plan what's termed a natural resource adaptation action area which basically allows the city to one, take a look at sort of prioritizing and potentially acquiring inland areas to facilitate the inland migration of these habitats so they won't be lost and two, to take a closer look at development that would be permitted in areas where the ecosystems would be migrating so that they would either not permit development or development that would be permitted there would be more restricted and still allow for these ecosystems to migrate. So for instance, buildings could be elevated or they could be movable. From ecosystem component to humans, the concept of esteemed communities is basically a broad based term to describe the areas to which people may be relocating. So the areas to which people may be relocating could be like as Jessica mentioned with Norfolk, areas that are sort of prioritized for higher density within a given city. They could be a neighboring city or region but as we've seen with migrations after natural disasters this year and even Hurricane Maria and Puerto Rico, people aren't necessarily even going to stay in the same state and maybe relocating elsewhere. So the idea of receiving communities is just that people are relocating to somewhere away from the coast. In Louisiana, that state is facing the greatest rate of coastal land loss in the country and as a part of different efforts to address this issue, the state partnered with the Nonprofit Foundation for Louisiana to create the Louisiana Safe or Louisiana Strategic Adaptations for Future Environments Program. At a high level, the state used disaster recovery funding to create a community-based bottom-up approach to look at development and six affected parishes who are facing the greatest threat of land loss and try to work with the communities to, one, educate them about the coastal threats they're facing as a result of climate change and two, seek their input to inform 10 pilot projects that the government would fund in higher ground receiving areas to try and promote more resilient development. Pilot projects in higher ground receiving areas included things like resilient housing prototypes with energy efficient systems to economic development incubators to try and educate people about different job skills in the community. So if they move from one area to another, they could still have the potential to get non-coastal job skills. This map, just to take a quick look at it, looks at census data from 2000 to 2010. And essentially you'll look at the red areas along the coast, which are the most vulnerable, losing population and the green areas further inland to where they've been migrating. All right, while the Louisiana State Model is a broad-scale sort of community engagement project, other local governments are confronting the question of manager sheet and how to just even engage communities in those discussions and start those discussions. Briefly, New Hampshire is sort of piloting some different community engagement models to talk to people about managed retreat. The state coastal management program, along with the non-profit Seabourg Hamptons Estuary Alliance, worked with the community of Hampton to in general, sort of explore the subject of adaptation more broadly through a series of workshops. And one innovative part of this community engagement strategy was to ask residents opinions about a buyout or managed retreat program so that way they could inform potential actions at the local level if the local government Hampton decides to take on a managed retreat program or more broadly hazard mitigation or adaptation plan. Looking at this slide briefly, you can see that in general, the strongly agrees respondents and agrees respondents in pink and purple and yellow. Basically the community respondents to this survey agreed that buyout or managed retreat programs could be useful in preventing recurring development that is occurring in these vulnerable areas and being damaged and help with property and health and safety issues. But they have concerns or questions about how buyout or managed retreat programs could affect local tourism or tax bases. And last but certainly not least, any adaptation strategy used to have the necessary funding to be able to plan for and implement it. While a lot of tools and ideas in this area are funded in especially buyouts by post disaster recovery dollars, some states and local governments are taking the lead on providing proactive sources of funding. This was mentioned earlier on this past year, Massachusetts passed a $2.4 trillion bill that funds a variety of things in addition to pass the law, in addition to other things that funds the state's municipal vulnerability or program or MVP program that provides technical and funding assistance to local governments to look at creating climate vulnerability assessments and adapting to climate change. And already there are some municipalities along the coast that have identified managed retreat as a strategy that they'd like to consider. Really? Oh, really. We can stop there. Yeah, okay. We can stop there. I think we're running out of time, but if you want to find any of these examples, you could find them on our adaptation clearing house where many of these are captured and you can figure out, find the primary source materials talking about these policies and tools. All right, we do have a couple of minutes for questions and I'm gonna stay up at the mic in case Jessica and Katie, you can't hear the questions, although they have microphones as well and then I will repeat the questions if you can't hear them. So let me know if you can hear them. So do we have any questions for Jessica and Katie? No questions. We've bored people to tears. I don't think so. I think they just have received a lot of information. All right, well, if there's no questions, what we're gonna do now is break into, well, first of all, let's thank Jessica and Katie. Thank you. We're going to break into our breakout groups and Cody's gonna grab my agenda and hand it to me. And I'm gonna tell you what room the breakout groups are in and I'm gonna let you guys know what rooms they're in and we do have about an even divide based on what you said, so feel free to go to whatever room interests you. In room 286, which is through these doors, it's one of those classrooms opposite this wall, we're gonna have integrating adaptation into state and local plans and that is the group that Jessica and Katie were originally scheduled to lead and they are going to be virtually in there but we are having Deanna and Deena lead that group in person in addition to having them in the room. In the room right next door to it, we have 285 institutionalizing resilience and ordinances and codes. We have Reed and Elena are gonna be leading that group. And then in 262, which is right opposite, right where you guys had lunch, it's the room opposite here, we have legal aspects of adapting infrastructure and you can find Thomas and Melissa leading that group. So please go on into your groups and we're gonna meet back here at four o'clock. Thank you.