By Louis Clausi
Aug. 11, 2024 – The storms cut across Savannah, the rain fall accumulates throughout the city. It gets extreme, houses fill quickly and mutilate living spaces. There aren’t enough roofers to eradicate the city-wide battle. Drivers steer their cars into a puddle far more substantial than their vehicle can handle. The Daffin Park pond breaches its walls, streams through the park and cascades over the curbs and across Victory Drive, creating a new little lake. Roads are impassable as waters rise and the threat of flooding increases for a city built on marsh, swamp, sand and silt.
Savannah has seen this before, but the threat seems to increase with each storm. Will anyone acknowledge that the bulldozing of the low country may play a part?
Word in the media and on the streets is that climate change is the cause.
That makes sense. Clear cutting our natural environment does factor in. Low country cities and counties have allowed for extensive clearings of the natural environment. Pay attention as you drive along I-16 and bear witness.
Decision makers around town and the developers set loose on the natural habitat need to recognize they are not victims but are a part of the cause.
Their actions play a direct role in bringing about climate change. Those decision makers are the same people that have also given permission to Chatham County’s paper mill to release higher emissions.
With new developments, one must build roads to accommodate the eager beavers moving on in.
This trend has been a constant since we entered the 2000s. Nature tumbles and the concrete jungles rise. Savannah has a very wealthy history, and it is no surprise that the trend continues.
Many residents would like to see this stop, or least put on pause, so there can be an assessment of what might be responsible for this “weather change.” Savannah ought to take a moment to assess our flooding situation and take action to get ahead of what can create a very problematic future. Maybe someone will be brave enough to step up and to hold themselves accountable for being a catalyst for this trend. Maybe they would be courageous enough to take responsibility.
That would be a human being with an abundance of integrity. Residents might even admire that person for taking responsibility and applaud them even more so if they would initiate -not just present- a plan to counter the loss of our natural buffers.
The weather is bound to get more extreme if we continue trading our natural environment for concrete.
This is a compounding issue that leaves the infrastructure well behind the growth.
Savannah has already seen a major increase in population since 2020 and there will be even more people that want to come and make the city their home. More people means more outflow into our sewer systems. Yet, the city has initiated minimal updates to that infrastructure to accommodate increased water waste.
Do you know of any upgrades that have been done to the sewer infrastructure?
Do new developers have any responsibility for playing a role in water waste infrastructure?
It seems that drainage is being put on the back burner.
It would serve the city well if they took time to clean out the sewers regularly to counteract leaf accumulation, or even more so, the incessant amount of trash that our citizens are willing to toss onto the ground. Increased budget set towards sewer, more time spent cleaning out drains, and teaching citizens how they can play a role in keeping drains clear,
Any of those actions in question would only serve to benefit the city and to battle against the recent flooding issues, because as of now it appears that we may just have to accept that flooding will be happening in town.
We always visualize the low country as flat terrain. With that perspective, flooding appears to be a problematic issue, but we miss something important – we are not on totally flat land. The affected areas carried one constant; they were all at the end of slightly sloped areas. Water follows gravity and gravity carries water downhill. This is what has been happening.
Now of course we can reflect on the amounts of rain we are experiencing and maybe that does tie into global climate change, but what will not change is that water will flow downhill.
We need to note the areas that experienced flooding and be proactive in making sure that water flow is not impeded. We must be certain that strains in those areas receive extra special attention and that they stay cleared, especially when it isn’t raining.
According to the city’s website, by 2025, “the City of Savannah will experience a 5% reduction in street flooding resulting from a 25-year-rain event (4.9” inches of rain within a 2-hour period)”.
Hopefully, this will be an issue we can address long before we are all washed away.
Louis Clausi is a local musician, handyman and weaver of tales as host of WRUU’s That Old Savannah Magic. You can find him in a spray-paint covered car cruising the city streets with all the life tools one needs in the trunk.