Around him, the water on this otherwise ordinary Tuesday creeps over concrete sea walls and fills drainage ditches. It covers swaths of grass and swallows most of a nearby fire hydrant. It devours stretches of sidewalk and inches past dead and dying oak trees hung with Spanish moss, their leafless limbs an unmistakable sign of their roots’ constant exposure to saltwater.
In barely half an hour, it is a foot deep or more in places. The water has consumed hundreds of parking spots and created an obstacle course for anyone trying to navigate to the visitor’s center of the historic Battleship North Carolina, which for more than six decades has been anchored here, across the Cape Fear River from downtown Wilmington.
“This is climate change,” Bragg, the site’s executive director since 2009, says as he stands ankle deep in floodwaters that inch higher by the minute.
The hulking battleship behind him is many things: a floating museum and one of North Carolina’s most visited tourist sites; the most decorated U.S. battleship of World War II, with 15 battle stars; and an enduring memorial to the more than 11,000 North Carolinians who served and died in that war.
But its site on low-lying Eagles Island also faces serious peril from rising seas and constant inundation.
The museum’s leaders have documented a more than 7,000 percent increase in tidal flooding at the site since it opened to the public in 1961. The changes in the past decade or so alone have been dramatic. In 2011, the battleship site recorded about 20 flood events. By 2020, the property was flooding roughly half of the year. The trend that shows no signs of slowing.
In 2022, even though the battleship had nearly a quarter-million visitors and its most successful financial year ever, the site experienced nearly 200 days of flooding. Officials had to close it at times when the lone access road vanished underwater or visitors couldn’t safely navigate the salty lake that forms in front of the main entrance to the 35,000-ton warship.
“If I can’t sell tickets and provide parking, I can’t keep the battleship open,” Bragg said of the site, which is overseen by a state commission but receives no regular government appropriations for its operations.
Without some sort of intervention, there’s little doubt that the problem will become only more dire. The battleship sits 28 miles upstream from the Cape Fear River’s confluence with the Atlantic Ocean and about a half a mile from a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration tidal gauge that has been collecting water level data continuously since 1935.
In that time, its data shows, sea levels at that spot have risen roughly 9 inches, although the rate of rise has accelerated over the past decade. Scientists project that they could rise another foot by the middle of the century.
“You can see the change,” said Jenny Davis, a North Carolina-based research ecologist at the National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science, which is part of NOAA. “The number of flood events is only going to increase over time.”
Feeling an urgency to act — and knowing that only worse problems could be on the way — the site’s leaders decided several years ago that they did not want to try to hold back the rising waters.
Instead, they would look for a way to live with the changing landscape around them, even if that meant doing what many places are not willing to do: surrender land back to nature.
Awesome! This is leadership. I wonder where they move the exhibit to? A gigantic problem is how to move docks when tides get higher. As docks are usually at coasts where they are just above sea level.
2 comments
*WILMINGTON, N.C.*
Another [high tide,](https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2023/04/10/sea-level-rise-southern-us/?itid=lk_inline_manual_2) and retired Navy Capt. Terry Bragg wades from his office into a flooded parking lot in the rain boots he always keeps close at hand.
Around him, the water on this otherwise ordinary Tuesday creeps over concrete sea walls and fills drainage ditches. It covers swaths of grass and swallows most of a nearby fire hydrant. It devours stretches of sidewalk and inches past dead and dying oak trees hung with Spanish moss, their leafless limbs an unmistakable sign of their roots’ constant exposure to saltwater.
In barely half an hour, it is a foot deep or more in places. The water has consumed hundreds of parking spots and created an obstacle course for anyone trying to navigate to the visitor’s center of the historic Battleship North Carolina, which for more than six decades has been anchored here, across the Cape Fear River from downtown Wilmington.
“This is climate change,” Bragg, the site’s executive director since 2009, says as he stands ankle deep in floodwaters that inch higher by the minute.
The hulking battleship behind him is many things: a floating museum and one of North Carolina’s most visited tourist sites; the most decorated U.S. battleship of World War II, with 15 battle stars; and an enduring memorial to the more than 11,000 North Carolinians who served and died in that war.
But its site on low-lying Eagles Island also faces serious peril from rising seas and constant inundation.
The museum’s leaders have documented a more than 7,000 percent increase in tidal flooding at the site since it opened to the public in 1961. The changes in the past decade or so alone have been dramatic. In 2011, the battleship site recorded about 20 flood events. By 2020, the property was flooding roughly half of the year. The trend that shows no signs of slowing.
In 2022, even though the battleship had nearly a quarter-million visitors and its most successful financial year ever, the site experienced nearly 200 days of flooding. Officials had to close it at times when the lone access road vanished underwater or visitors couldn’t safely navigate the salty lake that forms in front of the main entrance to the 35,000-ton warship.
“If I can’t sell tickets and provide parking, I can’t keep the battleship open,” Bragg said of the site, which is overseen by a state commission but receives no regular government appropriations for its operations.
Without some sort of intervention, there’s little doubt that the problem will become only more dire. The battleship sits 28 miles upstream from the Cape Fear River’s confluence with the Atlantic Ocean and about a half a mile from a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration tidal gauge that has been collecting water level data continuously since 1935.
In that time, its data shows, sea levels at that spot have risen roughly 9 inches, although the rate of rise has accelerated over the past decade. Scientists project that they could rise another foot by the middle of the century.
“You can see the change,” said Jenny Davis, a North Carolina-based research ecologist at the National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science, which is part of NOAA. “The number of flood events is only going to increase over time.”
That is true for sites all [on the East Coast,](https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/interactive/2022/east-coast-sea-level-rise/?itid=lk_inline_manual_18) which face growing[ threats from sea-level rise](https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/interactive/2023/obx-rodanthe-erosion-rising-sea-levels/?itid=lk_inline_manual_18) and repeat flooding. But that’s where the Battleship North Carolina’s story diverges from that of some other spots confronting similar risks.
Feeling an urgency to act — and knowing that only worse problems could be on the way — the site’s leaders decided several years ago that they did not want to try to hold back the rising waters.
Instead, they would look for a way to live with the changing landscape around them, even if that meant doing what many places are not willing to do: surrender land back to nature.
**Read more:** [https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2024/01/01/battleship-north-carolina-sea-level-rise-flooding/?utm_campaign=wp_main&utm_medium=social&utm_source=reddit.com](https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2024/01/01/battleship-north-carolina-sea-level-rise-flooding/?utm_campaign=wp_main&utm_medium=social&utm_source=reddit.com)
Awesome! This is leadership. I wonder where they move the exhibit to? A gigantic problem is how to move docks when tides get higher. As docks are usually at coasts where they are just above sea level.
Thanks for posting the excerpt or extract.