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Plan For Sea Level Rise and Resiliency, Florida

05 • 03 • 2022

Plan For Sea Level Rise and Resiliency, Florida

Goal: To establish a statewide office of resiliency, develop comprehensive sea level rise and flood vulnerability data, and create a state resilience action plan for Florida's roadways.

Victory! On May 3, 2022 the governor signed CS/SB7053  Statewide Flooding and Sea Level Rise Resilience, establishing a statewide Office of Resilience and requiring a state resilience action plan for Florida's roads and comprehensive statewide flood vulnerability & sea level rise data set & assessment. 

Read the full bill text here

Surfrider Foundation strongly supported bills this session to counter the damage of climate change through resiliency planning for sea level rise through comments, delegate meetings, and advocacy. Many bills have been proposed but didn't make it through committee stops this time. We encourage some of these measures to be taken up next session.

Last session, the Governor signed a bill SB1954 in May 2021 for sea level rise and resiliency measures across the state. Several bills in the State Legislative session 2022 that Surfrider Foundation supported passed including SB 1940 (Brodeur) / HB 7053 Statewide Funding and Sea Level Rise Resilience. The bill created a cabinet position of the Office of Resilience and provided for the development of comprehensive tide and stormwater flooding data. 

Surfrider also supported HB 1019 Saltwater Intrusion Vulnerability Assessments and CS/SB 1238 Saltwater Intrusion Vulnerability Assessments (Polsky). The House version did not pass, but there is opportunity for components of these bills to be addressed by the newly established Office of Resilience. 

This resiliency bill would have:

  1. authorized the DEP to provide grants for saltwater intrusion vulnerability assessments
  2. required the department to update the comprehensive statewide flood vulnerability and sea level rise data set
  3. made certain information received from the saltwater intrusion vulnerability assessments available on its website
  4. required the department to provide cost-share funding up to a specified amount for awarded grants, etc.

Surfrider will continue to support strong resilience planning in Florida through rulemaking following the passage of this bill.