The Florida town that challenged Hurricane Ian and won

Excerpt from the Christian Science Monitor:

Across the state, there is a small but growing effort to build more resilient communities in Florida – an effort to shift a yearslong pattern of rapid development that many here say exacerbates water shortages and other environmental risks. Now, academics, policymakers, advocates, and developers are pointing to how Babcock Ranch fared during the hurricane as proof that in one of the country’s fastest growing states, there are practical reasons to build with greater attention to the environment, climate change, and water management – and that doing so may well prove economically beneficial in the long run.

“I was super happy to see that they came through Hurricane Ian so well,” says Jennison Kipp, a resource economist with the University of Florida and the state coordinator for Sustainable Floridians, a program that works to put sustainability research into practice across the state. “So much [of the challenge] is having proof of concept and trying to sell it to developers.”

Bulldozer, bougainvillea efficiency

For years, building in Florida has followed a pattern. With a constant flow of new homebuyers – an average of nearly 1,000 people move to Florida each day, according to oft-repeated state statistics – developers have tried to acquire as much land as possible, and as quickly as possible. That often means buying up faded ranches or long-ignored swaths of swamps and forest – green-covered lands that must be flattened and cleared to make way for housing developments and roads and shopping centers.

Indeed, to meet building codes that require homes to be graded above street level, developers will typically bulldoze the landscape, dig storm ponds, and then use the fill from those holes to prep building sites, explains Timothee Sallin, co-CEO of Cherrylake, a landscape company working across the Southeast that has become a leader in sustainable design.

Traditionally, developers would replant that denuded landscape with the types of species that outsiders tend to think about when they imagine Florida – green St. Augustine grass, colorful azaleas, draping bougainvillea. The problem, Mr. Sallin says, is that these plants aren’t native to the state, so they require a lot of inputs to stay healthy, such as water, fertilizer, and pesticides. They also struggle to thrive in soil devoid of organic material and nutrients.

“The developers have to mass grade a site to build efficiently and economically,” he says. “The most efficient thing to do is to raze it and bring in fill. But that creates soils that are difficult to work with.”

Meanwhile, because the natural topography of the land has been erased, and the natural water collection systems of wetlands and marshes eliminated, the man-made drainage system becomes the only way to capture water. This can be a problem in some storms – particularly those with unusually heavy rains thanks to climate change.

All of this, says Ms. Kipp, creates a system without resilience, suffering from both too much and too little water.

“The landscapes are on life support,” she says. 

Nowhere is this more apparent than in the center of the state. The counties around Orlando are some of the fastest growing in the country, according to U.S. Census data, attracting not only the normal collection of sun-seekers from the North, but also what are known inside Florida as “climate refugees” – people from southern coastal cities who have decided to leave rising sea levels and hurricane risks to move north and inland.

That has meant even more rapid development – as well as more extreme water shortages. According to the state’s central water authority, the region will face a 235 million gallon a day shortfall by 2035 unless demand and usage patterns change.

This is one of the reasons why when 27,000 acres of ranch land came up for development just south of Orlando – part of a 300,000 acre swath owned by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints – executives at the development company Tavistock decided to approach the project differently.

“At the end of the day, Florida is at a pivotal point when it comes to development in the state,” says Clint Beaty, senior vice president of operations for Tavistock and the lead on the Sunbridge project, a community that will eventually have some 36,000 homes. “You have to look at development differently.”

To plan Sunbridge, which is about two-thirds the size of Washington, D.C., Mr. Beaty and others at Tavistock coordinated with representatives from the University of Florida’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences, the Sustainable Floridians, and other groups. They came up with a plan to use native landscaping – even eschewing the popular St. Augustine grass for the more drought and heat resilient (although occasionally browner) Bahia grass. They are saving and relocating some of the old live oak trees on the property. All of the new homes will be wired for solar panels and electric vehicle plug-ins, and one model house version boasts Tesla solar shingles and a battery backup system.

Meanwhile, to help move away from fertilizers, scientists have built a living laboratory along a walking path at the development’s community center, called Basecamp, where they are testing the viability of different species of native plants as well as different sorts of compost amendments to soil and the impact on pollinator species. Mr. Beaty is also working to figure out how to arrange for large scale composting and food-waste recycling for the community.

All of this, says Ms. Kipp, marks a substantial change from what usually happens in Florida developments.

She acknowledges that perhaps the best thing for the environment – and for the resilience of the land – would be to never build on those 27,000 acres, to never cull the trees or disturb the topsoil. But she and others involved in sustainable building initiatives here say that for better or worse, development in Florida is going to happen. And the new willingness of developers to balance their work with ecological efforts is a huge win, she says, one that she and others hope will snowball as it proves popular with new residents.

“It’s only been in the last year that we’ve been successful in convincing a large scale developer to adopt different practices,” she says. “We think that there’s a significant chunk of new home buyers who would pay more for a home and community that is walking the talk and offering more connection to nature. With a yard that looks different but it brings more pollinators, and it’s quieter and you don’t have to mow it.”

And when these communities withstand heavier storms and prove more resilient, then, she says, there could be even more consumer demand, and more of a change.

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