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Comment by nicholasbraker | Hacker News Reader

The reason why we had something like the Delta works was due to a 12 Bft storm hitting our shores in 1953. This infrastructure is built to withstand these kind of storms and protect the land from flooding. The protections in place (movable doors in storm surge barriers etc.) are used a few times the last decades when storms did hit our shores. I don't know if this is useable in the Florida context. It's easy to say whenever a big hurricane hits the Florida shore: "Yeah, just ask the Dutch to fix this.." And I am sure some smart guys from our tech universities can pull it off, but you need money and political will. And it literally takes decades to built it.

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Also, you need a place to build the dike. Look at a map of Miami, for example, and tell me where you want to build a dike. In front of Miami Beach? And how far does it go? All the way up the coast? There's 120 miles of continuous city on the Atlantic Coast. Also, the land is all very porous sand on top of porous coral. Even if you build a dike out of clay and concrete, water will still seep in from below. This is already happening at high tide.

Already happening at high ride? That is not a new phenomenon even though it is played up as as such.

Places like St Augustine, Fl or Alexandria, VA; and, although not a city, even Jamestown, Va all have records of regular flooding since their establishment centuries ago and well before the Industrial Revolution during strong king tides when you get a confluence of effects like the moon and the sun’s tidal forces amplifying each other, rains have swelled waterways and saturated ground, and the fact that they are situated and basically at water level. I’ve experienced it personally in a few places, ands considering that those places built a long time ago clearly have structures built to accommodate strong king tides is an indicator to me that they knew it happens every once and a while even before the Industrial Revolution.

Usually low-lying areas protected by dikes also deploy large pumps to pump out water that does get in. My guess is that it would be cost prohibitive to keep on pumping the water back out of Miami in 2075, but that is just a guess. There are probably people who know for sure, and it would be nice to read what they have to say.

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