Living Shoreline Campaign on St. Pete Beach
By Hanna Panagrossi & Zoe McGrath
Why Did We Do it?
As residents of St. Petersburg, Florida, we recognize that our white sand beaches and crystal clear ocean are some of the biggest draws to tourists and people looking to move to the area. We also recognize as a seaside town, we are going to experience some of the fastest and most devastating effects of sea level rise brought on by climate change. We felt that it was our responsibility, as residents, to advocate for the protection and preservation of our beach town. With that, we embarked on this campaign with the hope to enact change strong enough to keep our town safe enough for future generations to enjoy.
What is a Living Shoreline?
Sea level has been increasing at about 3.3 mm each year in since the early 1990s. The rising sea level can largely be attributed to increasing global temperatures; the warmer temperatures cause thermal expansion of the water and are melting land ice which adds input to the sea level. Different projections place the amount of sea level rise to increase by the year 2100 anywhere from 30 cm to 180cm. Recent research has shown that living shorelines could be an important tool for protecting our shorelines. Living shorelines are a unique way to mitigate sea level rise. A living shoreline is a protected and stabilized coastal edge typically made up of natural materials like oysters, mangroves, sand, or rock. Most living shorelines will be a hybrid shoreline. This means the shoreline will be made up of a combination of man made materials, like concrete domes and a natural material. Living shorelines provide a number of benefits like absorbing the impact of waves from storm surge, mitigation of flooding. They also provide a number of ecosystem services like water filtration and nursery habitats for juvenile fish and crustacean. In Florida, we are especially vulnerable to the consequences of sea level rise which is why this technique could be so useful here. We have already seen implementation of living shorelines in the Tampa Bay area which is why we believe it is an important tool that could be used around St. Pete Beach.
Our Goal:
Get the City Of St. Pete Beach Parks and Recreation to agree to move forward with plans to build a living shoreline on the bayside of the beach before 2026.
Course Concepts:
We focused on the idea of reframing the climate message in a lot of our communication. A lot of the climate communication we see is inherently negative and in class we have discussed the importance of using more positive framing with these issues. We followed a pattern of turning from a sacrifice framing to opportunity framing. This way this played out in our message is that we wanted to focus on all the benefits of a living shoreline including, sea level rise, red tide and storm surge mitigation rather than what we would lose to sea level rise. We also wanted to refocus the message from cost to insurance; although these kinds of projects can be very expensive we are investing and taking precautions to protect our area for the future.
Our Process:
Our original goal was to get the City of St. Petersburg to commit to building a living shoreline down by the beach. We reached out to Barbara Stallberg with the City of St. Petersburg, to talk about this goal. In doing so, she let us know that the City of St. Pete is not responsible for construction at the beach but that the City of St. Pete Beach Parks and Recreation is. Mrs.Stallberg did let us know that St. Pete just completed a living shoreline project at Lassings Park using oysters and ocean-safe domes. They are working on three more projects around St. Petersburg. That’s when we decided to shift our goal to directly address the City of St. Pete Beach Parks and Recreation. Armed with the knowledge from Mrs.Stallberg we reached out to Mandy, with the City of St. Pete Beach Parks and Recreation. She did not respond so we left her a message. We introduced ourselves as local students looking to gain more information about any future plans to construct a shoreline at the beach. We also let her know that we would like to discuss this project with her at her convenience. We did not get a return call. After several days of researching who we should contact next, we came across the email for the City Manager, Alex Rey. We sent him an email once again explaining who we are, why we’re concerned, and why we think this project is important. We received an “out of office” reply. In our email, we tried to frame our argument using the opportunity frame and insurance frame. Since we are talking with city officials, we felt it was important to use these tactics to prove that while a living shoreline may be a small financial investment, they will be able to compensate for that investment by gaining a spike in ecotourism, mitigating any costly damages due to flooding, and deterring loss of land from ongoing sea level rise. We really wanted to drive home the point that “Without our beaches we have nothing”. After even more rejections to respond, we reached out the Brandon Berry, the Senior Planner at Parks and Recreation, and Jennifer McMahon, Director of the Community Center at St.Pete Beach. We sent the same email to both of these individuals, but this time we included a date we expect a response (see correspondence 1). Luckily, we received quick responses. Ms.McMahon let us know that they are looking into a living shoreline but it is likely there will not be plans for “several years” (see response 2). Mr.Berry referred us to Maryellen Edwards, another Senior Planner who is working directly on their living shoreline project (see response 1). We sent her an email (see correspondence 2) and are awaiting a response. Attached to this email was our petition (see petition 1 & 2 for examples). We collected around 30 signatures. Within this petition was a chance to leave a comment. We got an overwhelming amount of comments supporting our campaign. Our aim with this petition was to show that we are backed by a community that is just as concerned as we are. With our collective action we were able to prove that constructing a living shoreline is vital to preserving our community, and must be done before 2026.
Correspondence 1- to Mr.Berry and Ms.McMahon
Unfortunately, we are still awaiting a response from the people we have talked to with the city of St. Pete Beach. Although we have no particular answers at this point in time, we are hopeful that our message and community support will inspire some action.
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