Climate Impacts Focus of Upcoming Meeting

This article was first published in The Pilot on April 14, 2022.

Moore County residents are being invited to discuss their concerns and needs for future climate mitigation efforts at a public workshop on April 27 led by the Triangle J Council of Governments.

The workshop, titled “Understanding Vulnerability from the Local Perspective,” is part of the Regional Resilience Portfolio Project. That project was launched last November to help North Carolina communities plan for climate change by assessing vulnerability to and preparing for extreme weather events on a local level.

It is an offshoot of a broader partnership between the N.C. Office of Recovery and Resiliency and N.C. Rural Center, in collaboration with the N.C. Councils of Governments, including TJCOG.

Emily Barrett, natural resources and resilience program manager at TJCOG, told The Pilot that input from Moore County is crucial to building a foundation for climate resilience throughout the region.

“We need people from Moore County participating,” Barrett said. “We really do.” No community, she noted, is insulated from the effects of climate change, “so it's just really good to get the conversation going.”

According to the NCORR press release, anyone who attends the workshop will have the opportunity to talk about places in their community that could be jeopardized by future climate conditions, such as hurricanes and forest fires. Workshop attendees will also have the chance to share personal experiences with disaster preparedness and recovery.

Residents of the TJCOG region are already getting prepared for more extreme weather events, Barrett said. She’s heard from folks who are doing anything from elevating pump stations away from floodplains to building resilience centers, where people can come and cool off if their power goes out.

Ultimately, the workshop will allow residents to have a say in the development of a climate vulnerability assessment, which in turn will guide which projects get funded in the area.

“The ultimate hope is that people who come participate in the stakeholder group or come to the public meeting will help define what projects are most needed in those counties to build resilience,” Barrett said. Chatham, Lee and Johnston Counties are also included in the TJCOG Resilience Portfolio Project.

Climate resiliency projects, Barrett said, could look like any number of things. Right now TJCOG is mostly looking at infrastructure projects.

“I think there is a lot of interest in flood mitigation. There's a lot of interest in heat mitigation, because it is getting hotter as time goes on,” Barrett said. “We also have storm related impacts that we're looking to mitigate, like hurricanes.”

She pointed out that “even though we think about hurricanes being a coastal issue, more inland counties were impacted by some of the storms in recent memory.”

Climate resiliency projects aren’t just about updating infrastructure to protect people from extreme weather events. They can also be new public amenities that deal with the effects of climate change. Barrett gives the example of “streamside parks that can be closed when there's flooding, but when there's not flooding can be a nice green amenity that adds attractive features” to a community.

“So we're really hoping that we can demystify this term resilience and help people understand that it really is just about building safer, better communities,” Barrett said.