Climate change threatens Southwest Florida, officials say

Southwest Florida will eventually suffer from climate change, environmental officials said Monday.

“We are already in climate change as we speak,” said Jim Beever, senior planner for the Southwest Florida Regional Planning Council.

Beever, who spoke Monday at the Estero Bay Agency on Bay Management meeting, presented a draft of the Charlotte Harbor National Estuary Program’s findings. The program, which began last summer, predicts climate change in the area into the year 2200.

According to the draft, Southwest Florida will experience a variety of consequences due to climate change including negative impacts on the economy, health, infrastructure and insurance rates.

The study, based on empirical data, also anticipates more pronounced wet and dry seasons, an increase in coastal erosion, stronger hurricanes and higher air and water temperatures. Sea level will rise, up to 27 inches by 2060 in one worst-case scenario, leaving much of the area under water.

In Collier County, 133 critical facilities — such as hospitals, fire stations and utility providers — are thought to be subject to climate change, officials said.

Climate change will continue even if greenhouse gases are reduced.

“Climate change was occurring before the Industrial Revolution,” Beever said.

A copy of the draft may be viewed on the agency’s Web site, www.swfrpc.org.

In other action:

*** The Florida Department of Environmental Protection presented an update on the impaired water basins in the area, including Hendry Creek and the Estero and Imperial rivers.

*** The Basin Management Action Plan kickoff meeting starts at 9 a.m. July 22 at the Southwest Florida Regional Planning Council’s office. It will develop plans to reduce the nutrients in the Everglades’ West Coast and the Caloosahatchee Basin.

*** The Estero Bay Watershed Public Symposium will be held Sept. 28 in the Florida Gulf Coast University Student Union Ballroom.

It will feature Craig Pittman, coauthor of “Paving Paradise,” and “Tropicalia” editor Amy Bennett Williams. A dinner will start at 6 p.m. to raise money for conservation land acquisition.