- Causes of Future Sea Level Rise
- Elevation Maps
- Will we really lose all that land?
- Sea Level Rise Planning Maps
1.2 Overview of this Primer
CHAPTER 2
WHAT CAN A ROLLING EASEMENT ACCOMPLISH?
The combination of rising sea level and coastal development could threaten wetlands, beaches, access along the shore, and perhaps eventually, the integrity of barrier islands.
This chapter examines how rolling easements could be part of a sustainable strategy to mitigate these impacts. Preventing seawalls, bulkheads, and other shore protection structures can enable beaches to migrate inland (Section 2.1). A rolling easement can ensure that the public (or a private party) continues to have access along the shore as a beach erodes (Section 2.2), or that people can relocate roads, infrastructure, and parks inland if necessary (Section 2.3). Wetlands can have room to migrate inland if landowners refrain from erecting shore protection structures and elevating the surfaces of their land (Section 2.4). Towns on barrier islands can move inland rather than attempt to keep the islands in their current locations (Section 2.5).
This chapter focuses on what people might do differently on account of a rolling easement. We defer the legal approaches for creating a rolling easement until Chapter 3. Some aspects of coastal property law are unavoidable in this chapter, however, because one of the resources threatened by sea level rise—access along the shore—is itself a legal right.
This page contains a section from: James G. Titus, Rolling Easements, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. EPA‑430‑R‑11‑001 (2011). The report was originally published by EPA's Climate Ready Estuary Program in June 2011. The full report (PDF, 176 pp., 7 MB) is also available from the EPA web site.
For additional reports focused on the implications of rising sea level, go to Sea Level Rise Reports.