While there are a lot of perks to living on the shoreline, increasingly frequent and damaging flooding isn’t one of them. As sea level continues to rise, Madison officials are discussing what planning or action should be taken to help make the town more resilient in the face of climate change.

At a recent Planning & Zoning Commission (PZC) meeting, the University of Connecticut (UConn) Institute for Resilience and Climate Adaptation (CIRCA) gave a presentation on the growing impacts of climate change and how the town can become more resilient.

PZC Chair Ron Clark said the commission is trying to prepare for that change.

“Last year [we] started on looking at our regulations to find ways in which there may be change, there should be change, in anticipation with this change in our shoreline,” he said. “It’s inevitable and our zoning regulations need to be modified, should be modified to encourage homeowners over the long term to adapt to this phenomenon.”

The presentation was led by Madison resident and former town official Joe MacDougald, an expert on climate change who is the executive director of the Center of Energy and Environmental Law at the University of Connecticut School of Law. He reviewed some of the science of climate change and outlined a need for a common understanding of the issues already plaguing the state. MacDougald pointed out that environmental law is trying to establish some general rules for towns, but that towns themselves need to start moving faster with developing local climate change or resiliency regulations.

“We’re experiencing climate change, but we don’t actually even recognize it,” he said. “Each town is treating it like a budgetary item, individually, instead it was a common problem. So this idea of giving a common definition to all the towns, is a way to try and get us to be planning for it.”

MacDougald and his colleagues shared with members of the audience the challenges the shoreline is likely to face with greater intensity in the coming years. For example, the state has told towns to prepare for 20 inches of sea level rise by 2050. He said the town needs to start thinking about this issue collectively and get ready to face the financial implications.

“We need to budget for buildings yet to come,” he said. “That has to start now, frankly, next budget coming up because we’ll pay for it coming up anyway, and the numbers become so large, so fast in 5 years, 10 years.”

So what is to be done? At a recent Board of Selectmen (BOS) meeting, Director of Planning and Economic Development Dave Anderson said the town has a couple of steps it can take now to start preparing for some of these issues.

“The PZC has been actively engaged in the resiliency conversation for a while. We have changed some regulations to hopefully better prepare the town for some of these impacts,” he said. “We have made some recommendations to the BOS regarding the flood plain ordinance which is internally under review now [and] will be coming back to you eventually, but there seems to be a little bit of a gap in terms of how we deal with some of these infrastructure issues. I don’t think we have the structure now to necessarily comprehensively tackle this issue. One of the things we had floated previously was the idea of reconstituting the Flood and Erosion Control Board.”

The Flood and Erosion Control Board generally deals with appeals regarding the flood plain ordinance, but Anderson said the board, if reconstituted, should be given greater authority to deal with the many issues related to climate change and coastal resiliency.

“The idea is that we establish a seven- to nine-member resiliency commission, so a permanent commission that would be looking at all of the issues,” he said. “The nuance of this commission is the idea that a portion of that commission would be staffed by town officials. This issue it is very complex and it is going to have an impact on people and on the bottom line in terms of these issues are going to be expensive, so I think that ton staff and electors need to be working hand in hand to try to figure this out.”

Anderson said if the town wants to move forward with a resiliency board, the issue could be put up for a formal vote at a town meeting in June.