The Little City That Could

On a recent morning, researcher Dominick Dusseau offers a glimpse into the future of Chelsea, Massachusetts, a small, industrial city just across the Mystic River from Boston. On digital maps he displays over Zoom, great blue splashes cover large swaths of the city—areas where, by his calculations, climate-driven flooding is likely to occur. The maps depict a world where the locals who can least afford it will get hit the hardest.

Dusseau’s analysis is a collaboration between the city and his employer, the Woodwell Climate Research Center, a nonprofit founded by a prominent ecologist who sounded early alarms about the hazards of DDT and climate change. Its mission is to put actionable data into the hands of decision makers, which is why it doesn’t charge for the climate risk assessments it conducts for cities like Chelsea, whose working-class population of about 39,000 is predominantly Latino.

To create the maps, Dusseau measured the precise elevations relative to sea level at numerous locations around the city. Combining these measurements with Chelsea’s stormwater data, he modeled various crisis scenarios—what happens, for instance, when a big downpour coincides with a high tide or storm surge. A town with so much pavement, he explains, can’t easily absorb excess water. “There are pretty significant increases in the amount of rainfall that Chelsea is going to have to deal with,” he says. “It’s just a huge amount of flooding.”

He found that storms now forecast as once per century—events that would flood 14 percent of the city—are likely to happen every year by 2100. Notably, floodwaters may encroach on the enormous white drums that hold jet fuel for nearby Logan Airport and the location near Chelsea Creek where Eversource, the region’s utility, is building a new electrical substation against residents’ wishes. “By 2080, it’s heavily inundated—the entire coastline is pretty much underwater,” Dusseau says.