Land Trust member Corrie Heinz attended a Community Resilience Building Workshop held Sept. 16, as did clerk Heidi Tarbox, The Nature Conservancy Associate State Director Scott Comings, and Block Island Conservancy President Dorrie Napoleone. They and other members of the Block Island Land Trust had a wide-ranging discussion about it at their meeting on Sept. 20.Conducted by the R.I. Infrastructure Bank and sponsored by The Nature Conservancy, the workshops with municipalities began in 2019, and Block Island is among the last of the groups to participate.
Heinz said there was a 40-minute introduction where members of the Infrastructure Bank talked about the goals of the program, and then participants broke into groups to discuss their top concerns. Most groups came up with the same priorities: moving buildings that are in areas that could become their own islands, the inundation of Corn Neck Road making the island two islands, and loss of communications with the mainland.
But there are many other aspects to consider – what can be done now to mitigate damage later, such as raising coastal structures and homes off the ground, and giving relief on building heights in order to do so; identifying areas where marshes
