Biden’s response to rising seas

Under the Biden Administration from 2021 to 2025, rising sea levels became a national infrastructure and environmental-justice priority. The administration combined executive action, federal funding and resilience guidance to help coastal communities prepare for more frequent flooding, shoreline erosion and saltwater intrusion.

That approach has limits. Federal agencies can finance projects and improve forecasts, but they cannot decide every local trade-off. The hardest choices concern housing, insurance, cultural heritage and whether some places should eventually be moved or left unprotected.

A federal resilience push

The administration’s central policy shift was to treat climate resilience as a core test for federal investment, not an optional extra. Executive Order 14008, signed in 2023, directed agencies to embed resilience in infrastructure decisions and created a National Council on Climate Resilience to coordinate work.

Its wider framework favoured locally designed protection, nature-based solutions such as marshes and living shorelines, and a national approach to managing retreat. These policies recognise that a seawall can transfer risk, while restoring wetlands can reduce wave energy and support habitat.

Funding coastal protection

Federal grants have targeted three linked needs: keeping water out, adapting infrastructure to wetter conditions and reducing losses before a disaster. Inflation Reduction Act funding and federal disaster programs have supported raised roads, upgraded drainage, flood barriers, restored marshes and living shorelines. The federal role has been chiefly to fund and coordinate, with states and localities usually designing and managing the works.

Mapping and mitigation money also affect household decisions. Better flood maps can reveal risks that conventional maps miss, informing insurance, mortgages and zoning. A voluntary buyout can prevent repeated rebuilding in an unsafe location, although no national program can settle the moral or economic question of whose neighbourhood should change.

Planning retreat and relocation

Retreat has been the most politically and socially difficult element of the response. Federal guidance has encouraged communities to identify locations where long-term protection is unlikely to remain viable and to prepare relocation options before repeated disasters force the issue. Voluntary purchases, relocation assistance and support for small businesses are possible tools.

Their success depends on fair treatment. Communities may need affordable housing nearby, transport links, cultural continuity and compensation that respects property and Indigenous rights. Without those conditions, retreat risks moving physical risk while leaving social and economic losses behind.

Better data and earlier warnings

Sea-level projections have become more useful as they are paired with local detail. Federal investment has supported improved tide gauges, satellite measurements, coastal inundation mapping and tools that compare high-tide flooding with future water levels. Local governments can add sensors and drainage observations that national agencies cannot supply.

The payoff is earlier action. Sea-level rise raises the baseline for storm surge, making a once-rare overtopping event more likely. Forecasts can guide road closures, utility protection, building standards and insurance decisions, but alerts must reach households in usable formats and languages.

Technology and supply-chain resilience

Modern coastal protection depends on electronics in tide gauges, pump stations, desalination plants and warning networks. Expanding those systems also raises a practical supply-chain issue: critical hardware supply chains need to withstand shortages, since a delayed control component can delay a flood barrier or monitoring network.

Resilience planning therefore reaches beyond concrete and marsh. Agencies need reliable replacement parts, interoperable equipment and protection against cyber attacks. Otherwise, expensive sensors and automated gates can become liabilities when vendors, software support or spare components are difficult to obtain.

Lessons for coastal Australia

Australian parallels are strong, but the institutional setting differs. Coastal councils—known as local government areas, or LGAs—handle hazard mapping, drainage, beaches and development controls, while state and federal governments supply disaster recovery and major infrastructure. Around Sydney’s northern beaches and the NSW Central Coast, residents already deal with king tides, backwater flooding and council debates over erosion.

Here, high home ownership makes public adaptation closely tied to property values. A new seawall or drainage scheme can protect household equity, while repeated flood claims can raise insurance costs and make some houses harder to sell. For owners along the Great Ocean Road, where erosion threatens cliffs, roads and homes, defending every site can become a fiscal as well as ecological question.

Adaptation also touches Sea Country and Indigenous obligations. For Gumbaynggirr and Bundjalung communities, and for Kaurna Country around Adelaide, decisions about wetlands, foreshores and relocation must be locally led. Australian experience therefore reinforces the US lesson: funding matters, but communities need a meaningful role and culturally grounded choices.

Take the information to decision-makers

Stay close to verified updates. NOAA’s Sea Level Rise Viewer, Australia’s National Flood Risk Information Portal and your council’s coastal hazard materials show how broad projections translate into local decisions. CAPosts’ news channels can help readers follow the wider policy debate and recent coverage.

Take that information to the places decisions are made: read the relevant coastal plan, ask elected representatives about flood insurance, drainage and relocation funding, and share CAPosts’ reporting with neighbours who face the same risks.