The residents of Conimicut, Rhode Island, love their close-knit, peaceful seaside community. Silence, wildlife, sunrises over the water, the gentle lapping of the tides… and $50,000 flood insurance premiums, because the tides are lapping in people’s living rooms with growing frequency. How many times can people rebuild the same houses before it becomes untenable to remain? Steinfeld profiles the families doing the most to stay in the place they love even as climate change drives the sea inward, the intensity of storms increases, and FEMA’s models fail to accurately predict flood risk.
The Pivergers’ house stands alone on their side of the street, the rest of the lots overgrown with riparian brush. You wouldn’t think anything of it, unless you happened to notice the street numbers that skip from one to seventeen, leaving a gap seven houses wide. In 2011, after a year of heavy rainfall, the city won federal funding to buy and demolish those buildings. 4
Ronald and Anne Marie Dutra live with their chihuahuas and Ronald’s brother on the other side of that empty stretch. They moved in eighteen years ago. “It’s a beautiful neighborhood, great place to live, great people,” says Ronald. “If I had known it would be like this I never would’ve moved in. No way.” In recent weeks the Dutras have gutted the bottom half of their basement and replaced the flooded boiler and furnace. “We don’t even travel anymore, we’re too afraid of the water,” says Anne Marie. “What are we going to do if it rains, turn the airplane around?”
