Innovation or Inundation? David Abel's New Documentary Dives Into the Issue of Development and Climate Change

It’s a fact of life that can no longer be ignored or denied. Sea level rise due to climate change and the warming of the planet is having a detrimental effect on coastal populations the world over, with more extreme weather events projected in the decades to come.

As cities, towns and rural communities around the globe go into defensive mode by retreating or engineering creative solutions to cope with the incoming tide, one major urban area in the U.S. seems to have willfully disregarded the dire predictions of what’s coming its way.

Ironically, that’s Boston, Massachusetts, a city with perhaps more climate scientists per capita than any other on the planet.

The story of Boston’s Seaport District — and the short-sighted planning of city officials who created it — is the subject of “Inundation District,” a new documentary by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and filmmaker David Abel. Produced by The Boston Globe, Abel’s film explores how the city’s desire to reclaim former landfill and bring in billions of dollars in investment and tax revenue trumped any consideration for how the waterfront might change in the years to come, and, in fact, already is.

On Saturday, November 2, Abel will bring “Inundation District” to the East End for a 7 p.m. screening at the Westhampton Beach Performing Arts Center, followed by a Q&A and discussion with critic and writer Andrew Botsford. This will be Abel’s second visit to the WHBPAC this year. In February, he came to the theater to screen his documentary “In The Whale,” the incredible story of Cape Cod lobsterman Michael Packard who, in June 2021, found himself engulfed in the jaws of a humpback whale. With this film, he’s offering another tale of man vs. sea, though this time around it’s an entire city that’s threatened to be engulfed.

For more than 25 years, Abel has been reporting on the environment and climate change issues for The Boston Globe. So in January 2010, when Boston city officials announced the creation of what they billed as the “Innovation District” and began formally courting potential entrepreneurs and developers to invest in the waterfront acreage that had recently been landfill, Abel took notice.

“The history of the Seaport and the decision to build a new urban district at sea level on landfill and hard on the coast was based on the billions of dollars we spent cleaning up Boston Harbor,” Abel explained. “It had once been one of the dirtiest waterways in the country. It was the back drop of the ’88 presidential election when Michael Dukakis was running against George Bush Sr. and Bush ran ads attacking Dukakis over the dirty waters and his environmental record.”

In response to Bush’s criticism, in the years that followed the city spent a great deal of money cleaning up the harbor and in the 1990s, Boston mayor Thomas M. Menino first floated the concept of the Innovation District in an area that had long been populated by abandoned warehouses and parking lots.

“It was basically landfill and no one wanted to live or work there because it was adjacent to what was essentially an open sewer,” Abel explained. “It stank and was fifthly. But once it was cleaned up, Boston had this valuable waterfront property and city officials started thinking they should do something with it and bring in some tax revenue.

“The city and state spent billions of dollars creating this infrastructure to enable this new urban district,” he added. “With tax incentives and other prodding they were able to carry out their vision and they created this urban mecca that succeeded in attracting developers.”

Today, the Innovation District is thriving — populated by glass towers and modern buildings housing Fortune 500 companies, residential apartments, restaurants, shops and tourists attractions.

“The only hitch is an increasingly vocal community of scientists that were basically raising a flag of concern, which is sea level rise,” Abel noted. “Unlike other places that are vulnerable, the City of Boston ignored the threats — and well after they understood the threats, they decided to proceed with no protections.”

Abel explained that as the permitting process for the Innovation District got underway in the 1990s and into the 2000s, plenty of people, including scientists, were sounding the alarm about how vulnerable the area was to flooding. Yet city officials opted to proceed with the venture. When asked if the threats from sea level rise were ignored due to politicians holding anti-climate change views, Abel said no, that it really came down to old school city interests.

“It was about tax revenue and doing something with this land, not taking into consideration the threats that were being increasingly discussed,” he said.

There have been warning signs, however, and Abel notes that in October 2012 — exactly 12 years ago this week — Boston came very close to experiencing catastrophic flooding from Superstorm Sandy, which devastated large portions of New York City and New Jersey.

“If it had hit at a different time of day, much of the seaport would have been affected,” Abel said.

But did that storm serve as a climate change wakeup call at all for Boston?

“You could say it did, but city officials are hitting the snooze button,” he said. “They were hearing about it, but not really acting on it. The seaport has continued to be developed in the last 10 years, and every time I go down there, a new building is sprouting up.

“It’s not like some button was pressed and it all of a sudden stopped. It’s an ongoing thing and we’re continuing to build.”

In recent years, there has been some acknowledgment of rising tides, however, and in 2021, city officials began requiring that developers take into account sea level rise in new construction. Many of the developers of the district’s first buildings have wisely sold them.

“There are now requirements that developers have to build new properties at a certain elevation,” Abel said. “Those requirements do not affect all the existing buildings and there are lots of them. They also don’t affect all the buildings that were previously permitted.”

While some local residents who Abel interviewed for his film have been quite vocal in their concerns about rising seas, he found plenty of other people who have lived and worked at the seaport for quite some time and don’t seem to be all that concerned about climate change.

“A lot of people are pouring a lot of money into this neighborhood,” he said. “A lot of people think climate change is some distant, abstract threat. If you live in a penthouse of a new glass tower, you might think you’re fine, but you might not be able to get out of the building.”

In fact, Abel explained that in 2018 when two massive storms sent water throughout the neighborhood, leading to major flooding, it whet his appetite to make “Inundation District.”

“The University of Massachusetts, Boston stats said seas could rise some 15 ½ feet by century’s end, which is hard to fathom,” he said. “It will likely be between four and seven feet if we don’t change the way we do business and the amount of fossil fuels we pump into the atmosphere. That means more and more flooding, even when there’s not a storm. Already during king tides or on sunny days, there’s a substantial amount of flooding.”

Abel adds that in his mind, it’s hard for people to appreciate the threats that Boston, and in fact the world, are facing.

‘These numbers and computer projections feel abstract and distant, but my hope with the film is to give viewers a view of these as a clear and present threat,” he said. “Ultimately, I see this film as being about environmental or climate justice. It raises the question about who should foot the bill to defend this new urban district, which was built long after we learned about the threats of rising seas. Lots of scientists were flagging this concern. Who should basically be on the hook to cover the costs to defend the neighborhood, and probably, inevitably, to cover the cost of repairs and the fallout that will come when the flooding does?”

As the scientists have long been warning, it’s only a matter of time.

David Abel’s documentary “Inundation District” screens on Saturday, November 2, at 7 p.m. at the Westhampton Beach Performing Arts Center. The evening features a Q+A and discussion with Abel moderated by Andrew Botsford. Tickets are $23 at whbpac.org or 631-288-1500. Westhampton Beach Performing Arts Center is at 76 Main Street, Westhampton Beach.