Rodney Rowland on Sea Level Rise: A Historic Museum's Resilience Strategy & Wins

Yeah.

Thank you.

Thank you for sharing.

I know we've talked a little and when we talked, you talked about the sea level rise initiative at Strawbery Banke and how you're pioneering this effort for historic preservation in face of climate change.

I know you've talked a little bit about how you moved from facilities to, to sustainability full-time.

If you think back to that moment, were there any pivotal changes or, like, slow changes? Like, what led to this change in investment, and what were you seeing that made it so important, so pri- you know, prioritize the cl- climate resilience work?

Yeah.

I mean, they're definitely interconnected.

Uh, what we were seeing as, as director of facilities, I could see that the recurring maintenance that we needed to do on the buildings seems to be-

Mm-hmm

... speeding up.

Mm-hmm.

That something was causing the paint on the exterior of the buildings to degrade faster.

We could see in the basements of the homes that, uh, wooden members were rotting faster or brick or mortar was decaying faster.

Uh, and you know, when you're, when you're talking about an institution that has 37 historic buildings-

Mm-hmm

... part of our challenge is maintenance on all of these structures before they reach a point where they need a lot of work.

Uh, and so if there's something that is making that period speed up, we need to identify-

Mm-hmm

... that and we try...

We need to try to, uh, counteract that because we had a hard enough time keeping up with all the maintenance on our buildings as it is.

So identifying what was causing this rapid decay of our buildings and paint to just not to s- to stay on the exteriors was really important.

That was sort of the aha-

And-

... moment

Yeah.

Thank you.

Thank you for sharing.

I know we've talked a little and when we talked, you talked about the sea level rise initiative at Strawbery Banke and how you're pioneering this effort for historic preservation in face of climate change.

I know you've talked a little bit about how you moved from facilities to, to sustainability full-time.

If you think back to that moment, were there any pivotal changes or, like, slow changes? Like, what led to this change in investment, and what were you seeing that made it so important, so pri- you know, prioritize the cl- climate resilience work?

Yeah.

I mean, they're definitely interconnected.

Uh, what we were seeing as, as director of facilities, I could see that the recurring maintenance that we needed to do on the buildings seems to be-

Mm-hmm

... speeding up.

Mm-hmm.

That something was causing the paint on the exterior of the buildings to degrade faster.

We could see in the basements of the homes that, uh, wooden members were rotting faster or brick or mortar was decaying faster.

Uh, and you know, when you're, when you're talking about an institution that has 37 historic buildings-

Mm-hmm

... part of our challenge is maintenance on all of these structures before they reach a point where they need a lot of work.

Uh, and so if there's something that is making that period speed up, we need to identify-

Mm-hmm

... that and we try...

We need to try to, uh, counteract that because we had a hard enough time keeping up with all the maintenance on our buildings as it is.

So identifying what was causing this rapid decay of our buildings and paint to just not to s- to stay on the exteriors was really important.

That was sort of the aha-

And-

... moment