For many Charlestonians, flooded streets are a phenomenon you learn to expect. What may be a catastrophe in other cities is commonplace here. Locals are used to seeing social media videos of people kayaking through the streets and water creeping up dangerously high on street-parked cars.
Residents know how to prepare, and the flooded streets can, at times, bring an added sense of camaraderie with fellow residents of the Holy City.
But the truth is, the city’s flooding is a problem.
Jared Bramblett, a water resources engineer by trade, combined his engineering knowledge with his talent for photography to launch the Mean High Water Project in 2020. Bramblett named the documentary photography project after the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association’s (NOAA) tidal datum, which tracks the average of high water heights.
As Bramblett explains on his website, over the last 30 years or so, Charleston Harbor has seen an increase of more than 200% in coastal flooding from 18.8 annual coastal floods in the 1990s to 42.4 in the 2010s.
Bramblett told the Charleston City Paper the project is “a call to action … [ I want to] raise awareness that things are changing.”
His photography depicts these changes, and you’ve probably seen them: Bramblett’s first photo to go viral was a shot taken during Hurricane Irma in 2017 (above). The photo shows the tide going out from the harbor over The Battery sea wall onto Murray Boulevard, almost making it a part of the sea. This photo captured the third-highest tide Charleston had ever seen.
Through his photography and accompanying writing, Bramblett illustrates an issue which he believes needs more attention. But the primary concern, he said, is that as sea levels continue to rise, the tidal floods caused by tropical systems like hurricanes become riskier.
The power of photography
Bramblett’s connection to tidal floods is obvious — he’s a Charlestonian and a water resources engineer — but the road to photography wasn’t quite as clear. Bramblett never thought it would become such a passion in his life, he said, but the engineer in him wanted to understand the technical components of the camera.
“I was here in Charleston for several years before I actually bought a camera,” Bramblett said. “And it just kind of happened that I became passionate from an engineering standpoint about coastal resilience and watching and seeing the increase in tidal flood events.”
He started photographing the streets of Charleston in 2010, and in 2015, turned his focus towards photographing flooding. For Bramblett, it was a merge between his passions for coastal resilience and the power of photography to preserve the way things look today.
Over the last decade of photographing Charleston, Bramblett said he’s witnessed as buildings that were once nearly dilapidated become popular eateries. Now, he sees his photography as more than a documentation of floods or buildings — it became a way to document how humans cope and respond to change.
Going out in the rain
In a city like Charleston, it’s easy to find something to do during those record tidal floods that may keep you dry. While many frequent local watering holes or hunker down at home watching TV, Bramblett sees an opportunity to create.
Charleston’s tidal floods are predicted in advance, so on days when floods are supposed to occur, Bramblett hops on his bike, throws on his boots and a pair of hip waders and takes photos of the flood.
“I like to take photos of what flooding looks like in Charleston today because it’s going to look different in the future,” he said. “Flood risk is changing and the sea level is rising, but it’s also going to look different because we’re going to hopefully change the way that we respond to and live with water.”
Bramblett hopes his work can help inspire changes in how residents interact with water. He gives a relatively simple example: not plowing through the flood waters. It may feel like part of the entertainment, but when cars drive through the floods, they send wakes into people’s homes and vehicles that can create flood damage.
Still, a lot of the change would have to be significant changes to the city itself. Many of the streets prone to flooding were once tidal creeks, so the question becomes: Now that there are buildings and homes in these areas, what infrastructure can be put in place to alleviate damage? It’s a layered answer, Bramblett said.
“Charleston is a historic city, and people were really proud of what Charleston is,” he said. “We need to preserve the character. We need to preserve the history, but it’s also going to require us to change some things if we want to protect it.”
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