The Jefferson Monument will be under 4 feet of water by 2040. Here’s how to redesign the National Mall
By Nate Berg, published by Fast Company, October 21, 2020
The roots of Washington, D.C.’s iconic cherry trees are rotting. At the National Mall Tidal Basin, where cherry trees line the water’s edge amid some of the country’s most famous monuments, sea-level rise and riverine flooding threaten not just tree roots but a landscape inextricably tied to the history of the United States. If the situation is left unaddressed, rising waters could inundate the trunks of those cherry trees along with monuments to figures such as Martin Luther King Jr., Thomas Jefferson, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt in several feet of water every day during the river’s twice-daily high tides.