Smoothing Senate Bill 237 Implementation: An Information Exchange Between Delaware’s Local and State-Level Planners

PROJECT SYNOPSIS

Senate Bill (SB) 237 requires Delaware’s three counties and municipalities with populations greater than 2,000 to include and consider climate change in their comprehensive (comp) plans. Since the new law does not take effect until November 2026, and since the Office of State Planning Coordination (OSPC) has yet to develop their compliance guidelines for municipalities and counties to follow, Energize Delaware commissioned this research to smooth implementation of SB 237 by executing an information exchange between local and state-level planners. Information about SB 237, including its content and expected impact, was presented to select planning and zoning commissioners and county councilmembers at their regularly scheduled meetings. Following this presentation, feedback was solicited from these same individuals. Commissioners and councilmembers voiced their comments and concerns about the impending rollout of the new planning requirements. This feedback was noted, synthesized, and analyzed to form the basis for this report. The content of this report can be reviewed and used to inform OSPC’s guideline development process.

Common concerns voiced by commissioners and councilmembers include uncertainty on the need to both plan for climate mitigation and adaptation; the technical and costly nature of compliance; the acceptability of different climate data and mapping products/tools; the potential negative impact on agriculture; the potential restrictions to housing growth and development; congruence of the forthcoming compliance guidelines with the forthcoming Climate Action Plan; and the need to know the planning expectations as soon as possible.

To initiate the creation of planning guidance, this report provides a simple sea level rise planning method using Delaware-specific data and maps. The method is presented as a straw man proposal, and two examples are provided to demonstrate how it might be applied in practice. The issues and limitations of the method are presented, and a robust critique to refine the method is invited.