The U.S. National Park Service on Dec. 10 announced the completion of a new seawall along the banks of what is known as the Tidal Basin, off the Potomac River in the District of Columbia.
The seawall will protect not only the Japanese cherry trees from daily flooding but also the Thomas Jefferson, Franklin Roosevelt and Martin Luther King Jr. memorials.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers built the original seawall in the late 1800s to contain water from the Potomac River. But sea level rise and subsidence of the former wetland have progressed to the point that the area now floods with every high tide…