Living on the edge: ‘The ultimate test’
11 April 2023 | Lisa Hall
Solar-powered Babcock Ranch came through Hurricane Ian with minimal damage and no flooding. Its developer believes it can inspire sustainable development in interior Florida.
While Hurricane Ian pounded southwest Florida for eight solid hours last fall, Syd Kitson was hunkered down at his home in Babcock Ranch, the solar-powered town he’d worked to develop over the prior two decades.
The major Category 4 storm was “the ultimate test,” Kitson said last month at the Aspen Ideas: Climate conference in Miami. The winds raged at 100 miles an hour with gusts of more than 150 miles an hour. “I’m sitting in my house, and it was like this perpetual freight train running right through us and it just seemed like it was never gone to end,” he said.
