The dramatic images of floating lawn chairs on the waterfront, impassable roads and docks under water are becoming a common reality in Boston and one that city officials say are directly tied to climate change.

On Saturday, high tide in Boston Harbor went up to 14.4 feet, the fourth highest level ever recorded in the city, just short of the major flood stage of 15 feet.

Boston City Councilor Gabriela Coletta saw significant flooding in her district, which ranges from East Boston to Charlestown and the North End. Coletta said that while the state and the city are both working to implement climate plans, the frequency of extreme weather is a call for more urgent action.

“The city has estimated that undertaking full waterfront resilience is upwards of $3.5 billion. This is the issue of our time, and we're going to need to tap into both public money and private money, and potentially philanthropy partners to be able to fortify our coastline,” she said.

Coletta said her constituents have constantly flooding basements, and that businesses keep sandbags at the ready for when they see a storm coming. People want to live on the waterfront, she said, “but they're starting to see that it is becoming a huge liability for their homes and their businesses.”

The City of Boston produced a report in 2016 that became a template for developing coastal resilience plans for the city's 47 miles of coastline and to address flooding impacts from climate change. Coletta said that work is now in the implementation stages.

Governor Maura Healey’s administration also launched a “Resilient Coasts Initiative” in November to address climate change in the state’s 78 coastal communities. It will “identify regulatory, policy, and funding mechanisms to develop focused long-term solutions,” according to a press release issued then. A new position for a Chief Coastal Resilience Officer within the Massachusetts Office of Coastal Zone Management was also created.

Coletta said she wants to replicate that position at the city level.

“My goal is to have a similar position in the City of Boston, because in the past week, and the past year, and even decade, we have seen that climate change isn’t coming to a theater near us — it is happening now. It is here,” she said.

She said that the task of mitigating flood risk has often been borne by private entities, like developers, who make climate-ready buildings on coastlines. Solutions like elevating the Harbor Walk, rain gardens and more parks could also be explored to absorb flood water, but need funding.

The Fort Point neighborhood between South Boston and the Seaport often sees flooding, but has seen significantly more since 2018.

Tom Ready of the Fort Point Neighborhood Association said that the city and state have tried to help in the area, specifically with a plan issued in 2021 to build an earthen berm along the channel. He said FEMA has approved the plan, which will cost $20 million, but that work can't begin until the funding is allocated.

Ready said the neighborhood has made other recommendations to the city’s office of emergency management, asking them to duplicate snow emergency protocols.

“It would be helpful if we could get the cars off the street. So why can't public, discounted parking similar to what they do for snow emergencies be made available?” he said. Ready also thinks the city needs to identify evacuation routes and let residents know their options for evacuation.

Social media posts from around area showed the extent of the flooding, including Everett and Chelsea, where roads and sidewalks were left impassable for hours.

Ryan Murphy took a video of Owen Thomas, a fellow Dorchester resident and member of the Savin Hill Yacht Club, when Morrissey Boulevard flooded on Saturday.

Murphy said that instead of flooding once every two to three years, the boulevard now floods multiple times a year. He thinks there should be a solution, but it’s complicated.

“A lot of the neighbors have turned down a bunch of the different plans that have been put forth. It seems like everyone's kind of dragging their feet,” he said. “No one wants to take responsibility for Morrissey Boulevard. It seems like it’s [the Department of Conservation and Recreation], the city, the state ... nobody seems to be able to come to a consensus on what to do.”

For now, he said they try to make flooding fun, ferrying their kids around to the Yacht club where they grabbed an old sail.

“I just grabbed my son and ran outside, and we stapled it to some broomstick,” he said.