Hudson River Maritime Museum Director of Education Sarah Wassberg Johnson said the museum's protections against extreme weather do not mean the staff here are crusading against climate change, but rather guarding against it.

"You can either adapt to climate change, or you can try to reverse climate change," Johnson said.

The museum staff have chosen to adapt.

Johnson showed Spectrum News around the museum's three buildings, which sit on Rondout Creek, a tributary of the Hudson River. The boathouse -- new and improved since Hurricane Sandy in 2012 -- is designed to let rising water from Rondout Creek flow in the creekside doors, through the building and out the front doors.

In the case of high water, all electrical outlets are placed high up on walls and the building is held together, not with nails, but with wooden pegs which get stronger when the weather turns wet.

"The more damp it is, the tighter the joints get, basically," Johnson said.

City officials in Kingston hope a new opportunity will help and inspire other property owners near the waterfront to take similar action. The city was recently chosen for $10,000 grant and expert assistance in building a community resiliency against weather events intensified by climate change.

The National League of Cities selected seven cities, including Kingston, to use the grant and consultations to build on their community resiliencies.

"It impacts our economic development," Kingston Environmental Education Coordinator Julie Noble said of climate change during an interview Thursday about the city's newfound assistance. "If you look around the world, most human development and population is located around waterfronts. Many cultures depend on the waterways for food, drinking water, recreation and tourism."

Noble said the award will help improve Kingston's resiliency that she has been building for the past ten years.

"So many of these [other] projects, we have certain grant funding for," Noble said. "... But this will be the impetus to bring everyone together again and to advance more of these projects."

Noble also said city leaders want to extend the promenade along Rondout Creek, but they must first secure the shoreline against high tide and sea level rise.

She hopes the city gains new insight, perhaps from one of the other cities selected for the NLC's program.

"The levels of the ocean are getting higher, and thus, our water levels are getting higher," she explained. "And it will continue to over the next century and beyond."

Other cities chosen for the program include: Birmingham, Alabama; Bozeman, Montana; Durango, Colorado; Indianapolis; Nashua, New Hampshire; and San Leandro, California.