David Helvarg / Calif. shows how to plan for rising sea - pressofAtlanticCity.com: Commentary

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David Helvarg / Calif. shows how to plan for rising sea

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Posted: Monday, December 3, 2012 12:01 am

David Helvarg / Calif. shows how to plan for rising sea

Govs. Andrew Cuomo of New York and Chris Christie of New Jersey don't need to wait on gridlocked Washington to confront future risks from climate-change intensified storms. They can instead look at how California is already moving forward on common-sense adaptations, and do it themselves. With 3.5 million Californians living within three feet of sea level, and the best available science projecting a 3- to 5-foot rise in sea level for the state by 2100, doing nothing would be irresponsible.

For the next few decades it will be extreme storms, with their accompanying waves and king tides, not sea-level rise per se that will have the most impact in the state, according to U.S. Geological Survey testimony last year to the California Ocean Protection Council, the state's umbrella agency for coordinating its response to rising seas.

A number of local and state efforts are under way. This year, the San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission, the state's original coastal protection group, amended its long-standing San Francisco Bay Plan to make sure projected sea-level rise is taken into account by any new project, such as a planned $1.5 billion development on Treasure Island in the middle of the bay.

After repeated flooding from winter storms in 2009-10 shut down the Great Highway along the city's share of the Pacific coast, the Army Corps of Engineers proposed pumping dredged sand onto the beach to shore it up, and a city think tank suggested "planned retreat" - shrinking and rerouting the highway at a cost of $343 million - as the best long-term solution. While the options are reviewed, city workers continue armoring the southbound lanes with boulders.

Down the peninsula, on the bay side, a major wetlands restoration project now under way is expected to reduce the impact of sea-level rise and flooding on small, low-income towns such as Alviso as well as on low-lying, high-dollar-value corporate campuses, such as those of Yahoo in Sunnyvale and Google in Mountain View.

In Newport Beach in Southern California, city planners are looking into raising sea walls in waterfront neighborhoods like Balboa Island that are prone to flooding. They may also begin requiring that foundations on new beach properties be raised several feet, a modest start but a start nonetheless.

Governments in San Diego, Ventura and Humboldt counties are also embarking on multi-stakeholder efforts to adjust their zoning and permit systems to account for storm tides and sea-level rise. The city of Ventura has completed the first phase of a managed retreat at Surfer's Point, removing a sea-damaged parking lot and moving a bike trail 65 feet inland. About half the towns along California's coast have begun developing climate adaptation policies.

"It's not uncertainty about the science keeping them from acting," says Amber Mace, former California Ocean Protection Council executive director. "It's lack of funding, lack of staff and a lack of support from outside."

Part of the council's job is to provide coastal communities with high-resolution seafloor maps and updated intertidal and shoreline maps that are basic to sea-rise and storm-surge planning. The council also provides links to scientists who are working to downscale the projections of climate impacts from the 200-mile grids used by the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change so that they can be applied to zoning, beachfront management and other land-use decisions.

The council, with strong backing from Gov. Jerry Brown and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger before him, has worked to persuade other agencies to incorporate sea-level rise and other climate change projections into their work.

For example, the California Coastal Commission is expected to require all waterfront communities to include extreme flooding and sea-level-rise planning in their local coastal plans. The state is also considering withholding some funds from communities until they have a comprehensive climate-change adaptation policy in place.

The state Water Resources Control Board is another state agency that is responding to expected flooding due to more extreme weather patterns. It has established tougher standards for storm water runoff, which again will force coastal communities to plan for climate change impacts.

It's worth remembering that after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, California set new standards for fire and building safety, many of which eventually became national standards. Now the state is poised to do the same with its planning for climate change. And the common-sense lessons being learned here about coastal adaptation need to be applied from sea to shining sea.

David Helvarg is executive director of the Blue Frontier Campaign. He wrote this for the Los Angeles Times.

Posted in on Monday, December 3, 2012 12:01 am.

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