Landmark Bay Area Regional Plan to Combat Sea-Level Rise Unveiled

For the first time in history, the Bay Area now has a plan to protect the region from the havoc sea-level rise could unleash here — submerged neighborhoods, flooded freeways, skyscrapers surrounded by water, and so on.

No one said this work would be inexpensive. Regulators estimate it will cost $110 billion to construct all the seawalls, levees, marshes and other adaptation projects to protect the 400 miles of bay shoreline. But they believe it would cost the region far more, $230 billion, if it did nothing.

“It’s not just people on the front lines who live near the bay who will be affected by this; it’s people who live inland because the bay shoreline protects everybody,” said Larry Goldzband, executive director of the Bay Conservation and Development Commission, or BCDC.

His state agency released a draft Regional Shoreline Adaptation Plan Monday afternoon. It is an attempt by regulators to get in front of the looming climate effect by creating standards and requirements that cities and counties along the lip of the bay will use to ensure that the preparation for sea-level rise is consistent across the region. However, some elected officials think the plan might be too ambitious, costing local governments time and money they say they don’t have.

Last year, California passed a law requiring all local governments along its coast, including those in the Bay Area, to address how they will tackle rising seas by 2034. But it stops short of punishing cities that don’t comply.

The San Francisco Bay accounts for a third of California’s coastline. Still, the plan states that “the Bay Area is expected to experience two-thirds of the state’s total economic damage from sea-level rise.”

“We have so many habitats that could potentially drown over the next 10 to 20 years, and then everyone’s lifestyle is going to be impacted by flooding, whether or not they live near the shoreline,” said Dana Brechwald, assistant planning director for climate adaptation with BCDC.

Since the 1880s, the Pacific Ocean has risen by about 8 inches along the West Coast, but state scientists predict more than a foot of bay rise by 2050 and more than six feet by the end of the century in the worst-case scenario.

The plan attempts to do three main things: create a unified vision for the future of shoreline adaptation, outline eight regional priorities, and create guidelines for local governments to generate their plans. One of the regional priorities is reducing contaminated sites, which could steep like teabags in rising seawater.

Public comment is open until Oct. 18, BCDC will hold a public hearing on Oct. 17, and the agency will finalize the plan by the end of the year.

Janelle Kellman is a city council member for the City of Sausalito who runs the nonprofit Center for Sea Level Rise Solutions. Kellman said she “fully endorses this idea of regional collaboration. This is absolutely the way we need to go.”

However, Kellman said she hopes BCDC will make the plan even more “actionable” with a detailed scope of the work or example budgets “with actions that local governments can implement immediately.”

Last Thursday, BCDC officials presented the plan to a group of elected officials, and San Rafael Mayor Kate Colin expressed concern.

“I have red flags,” she said. “I think this plan is too rigid. I think it’s too onerous. I really want cities to be met where they are.”

Colin told BCDC staff that she doesn’t think five weeks of public comment is enough time to get input on the sweeping plan that relies on localities to do much of the work. For example, Colin said it took over a year to get public input for her city’s general plan. Plus, the cost of mitigating a disaster is expensive. She said her city doesn’t have the “extra million bucks” to implement the plan locally.

“I will be the biggest fan when this goes forward in a way that I believe represents really good government, using the existing resources that I have here in San Rafael,” she said. “And this, to me right now, is not that.”

Assuming BCDC marches ahead with its timeline, the draft plan will be finalized and adopted in 2025.

Afterward, the agency will metaphorically hang an “open for business sign” outside of its door to help cities and counties come up with local sea-level rise plans.

The state is offering at least one grant program led by the Ocean Protection Council to help localities create these plans, Brechwald said.

“We hope that people start chatting with us early on so that we can all figure out how to proceed forward together,” Brechwald said.