The Bay Area Now Has Its First-Ever Regional Sea Level Rise Plan

In a first for the Bay Area, the region has a finalized plan to protect the more than 400 miles of bayshore from the chaos that sea level rise could unleash — waterlogged freeways, submerged neighborhoods, inundated airports and sunken train lines.

However, for the effort to succeed, more than 50 cities and counties that ring the San Francisco Bay need to get on board and follow the guidance.

“The plan will require more effort from the localities because more effort is required if we’re going to survive this and avoid major damage,” said Zachary Wasserman, chair of the Bay Conservation and Development Commission. “We’re all going to have to make efforts to address this very real threat.”

The commission voted unanimously to approve the Regional Shoreline Adaptation Plan Thursday evening, and it was quickly celebrated by state officials.

“Local agencies in the bay will now have access to the latest science and best practices they need to develop their own plans to adapt to rising sea levels,” Wade Crowfoot, California’s Natural Resources secretary, said in a statement.

The San Francisco Bay accounts for a third of California’s coastline, and state regulators expect it to experience “two-thirds of the state’s total economic damage from sea-level rise.” They estimate it will cost $110 billion to construct all the seawalls, levees, marshes and other adaptation projects (PDF) to protect the 400 miles of bay shoreline. But they believe it would cost the region far more — $230 billion — if it did nothing.

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 6 feet by the end of the century in the worst-case scenario.

The Bay Area is home to giant tech companies, major highways, the majority of the state’s wetlands, international airports and nearly 8 million people, but so far its planning for sea level rise has been governed by a patchwork of rules and overseen by numerous agencies and localities.

The nearly 200 pages of new guidance documents are meant to spur big cities like San Francisco and small towns like Tiburon on Richardson Bay to address future sea level rise by 2034. SB 272, which California passed into law last year, requires all coastal jurisdictions to create sea level rise plans based on the best available science. But the law stops short of punishing cities that don’t comply.

Environmental groups think the guidelines don’t go far enough to protect their interests, and business groups said the plan missed an opportunity to outline how private equity could help meet the region’s goals.

Some environmental advocates, including the Sierra Club’s San Francisco Bay Chapter, pushed over the last few weeks to add teeth to the guidelines and include language to enforce the plan rather than just provide direction. More than 40 local climate and environmental groups issued a statement urging the state agency to “strengthen the plan,” and 650 residents signed a petition calling for the same. Regulators debated whether to alter the guidelines but ultimately changed very little.

Arthur Feinstein, who chairs the Sierra Club’s Coordinated Bay Alive Committee, said he’s disappointed that the new plan “weakened some standards” around preserving undeveloped shoreline lands and nature-based sea level rise adaptation strategies.

“They could have gone back and said that you must apply these standards instead of you must consider these standards,” Feinstein said. “That alone would change how it’s going to be implemented because it’s so much more forceful.”

Up until the vote, regulators tweaked amendments on how cities could comply with the guidelines and not negatively impact the environment. BCDC Commissioner Andrew Gunther, who represents the Regional Water Quality Control Board, called it a “generational scale accomplishment” while acknowledging that he doesn’t “expect this document to be perfect.”

In several places, the commission changed wording to encourage the use of nature-based solutions and how adaptation strategies that could significantly affect resources — plans that could pollute the bay, disrupt contaminated sites or reduce surface water movement — should “to the greatest extent feasible be avoided.”

State regulators are attempting to set a unified path for the entire Bay Area with what they describe as “strong guidance” and “carrots.” The plan includes incentives for cities that follow the guidelines by putting them at the top of the list for project funding.

“The stick is rising sea levels,” Wasserman said, adding that enforcement is outside BCDC’s jurisdiction set by the Legislature. He said advocates need to bring concerns to their elected officials if they want strong enforcement or mandates.

At least one city official expressed concern that the regional plan is too complex. Danielle Mieler, the city of Alameda’s sustainability and resilience manager, said she is worried “some of the requirements are beyond what is reasonable or necessary for cities to develop a robust shoreline adaptation plan.”

In a letter to BCDC, five business groups, including the Bay Area Council, called the plan a major milestone for the Bay Area and thanked the state agency for providing “flexibility for local jurisdictions” by “removing prescriptive ‘must’ language” from the guidance so localities “can tailor their adaptation strategies.”

But the groups wrote they “remain anxious about the plan’s approach to development.” They also noted that the plan doesn’t “leverage private capital,” which they call a “missed opportunity” to fund regional change.

“We need more than first steps; we need big, urgent leaps to protect the region and solve our $110 billion shoreline resilience price tag, which can’t be done without historic private sector investments in our shoreline,” Adrian Covert, senior vice president of public policy for the Bay Area Council, said in a statement.

Wasserman pushed back on this idea and said the regional plan “is not the right place to do that.” He said the agency is pursuing a range of ways to encourage private financing and a separate study could address private equity.

The sprawling guidelines are meant to shepherd cities and counties as they create thorough plans for protecting shorelines. Solutions could include human-made or natural barriers to keep water out and relocating built infrastructure away from the water’s edge.

The agency split the new plan into eight topic areas, including ecosystem health and transit to development.

When cities or counties submit developmental plans, BCDC asks for vulnerability assessments for four different sea level rise scenarios ranging from just under a foot up to 6.6 feet. Each assessment should address coastal flood hazards, including tidal inundation and storm surge from a 100-year storm.

For the first time BCDC is requesting all local plans to consider how sea level rise will push up groundwater into communities while also examining how flooding could inundate contaminated sites. The staff made this decision after Bay Area scientists highlighted in recent years how rising groundwater will affect communities decades before seas lap over shorelines.

“We understand that it’s going to impact the way that people adapt, and we’re asking them to identify what’s vulnerable in their communities,” said Dana Brechwald, assistant planning director for climate adaptation with BCDC.

But cities won’t have to go at planning alone; Brechwald said the agency is gearing up for an influx of requests for help. BCDC is working with the Ocean Protection Council for grants of up to $1.5 million and said the recently passed state climate bond could “give another influx of money into the grant program.” The noncompetitive grant program also includes technical assistance to help communities with fewer resources access funding.

“It’s really first come, first serve as long as you meet the requirements, and the technical assistance program is designed to help cities get to that point,” Brechwald said.

As for which areas need the work first, Brechwald said a BCDC analysis found hot spots in San Rafael, Corte Madera, Napa, Martinez, Suisun City, Oakland, San Francisco, San José, Mountain View, Redwood City and East Palo Alto.