The Estuary Partnership is currently updating the 2016 CCMP or Estuary Blueprint! We’re interested in your thoughts. What are your priorities for the future of the Estuary?
Visit https://archive.estuarynews.org/estuary-blueprint-update for opportunities to get involved, or contact [email protected] or (415) 778-6673 to share your ideas and for more information.
In 1992, when the San Francisco Estuary Partnership produced its first Comprehensive Conservation and Management Plan (CCMP), the community of participants was looking largely backward in time to the 19th century before massive population growth and ensuing development occurred around the Estuary. At the time, the science of how the Estuary worked was in its infancy, and the politics of managing San Francisco Bay and the Delta were embroiled in various battles over water supply, dredging, fish, pollution, and other environmental ills.
The 1992 CCMP used new science and regional partnerships to begin resolving natural resource conflicts and fixing damage to habitats and species of the Estuary. Its framers crafted goals and actions with an eye toward restoring the landscapes and waterways of a less disturbed era. They cast restoration objectives with the intent of bringing the Estuary back to the health and vitality of an earlier time.
Twenty-five years later, we know that we can never recover that Estuary; it is too altered by human development, too invaded by alien species, and too changed from the way it used to function historically. We do know, however, that we can bring back vibrant, healthy habitats to some parts of the Estuary, and that they in turn help recover endangered species. We also know that despite population growth, we can still conserve water, grow wetlands, green cities, and protect some wildlife. With these successes in mind, and with access to so many new shorelines for recreation and personal enjoyment, those who live around the Estuary are more eager than ever to help sustain it.
So what is to be the future of the Estuary that sits at the heart of 12 Bay Area and Central Valley counties and serves all of California as the hub of a critical water supply system? How can the people and communities that surround the Estuary best protect this economic engine and ecological treasure? Can we sustain all the beneficial uses of its waters—for drinking, irrigation, shipping, fishing, recreation—while reducing stresses on its habitats and wildlife and restoring them to health? If climate change and population growth continue as projected, what will the Estuary look like in 50 years? How do we plan for both expected changes and those we cannot yet foresee? What actions can we take now to help ensure a thriving Estuary in 2050, 35 years in the future?
These are the pressing questions that the San Francisco Estuary Partnership, working with hundreds of partners over the last 20 years, has sought to answer. And it is these questions that shape the core of our new Estuary Blueprint (formerly the CCMP). The purpose of the 2016 Estuary Blueprint is to provide all of us who call this place home with a working blueprint for cleaner waters, enhanced habitats, and healthier fish and wildlife.
The San Francisco Estuary Partnership’s Estuary Blueprint is a collaborative agreement about what should be done to protect and restore the Estuary — a road map for restoring the Estuary’s chemical, physical, and biological processes to health. The first CCMP, required under a reauthorization of the Clean Water Act in 1987, was produced in 1993 after several years of status assessments and policy discussions in which over 100 different stakeholder groups took part. It was the first plan to recognize that the Bay and the Delta should be managed as one Estuary, and remains the only plan of such scope to date. After 14 years of implementation, the CCMP was updated in 2007 to include new and revised actions while maintaining many actions from the original.
The 2016 Estuary Blueprint reflects the changing context of Estuary management over the last few decades. While this version incorporates many of the original CCMP goals, it has a new focus on the need to plan and adapt to climate change. In addition, the actions in the new Estuary Blueprint address the results of our 2015 State of the Estuary assessment. This assessment examined numerous science-based indicators of the health of five Estuary attributes: water, living resources, habitats, ecological processes, and people. This strong link between science and management will allow for a more direct evaluation of the outcome of our Estuary Blueprint actions.
The 2016 Estuary Blueprint revision represents a major overhaul of earlier documents. The 2007 CCMP included over 200 actions. The new structure includes 32 actions to be carried out over five years, connected to 35-year goals and objectives. By focusing on a more manageable number of priority actions, and updating priorities every five years, the Partnership expects to be more responsive and adaptable in the face of uncertain and changing environmental conditions.
The revision of the Estuary Blueprint took place over nearly three years and is the result of countless hours of effort from a broad range of organizations across the Estuary. The 2016 revision was guided by the following key objectives:
Several governing bodies directed the efforts of the Estuary Blueprint revision:
By Ariel Rubissow Okamoto
Nothing could be stranger than sitting in the dark with thousands of suits and heels, watching a parade of promises to decarbonize from companies and countries large and small, reeling from the beauties of big screen rainforests and indigenous necklaces, and getting all choked up.
It was day two of the September 2018 Global Climate Action Summit in San Francisco when I felt it.
At first I wondered if I was simply starstruck. Most of us labor away trying to fix one small corner of the planet or another without seeing the likes of Harrison Ford, Al Gore, Michael Bloomberg, Van Jones, Jerry Brown – or the ministers or mayors of dozens of cities and countries – in person, on stage and at times angry enough to spit. And between these luminaries a steady stream of CEOs, corporate sustainability officers, and pension fund managers promising percentages of renewables and profits in their portfolios dedicated to the climate cause by 2020-2050.
I tried to give every speaker my full attention: the young man of Vuntut Gwichin heritage from the edge of the Yukon’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge who pleaded with us not to enter his sacred lands with our drills and dependencies; all the women – swathed in bright patterns and head-scarfs – who kept punching their hearts. “My uncle in Uganda would take 129 years to emit the same amount of carbon as an American would in one year,” said Oxfam’s Winnie Byanyima.
“Our janitors are shutting off the lights you leave on,” said Aida Cardenas, speaking about the frontline workers she trains, mostly immigrants, who are excited to be part of climate change solutions in their new country.
The men on the stage, strutting about in feathers and pinstripes, spoke of hopes and dreams, money and power. “The notion that you can either do good or do well is a myth we have to collectively bust,” said New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy whose state is investing heavily in offshore wind farms.
“Climate change isn’t just about risks, it’s about opportunities,” said Blackrock sustainable investment manager Brian Deese.
But it wasn’t all these fine speeches that started the butterflies. Halfway through the second day of testimonials, it was a slight white-haired woman wrapped in an azure pashmina that pricked my tears. One minute she was on the silver screen with Alec Baldwin and the next she taking a seat on stage. She talked about trees. How trees can solve 30% of our carbon reduction problem. How we have to stop whacking them back in the Amazon and start planting them everywhere else. I couldn’t help thinking of Dr. Seuss and his truffala trees. Jane Goodall, over 80, is as fierce as my Lorax. Or my daughter’s Avatar.
Analyzing my take home feeling from the event I realized it wasn’t the usual fear – killer storms, tidal waves, no food for my kids to eat on a half-baked planet – nor a newfound sense of hope – I’ve always thought nature will get along just fine without us. What I felt was relief. People were actually doing something. Doing a lot. And there was so much more we could do.
As we all pumped fists in the dark, as the presentations went on and on and on because so many people and businesses and countries wanted to STEP UP, I realized how swayed I had let myself be by the doomsday news mill.
“We must be like the river, “ said a boy from Bangladesh named Risalat Khan, who had noticed our Sierra watersheds from the plane. “We must cut through the mountain of obstacles. Let’s be the river!”
Or as Harrison Ford less poetically put it: “Let’s turn off our phones and roll up our sleeves and kick this monster’s ass.”
by Isaac Pearlman
Since California’s last state-led climate change assessment in 2012, the Golden State has experienced a litany of natural disasters. This includes four years of severe drought from 2012 to 2016, an almost non-existent Sierra Nevada snowpack in 2014-2015 costing $2.1 billion in economic losses, widespread Bay Area flooding from winter 2017 storms, and extremely large and damaging wildfires culminating with this year’s Mendocino Complex fire achieving the dubious distinction of the largest in state history. California’s most recent climate assessment, released August 27th, predicts that for the state and the Bay Area, we can expect even more in the future.
The California state government first began assessing climate impacts formally in 2006, due to an executive order by Governor Schwarzenegger. California’s latest iteration and its fourth overall, includes a dizzying array of 44 technical reports; three topical studies on climate justice, tribal and indigenous communities, and the coast and ocean; as well as nine region-specific analyses.
The results are alarming for our state’s future: an estimated four to five feet of sea level rise and loss of one to two-thirds of Southern California beaches by 2100, a 50 percent increase in wildfires over 25,000 acres, stronger and longer heat waves, and infrastructure like airports, wastewater treatment plants, rail and roadways increasingly likely to suffer flooding.
For the first time, California’s latest assessment dives into climate consequences on a regional level. Academics representing nine California regions spearheaded research and summarized the best available science on the variable heat, rain, flooding and extreme event consequences for their areas. For example, the highest local rate of sea level rise in the state is at the rapidly subsiding Humboldt Bay. In San Diego county, the most biodiverse in all of California, preserving its many fragile and endangered species is an urgent priority. Francesca Hopkins from UC Riverside found that the highest rate of childhood asthma in the state isn’t an urban smog-filled city but in the Imperial Valley, where toxic dust from Salton Sea disaster chokes communities – and will only become worse as higher temperatures and less water due to climate change dry and brittle the area.
According to the Bay Area Regional Report, since 1950 the Bay Area has already increased in temperature by 1.7 degrees Fahrenheit and local sea level is eight inches higher than it was one hundred years ago. Future climate will render the Bay Area less suitable for our evergreen redwood and fir forests, and more favorable for tolerant chaparral shrub land. The region’s seven million people and $750 billion economy (almost one-third of California’s total) is predicted to be increasingly beset by more “boom and bust” irregular wet and very dry years, punctuated by increasingly intense and damaging storms.
Unsurprisingly, according to the report the Bay Area’s intensifying housing and equity problems have a multiplier affect with climate change. As Bay Area housing spreads further north, south, and inland the result is higher transportation and energy needs for those with the fewest resources available to afford them; and acute disparity in climate vulnerability across Bay Area communities and populations.
“All Californians will likely endure more illness and be at greater risk of early death because of climate change,” bluntly states the statewide summary brochure for California’s climate assessment. “[However] vulnerable populations that already experience the greatest adverse health impacts will be disproportionately affected.”
“We’re much better at being reactive to a disaster than planning ahead,” said UC Berkeley professor and contributing author David Ackerly at a California Adaptation Forum panel in Sacramento on August 27th. “And it is vulnerable communities that suffer from those disasters. How much human suffering has to happen before it triggers the next round of activity?”
The assessment’s data is publicly available online at “Cal-adapt,” where Californians can explore projected impacts for their neighborhoods, towns, and regions.
