Download: Estuary News, February 2013 PDF
Call it the Canute Syndrome, after the 11th-century monarch who is said to have ordered the waves not to approach his throne. In the past, when storms and waves eroded a heavily-used California beach, the automatic response was armoring the shoreline—putting down boulders, building revetments or groins. That’s changing, though, due to a constellation of forces: nonprofits like the Surfrider Foundation advocating for natural beaches; engineers willing to take on projects that build shoreline resilience; Coastal Conservancy funding to implement them; a Coastal Commission majority unwilling to approve hardscape solutions; and the certainty of sea level rise. From San Francisco to Ventura, a new consensus is emerging that the soundest approach to beach erosion is to step back, even if that means relocating infrastructure. The strategy is “managed retreat,” a phrase coined by ecologist Reed Noss of the University of Central Florida with reference to habitat corridors for wildlife.
Our coastline is “a temporary line in the sand,” writes Gary Griggs in Introduction to California’s Beaches and Coast. We’ve ignored its temporary nature by building out onto the beach. Bob Battalio, an engineer with ESA PWA involved with several managed retreat projects, points out that sea level has been rising over the last 20,000 years, cutting into low landforms: “We shouldn’t be surprised if the shore encroaches upon what we build. It’s hard to stop this large-scale geologic process even if you own the property. When we try to intervene and manage the system, we end up with man-made problems. We’re throwing public money off the cliff to try to maintain something that’s ultimately not sustainable.”
The master plan for San Francisco’s Ocean Beach, developed by the San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association (SPUR) incorporates managed retreat. Not yet officially adopted by the city, its goals include dismantling the Great Highway south of Sloat Boulevard, letting dunes migrate inshore, and restoring native dune vegetation. “Closing the Great Highway is a spectacular move,” says SPUR’s Ben Grant. The plan took shape after the Coastal Commission rejected further shore armoring. SPUR brought together stakeholders like the Golden Gate National Recreation Area (GGNRA), S.F. Park & Rec, the S.F. Public Utilities Commission, Surfrider, and Golden Gate Audubon, and won across-the-board political support. It’s not all retreat: the sewage treatment plant will be protected by a dynamic revetment. “We worked hard to get out of the framework of armoring versus retreat,” Grant adds. “It’s a careful combination of managed retreat, beach nourishing, and selective armoring. We came in from the outside without a dog in the fight and made people acknowledge each other’s constraints.”
The regulatory constraints associated with the plan are formidable, including wastewater permits under the Clean Water Act, state and regional water board permits for federal dredging, Coastal Commission coastal development permits allowing emergency armoring and future management activities, and GGNRA permits for activities on a national park property. In addition, two sensitive bird species use the beach: snowy plovers winter in the central and northern portion, bank swallows nest in the bluffs south of Sloat. Under the master plan, the plovers would benefit from dune habitat restoration. “The bank swallow habitat is one of the major constraints that has regulatory teeth,” says Grant. “A lot of the embankment is artificial fill, not really good nesting habitat, which we propose incrementally removing.”
Down the Peninsula at Pacifica State Beach, managed retreat entailed relocating a parking lot and a bike path, rerouting access roads, and demolishing two homes. “The main problem was a lack of trust,” recalls Battalio. “The city had a varied record, with a lot of armoring in the northern part of town.” When funding constraints killed a proposed cobble berm, ESA PWA came in with a design alternative. “It’s an ongoing process,” he says. “We moved back 40 feet and we’re good for 20 or 30 years. Then we have a problem about what we do if sea level rise really accelerates.”
Santa Barbara has a long history of attempted erosion control at Goleta Beach, with rock revetments emplaced, removed, then reinstated. The city proposed a $20 million sand-trapping groin to stabilize the beach and found a Southern California engineering firm to build it. Surfrider and the local Environmental Defense Center (EDC) argued that this would cause downcoast beaches to narrow as much as Goleta Beach would widen. Despite support from a group called Friends of Goleta Beach and local politicians, the Coastal Commission voted down the groin plan. “It was a tremendous victory,” says EDC’s Brian Trautwein. “Immediately afterward we started talking with the county about a managed retreat approach.” That led to the Goleta 2.0 plan, with Phase 1 construction budgeted at about $3.5 million. The plan will remove a parking lot at the beach’s erosion hot spot, squeeze out more spaces in another lot, move sewer and water lines and a bike path inland, and build a dune system on geotextile bags.
Consensus came more easily with the Surfer’s Point project in Ventura, where the Coastal Commission denied a permit for a rock revetment. According to UC Santa Cruz researcher Marc Beyeler, the key figure was Surfrider activist, city councilman and restaurateur Brian Brennan, who restarted a stalled process by bringing stakeholders together at a “Caesar Salad Summit.” As with Pacifica, a bike path and parking lot were moved back. “Surfer’s Point is a leading example cited by federal and state agencies,” says Beyeler. He believes social scientists should investigate ways to generate this kind of community support for adaptive shoreline management: “Even if we have the best natural science, the real limitation is the disconnect between science and policy.”
Beyeler feels the “managed retreat” concept needs rebranding, preferring “resilient shorelines.” ESA PWA’s Battalio agrees that “retreat is not a popular word. Lots of people are calling it realignment. But I use ‘retreat’ because it’s important to communicate with people. We’re going to retreat. The only question is how much money we waste and how much of the environment we destroy before we figure that out.”
MORE INFO?
NOAA: Ocean and Coastal Resource Management
SPUR: Future of Ocean Beach
CONTACT: Bob Battalio, [email protected]; Marc Beyler, [email protected]; Ben Grant, [email protected]; Brian Trautwein, [email protected]
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.