Sea level rise isn't a possibility, it's an inevitability-and one with which waterfront communities still seem to be struggling.
Kevin Stark with the San Francisco Public Press taking field measurements at the San Francisco Ferry Building to demonstrate how much sea level rise would affect the piers along the Embarcadero. Photo by Kevin McKean/Public Press
By Bill Picture
Published: October, 2015
Sea level rise isn’t a possibility, it’s an inevitability—and one with which waterfront communities still seem to be struggling.
Reporters at the San Francisco Pubic Press were curious how current predictions about rising sea levels are figuring into plans for new construction projects in the Bay Area, so they started digging. Their extensive public records search turned up 27 major projects that, if built as proposed, would be at the mercy of advancing waters in coming decades. The combined price tag for these projects comes to more than $21 billion.
“It’s pretty insane,” said the San Francisco Public Press’ Kevin Stark, who wrote the story and worked with UC Berkeley’s Cartography and GIS Education (CAGE) Lab to create a map that spells out very clearly the impact of sea level rise on a region in the midst of a serious building boom with no end in sight.
“That dollar figure is staggering,” he said, “and those are just the projects that we were able to find on our own.” Stark added that his team only reviewed projects with an estimated cost over $500,000.
Keeping tabs on waterfront development
One of the reasons that sea level rise isn’t getting the attention it deserves from developers and the agencies that regulate them is that determining exactly how much the water will rise is an imperfect science. Projections vary from three feet to eight feet by the end of this century, and without a firm number to work with, regulatory bodies are reluctant to put new rules on the books that could deter new investment.
What’s more, buildings are going up so fast that regulation, which is notoriously difficult and slow to shape and get approved, is left trying to catch up. Stark pointed out that sea level rise wasn’t really an issue when current building rules were drawn up, allowing the issue to slip through the regulatory cracks.
The San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission is typically one of the first stops for developers seeking permission to build on Bayfront land. But this agency’s jurisdiction ends 100 feet from the water, putting many of the threatened projects out of the commission’s limited purview.
“And environmental impact regulation, as it’s written now, is concerned only with the impact on the environment, not the other way around,” Stark said. “So when a project is challenged, the legal argument being made is, ‘Well, the law doesn’t say we have to worry about how the environment will affect us. We only have to worry about how our project affects the environment.’”
That’s what happened when environmental watchdogs challenged plans for Facebook’s Menlo Park campus, which was built on land that’s already just a smidge above sea level. Though currently protected by a levee, the issue of who will foot the expensive bill for maintaining that levee as the Bay rises—Facebook or the City of Menlo Park—has yet to be decided.
“It’s short-sighted thinking, for sure,” Stark said. “And interesting to see already very loose regulations regarding sea level rise being directly challenged.”
And sea level rise received little more than a mention in an environmental report prepared by the company wishing to build an arena for the Golden State Warriors in San Francisco’s Mission Bay. The San Francisco Public Press reports that the impact of sea level rise was downplayed in the report, “citing lack of regulatory clarity.”
San Francisco pulls ahead
It will come as no surprise that San Francisco is ahead of neighboring counties when it comes to addressing sea level rise. “San Francisco is ahead of the curve in that it’s done a deep dive into the science,” Stark said. “They’re looking at the data and figuring out, ‘What number should we be prepared for?’”
San Francisco has also established internal guidelines for public projects. That includes a matrix that planners can use for designing the roads and sewer systems that service new Bayfront developments. Still, there’s little San Francisco can say about how private developers plan for sea level rise. As long as a project meets current environmental and safety standards, there’s really no stopping it.
A good example is the plan for a mixed-used development at San Francisco’s Pier 70. The 28-acre property sits at the edge of the water, just five feet above sea level in some areas. Add six feet of water to the Bay, which is what scientists are predicting will happen by the end of this century, and residents lucky enough to nab a unit on a higher floor could be able to fish from their windows. That’s if nothing’s done between now and then to keep the encroaching water at bay.
People moving into many of the condominium complexes being built on land already determined to be flood-prone have a Mello-Roos tax folded into their property taxes that will help pay to protect them from sea level rise. It’s a proactive effort to be prepared for the near future.
“The bottom line is, there needs to be a regional solution, and it’s the state that would need to step in and help develop that,” Stark said. “But honestly I think we’re years out from seeing that happen.”
Read Stark’s story and see the sea level rise map created by San Francisco Public Press and UC Berkeley’s CAGE Lab at sfpublicpress.org/searise.
During king tides, which occur when the gravity of the sun and moon align, “We can get an idea of what a permanent rise in sea level might look like in our communities,” says the California King Tides Project. In these stills from a time-lapse video, the water level at Ferry Building Terminal B changed about 8 feet over a period of 6˝ hours. Photos by Eric Lawson // Public Press
