DID YOU KNOW The California Ocean Protection Council Just Voted to Safeguard California from Climate Risk?

In a little watched decision, last Wednesday August 26th, 2014, the California Ocean Protection Council voted to support a resolution to implement a safeguarding plan for California to reduce climate risks. (http://www.cal-span.org/cgi-bin/archive.php?owner=COPC&date=2014-08-27 ) What was particularly interesting was that they encouraged protecting “California’s most vulnerable populations,” while achieving “multiple benefits from efforts to reduce climate risks and priorit(izing) green infrastructure solutions.” They further resolved that they need to “understand that an effective strategy for preparing for climate risks should evolve as new information is available.”

As Heal the Bay noted in their letter of support “the 2009 Climate Adaptation Strategy states that California ‘should pursue activities that can increase natural resiliency, such as restoring tidal wetlands, living shoreline, and related habitats; managing sediment for marsh accretion and natural flood protection; and maintaining upland buffer areas around tidal wetlands.…. Beach, dune, and wetlands habitats create a natural buffer zone to protect coastal communities, and associated infrastructure, from surging seas.’”’

In other words as the seas rise up, “coastal armoring should be the last resort to shoreline protection in California.” (Coastal armoring is further described as “beach armoring, including the use of hardened structures such as seawalls.”) “Instead, softer strategies that enhance an ecosystem’s natural adaptive capacity are the preferred option, such as managed retreat.” If I understand this correctly then all the structures currently on land that become flooded in the coming years should simply be allowed to float or are we talking of destroying them.

The fact is that what really may be becoming apparent is that we need to update the California constitution and California law so that as the seas rise, the state does not take over the lands. Under the State Lands Commission’s (SLC) current interpretation, your home can be taken by the state after long term flooding. As noted in one of my earlier blogs ( http://patch.com/california/redwoodcity-woodside/did-you-know-that-macro-trends-are-conspiring-to-privatize-submerged-lands-around-us ) the SLC is effectively claiming the right under the Public Trust Doctrine to remove homes and businesses after long term flooding.

Interestingly enough as I have also already written in earlier posts (http://patch.com/california/redwood-city-woodside/did-you-know-london-getting-floating-village ) cities like Amsterdam and London are fully on board . Instead of building seawalls and levees they are simply planning for floating neighborhoods and villages. In fact right here in the SF Bay Area we have a number of floating home communities that are essentially “softer strategies that enhance an ecosystem’s natural adaptive capacity.”

Although when the bay was slated to be filled in completely (think Foster City and Redwood Shores as the first steps towards that plan) these communities were originally considered fill, isn’t it time to recognize that when the bay is growing the number of these communities is actually only likely to grow?

What do you think? Should seawalls and other hardened structures be built to protect our shorelines? Or should we allow for softer strategies such as flooding and wetlands including converting some of our coastal communities to floating communities?

Photo credit: www.opc.ca.gov