San Francisco Bay area shoreline faces flooding in 40 years

Daily Californian: A recent report issued by a local conservation commission found that areas of the Berkeley shoreline are in danger of flooding in the next 40 years as a result of expected climate change. An April 7 draft report released by the San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission predicted that the sea level in the Bay Area will rise 16 inches by mid-century and 55 inches by 2100, flooding areas of the Berkeley Marina and a few blocks of West Berkeley.

According to Leslie Lacko, the report's principal author, 84 percent of the flooding will occur by 2050. "By the time sea levels rise just 16 inches, the Bay Area has received a tremendous impact," she said.

…The city of Berkeley is not as susceptible as other areas of the bay because its shoreline is at a higher elevation, according to Dennis Baldocchi, a professor of biometeorology at UC Berkeley. Many areas at risk of greater flooding are marshlands in the Bay Area that were filled with sediment or trash to create more land for development in the mid-19th and early-20th centuries, according Goldbeck.

"They didn't bother to build (the sediment) very high, because they didn't expect the sea to rise," he said. Regardless of how much flooding will occur in each region, Lacko said the report should be a concern to all cities with coastlines along the San Francisco Bay….

The Golden Gate from Berkeley Heights, between 1898 and 1905