California's coastal cities prepare for rising sea levels

Tony Barboza in the Los Angeles Times: Cities along California's coastline that for years have dismissed reports of climate change or lagged in preparing for rising sea levels are now making plans to fortify their beaches, harbors and waterfronts. Communities up and down the coast have begun drafting plans to build up wetlands as buffers against rising tides, to construct levees and seawalls to keep the waters at bay or to retreat from the shoreline by moving structures inland.

Among them is Newport Beach, a politically conservative city where a council member once professed to not believe in global warming. Now, the wealthy beach city is considered to be on the forefront of preparing for climate change.

Though some in Newport Beach remain skeptical that global warming caused by humans is elevating sea levels, city planners are looking at raising seawalls by a foot or more to hold back the ocean. New homes along the city's harbor are being built on foundations several feet higher than their predecessors as a precaution against flooding. "I feel a real sense of urgency to begin planning for this right now," Mayor Michael Henn said. "To me it's irrelevant what the causes of global warming are. What we are dealing with is the reality that sea levels are rising."

Sea levels have risen about 8 inches in the last century, and scientists expect them to rise several feet by the end of this century as climate change warms the ocean.

The focus on adaptation is a marked shift for cities such as Newport Beach that just a few years ago had made few preparations for the effects of climate change or were focusing on reducing their carbon footprints. Even as the California Legislature passed a landmark law in 2006 to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, few coastal cities had any plans to confront rising waters on their own shores.

"The state of preparedness was close to zero in terms of looking forward to climate change and what it's going to bring," said Susanne Moser, a social science researcher at the Woods Institute for the Environment at Stanford University, who has surveyed coastal cities and counties about planning for rising sea levels. "Since then there's been an explosion of interest on the local level."…

The town of Newport Beach, and the Pacific. Shot by Renjishino, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license