California confronts a sea change

David Helvarg in the Los Angeles Times: Governors Andrew Cuomo of New York and Chris Christie of New Jersey don't need to wait on gridlocked Washington to confront future risks from climate-change intensified storms. They can instead look at how California is already moving forward on common-sense adaptations, and do it themselves. With 3.5 million Californians living within three feet of sea level, and the best available science projecting a 3- to 5-foot rise in sea level for the state by 2100, doing nothing would be irresponsible.

In Northern California, rising sea levels are projected to affect more than a quarter of a million people and threaten more than $60 billion in infrastructure in the San Francisco Bay/Delta region, putting power stations, water-treatment plants, roads, buildings and the San Francisco and Oakland airports (both built on filled wetlands) at risk. In Southern California, scientists point to the loss of 3,000 beachfront homes to major El Niño winter storms in the 1980s as suggestive of what climate change has in store.

...For starters, California is ahead of most states in its attempts to address the problem at its source by reducing greenhouse gas emissions. ... But climate change is happening, so adaptation, as well as prevention, is going to be essential.

A number of local and state efforts are underway. This year, the San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission, the state's original coastal protection group, amended its long-standing San Francisco Bay Plan to make sure projected sea-level rise is taken into account by any new project, such as a planned $1.5-billion development on Treasure Island in the middle of the bay.

After repeated flooding from winter storms in 2009-10 shut down the Great Highway along the city's share of the Pacific coast, the Army Corps of Engineers proposed pumping dredged sand onto the beach to shore it up and a city think tank suggested "planned retreat" — shrinking and rerouting the highway at a cost of $343 million — as the best long-term solution. While the options are reviewed, city workers continue armoring the southbound lanes with boulders....

The Newport Pier in Newport Beach, California, shot by Alienburrito, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license