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SUMMER 2015
ISSUE 17
SEA LEVEL RISE THREATENS WATERFRONT DEVELOPMENT NEW CONSTRUCTION WORTH BILLIONS COULD BE FLOODED WITHIN DECADES
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he Bay Area’s current waterfront building frenzy includes at least $21 billion in housing and commercial construction in low-lying areas that climate scientists say could flood by the end of the century. In examining approval processes for new buildings on the edge of San Francisco Bay, our team found that some cities are greenlighting waterfront development without planning for the long term or fully accounting for the future cost of reconfiguring large projects to resist flooding. In light of a new convergence in scientific projections — in which sea level rise could drive
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floodwaters during extreme storms as high as 8 feet above today’s high tide — some scientists and community activists are calling for reforms. That may not happen before all these new waterfront communities and office parks get built. Developers say they can raise the land, waterproof basements and build levees and seawalls much higher to protect residents and businesses. But critics say the burden of protecting new real estate is being passed on to the taxpayers of the next two or three generations. STORIES BEGIN ON PAGE B1
BAY AREA GOVERNMENTS STUDY THE PROBLEM, BUT FEW SET LIMITS ON DEVELOPMENT PAGE B2
section MAP SHOWS CONSTRUCTION AT RISK ACROSS BAY PAGES B4–B5 AS SCIENTIFIC PROJECTIONS GET BETTER, SERIOUS FLOODING SEEMS INEVITABLE PAGE B6 MISSION BAY PIONEERS: WORKING AND LIVING IN S.F.’S NEW FLOOD ZONES PAGE B6 FOUR WAYS TO GUARD AGAINST SEA LEVEL RISE PAGE B8 FORMIDABLE OBSTACLES TO BAYWIDE RESPONSE PAGE B8 PLANNING AND ENVIRONMENTAL EXPERTS ON THE COMING INUNDATION PAGES B1–B8 This page: Darker shades of blue show areas that could flood in a bad storm by the end of the century. Solid red boxes are actual or planned construction projects; thin red lines enclose neighborhoods where development is encouraged. For more details and a larger map of the bay, see pages B4–B5.
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section
RESEARCHERS FIND NATIVE BEES ARE BEST POLLINATORS FOR CITY GARDENS PAGE A3
TRANSIT OFFICIALS CLEAR WAY FOR LARGE, PRIVATELY FUNDED BIKE SHARE PROGRAM PAGE A6
STATE CLIMATE CHANGE RULES NOT LIVING UP TO EXPECTATIONS PAGE A4
ADVOCATES CLAIM NEW TIPLESS RESTAURANT APPROACH PAYS WORKERS MORE FAIRLY PAGE A7
TOOTH DECAY POSES MAJOR PUBLIC HEALTH PROBLEM PAGE A5 A ROTATING COLLAGE SHOWCASES S.F. LANDMARKS, UNITES COMMUNITY PAGE A5
HOUSING PRICES SOAR DESPITE PACE OF RESIDENTIAL CONSTRUCTION IN SOMA NEIGHBORHOOD PAGE A7
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A2 | SFPUBLICPRESS.ORG | SAN FRANCISCO PUBLIC PRESS, SUMMER 2015
SAN FRANCISCO PUBLIC PRESS
FROM THE EDITORS
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he San Francisco Public Press produces in-depth investigations that show the real effect of public policy decisions and help all of us in the Bay Area understand our communities better. We need your support to keep this work going. You can help by making a donation to join or renewing your membership during our summer fundraising campaign to raise $50,000. As of press time, we have raised more than $34,000, including donations from dozens of people and a $15,000 matching grant from the San Francisco Foundation. Our goal as a nonprofit, noncommercial news organization is to lead in improving community coverage. Recent cover stories have tackled the tortuous path from homelessness to housing, delays in communicating with tenants and homeowners about the earthquake vulnerability of soft-story buildings, how San Francisco tracks its myriad workforce development programs, and increased segregation in San Francisco public schools. Learn more about the Public Press at sfpublicpress.org and join or renew your membership today by pledging online at sfpublicpress.org/membership, sending a check or calling (415) 495-7377. Thank you for supporting our efforts to bring you the best local public-interest journalism.
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Awash in the Ocean ACROSS 1. Transfer city 4. Mamas’ partners 9. Befuddled 13. Lawyers’ guild 14. Fatty liquid 15. Not quite right 16. ____ Miz (Broadway nickname) 17. Some travelers’ preferences 19. Revitalizes 21. Delivery man of old 22. Lois or Penny 23. Burn the surface of 24. Skedaddles 27. Emulate Daffy 28. Bo Peep’s charge 31. The devil's designer? 32. Result of leaf-raking 33. Boxers Muhammad and Laila 34. Environmental concern, and what this puzzle illustrates 37. “Agreed!” 38. Greek letters that look like P’s 39. Vaughn of “Wedding Crashers” 40. ___ out! (umpire’s cry) 41. Connery or Lennon 42. “The Year of Magical Thinking” novelist Joan 43. Ball of thread or yarn 44. Word often spelled out using two hockey sticks 45. Phylicia of “The Cosby Show” 48. 1930’s dance 52. Like child’s play 54. Big galoot 55. A gift of the magi 56. “It’s a Wonderful Life” director Frank 57. Buddhist sect 58. Clothes line? 59. Arose, by any other name 60. Have the last word? DOWN 1. 50/50 share 2 . Ride sharing service 3. Military center 4. Father of Pocahontas 5. Little green men
Crossword by Andrea Carla Michaels and Joel Elkins
6. Tubular pasta 7. Helps out 8. Cone or Caps prefix 9. Bahrain bigwig 10. “The King and I” locale 11. “Como ____ usted?” 12. Part of AARP 15. Musical copyright protector 18. Nobel laureate Elie 20. Arrived home in a cloud of dust 23. Marner of fiction 24. Skunk’s defense 25. USDA's highest rating 26. Non-invasive surgical tool 27. Use as a bed 28. Nicholas Gage memoir 29. Roger’s last name? 30. City on the Ruhr
32. “Hogwash!” 33. With gusto 35. Selfish 36. Raimi cult classic film 41. / 42. Star of “The King of Comedy” 43. Amulet 44. “Fantasia” ballerina 45. Mates for 28-across 46. “____ sow, so shall ...” 47. “Will be,” in a Doris Day song 48. Hurdle for future 13-Across members 49. State of confusion 50. Unlock 51. Hang in the balance 53. Summer coolers, briefly 67. Pipe joint
SAN FRANCISCO PUBLIC PRESS, SUMMER 2015 | SFPUBLICPRESS.ORG | A3
San Francisco’s Native Bees Do the Job Just Fine
Above: Two female digger bees – California natives – work a sunflower for pollen to feed their young. Photo by Debbie Ballentine // Bay Nature Inset, right: A tuning fork was used to mimic the frequency at which a wild bee buzzes to release pollen from a tomato flower for one of the artificial pollination treatments. Photo courtesy of Andrew Potter
Study finds city’s 150 species adequately pollinate agriculture, parkside gardens By Michelaina Johnson // Bay Nature
D
oes San Francisco have a healthy enough native bee population to pollinate the city’s agriculture? Andrew Potter, an environmental consultant and a former San Francisco State University graduate student asked himself that question a few years ago after learning that not enough bees live in pollinator deserts, such as California’s Central Valley, to provide adequate pollination service to plants. He wondered if urban San Francisco shared the same challenge. With San Francisco State biology professor Gretchen LeBuhn, Potter designed a study that measured the pollination service of the city’s native bees. The study, published in the journal Urban Ecosystems, found that the native bee population indeed supplies “adequate pollination service” for the city’s agriculture, including parks and gardens. The results are surprising, since previous studies have found that urban environments have lower bee populations and fewer bee species than surrounding areas. Urban growers should take heart as there are 150 native bee species in San Francisco, LeBuhn said. This figure does not include honeybees,
which are not indigenous to North America. “It is pretty clear that there is sufficient pollinator service for urban agriculture from native species alone,” LeBuhn said. “We don’t need to add honeybees to have pollination” in the city. Nevertheless, honeybees remain a part of the fabric of San Francisco’s urban agriculture, where beekeepers harvest and sell honey to a re-
tion” in which the bees pump their flight muscles to vibrate the flower to shake pollen free. Honeybees, however, are incapable of sonication and avoid tomato plants if other floral options are available. LeBuhn and Potter randomly selected 18 urban gardens from a list of more than 200 in the city as study sites and placed three tomato plants at each site. Each plant was divided into four inflorescences, or
“If you think about it from a bee’s perspective, flying over downtown San Francisco is not particularly welcoming. But the bees were capable of navigating that environment while providing the ecosystem service of pollination.” Andrew Potter, author of study tail marketplace hungry for locally made products. In the study, Potter and LeBuhn selected a plant that native bees favor – the cherry tomato plant. The pollen of tomato flowers is significantly more accessible to native bees than honeybees because native bees access the pollen though a technique called sonication or “buzz pollina-
flower clusters. The researchers covered three of the clusters with pollinator exclusion bags and left the last one open for native bees to pollinate. The covered clusters were given differing pollination treatments. The control group was self-pollinated, and researchers used artificial methods of pollination in the other
Male longhorn bees cluster on a California buckwheat plant. Photo by Debbie Ballentine // Bay Nature
two groups. In one, Potter used a middle C tuning fork to mimic bee sonication to release pollen from the plant’s anther cones, which make up part of the male plant organs. The other method involved dipping the female parts, the stigmas, of the experimental flowers in sonicated pollen gathered from other plants. Results from two of the sites were excluded because of aphid infestation and wind damage. After two weeks of pollinating on-site, the plants were returned to a San Francisco State greenhouse to finish their growth under uniform conditions. The researchers measured tomato weight, the number of tomatoes on each plant, the number of flowers that matured into tomatoes and the number of seeds per tomato cluster. The study found that the clusters where native bees had done their work in the open yielded the highest amount of fruit of the test cases. Potter and LeBuhn concluded that the native bees are able to adequately pollinate plants that, like tomatoes, are not restricted to a certain bee species. Much to the scientists’ surprise, the study also found that the number of impervious surfaces, such as buildings and fences, does not hinder pollination service in the city. “If you think about it from a bee’s perspective, flying over downtown San Francisco is not particularly welcoming,” Potter said. “But the bees were capable of navigating that environment while providing the ecosystem service of pollination. That is good news for both bees and farmers.” The study also indicates that the number of bees attracted to a garden plot has more to do with the density of flowers than the size of the garden. That is also good news to space-limited gardeners, who can add more flowers to boost fruit and vegetable yields. LeBuhn launched The Great Sunflower Project in 2008 to engage the public in the conservation of pollinators and gather important data for research. Participants record the bees they see in their gardens,
Cherry tomatoes — a favorite among California native bees — were adequately pollinated by San Francisco local bees. Photo courtesy of Andrew Potter parks and schools, and now have a tool to allow them to evaluate their pollinator spot and receive customized suggestions on how to make the
space more bee friendly. Over time, researchers will get a better sense of which interventions are effective and which are not.
HOW TO HELP NATIVE BEES • • • • • •
Create a bee garden with wildflowers native to your area Choose wildflowers with blossoms of varying size and shapes, and with varied bloom times to support a diverse bee population Plant in 3- to 4-foot-wide color blocks of the same flower species (bees especially like purple, blue, white and yellow flowers) Keep your garden free of pesticides and herbicides Leave an area of bare dirt where ground-nesting bees can tunnel Make stem bundles of plant material for woodnesting bees
A4 | SFPUBLICPRESS.ORG | SAN FRANCISCO PUBLIC PRESS, SUMMER 2015
Above: California’s cap-and-trade program gives utilities credits for a variety of pollution-prevention programs, including residential solar power production. Workers recently installed rooftop panels at a South Sacramento home at an event attended by state Sen. Kevin de Leon. Photo by Carl Costas // CALmatters Right: Lawmakers hope electricity providers will rely more on wind farms, such as this one in Altamont, for their energy in the next five years. Photo by jasleen_kaur via Flickr
California’s Ambitious Climate Change Rules Fall Short of Goals With spate of new reforms, state struggles with cost of cap-and-trade, conservation programs By Kate Galbraith // CALmatters
California has long been a global leader in fighting climate change, despite producing only about 1 percent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. In 2006, Assembly Bill 32 established a goal of cutting the state’s greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020. By executive order, Gov. Jerry Brown set a new goal this spring: He now wants California businesses and residents to cut their greenhouse gas emissions to 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2030. Over the 10 years leading up
D-Agoura Hills, an author of both bills. Melting mountain snows, rising seas and poor health resulting from warmer temperatures — all resonated with Californians, she said. At a signing ceremony for AB 32 on San Francisco’s Treasure Island, then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger predicted that major nations would join the fight against climate change. So would the federal government. “Trust me,” Schwarzenegger said to applause, as international flags fluttered behind him in the breeze. “I am convinced of that — that this will happen, because
“We realized under AB 32 and the car bill, we’re not just talking about polar bears and arctic ice caps, but this was real impacts to California,” Sen. Fran Pavley, D-Agoura Hills
to Brown’s deadline, emissions must fall up to seven times as fast as during the preceding decade. And emissions would have to fall another 40 percentage points by 2050 if a bill currently before the Assembly passes. Cutting emissions that much more will be costly. To date, consumers in the state have seen an estimated 3 to 5 percent rise in electricity rates, and are paying about an extra dime per gallon of gasoline, due to specific climate-related programs. Despite the pioneering policies, greenhouse gas emissions in California have dropped by 7 percent from their peak in 2004 to 2013, the latest year for which figures are available, compared to 9 percent drop nationwide over the same period. When AB 32 passed, establishing the nation’s first broad plan for cutting greenhouse gas emissions, environmentalists hoped the action would touch off a revolution. The target established was ambitious. It built on an earlier groundbreaking bill to reduce the greenhouse gases in car exhaust. “We realized under AB 32 and the car bill, we’re not just talking about polar bears and arctic ice caps, but this was real impacts to California,” said Sen. Fran Pavley,
nothing is more important than protecting our planet.” Democrats and some Republicans in Congress did try to pass a national greenhouse gas cap. But it failed, while California forged ahead with a kaleidoscope of programs. The broadest and perhaps most controversial of these is a cap-and-trade policy, which subjects the state’s most-polluting companies to a cap on their greenhouse gas emissions and allows them to trade credits to pollute. The California Chamber of Commerce has challenged the legality of a key feature of the program. The state has prevailed so far, but the lawsuit is working its way through an appeal. Other policies for cutting greenhouse gas emissions include a requirement for most electricity providers to get 33 percent of their energy from renewable sources, such as wind farms and solar arrays by 2020, and a low-carbon fuel standard that requires producers of fuels like gasoline and diesel to make their products 10 percent less carbon-intensive by 2020. Many other programs also exist, including goals to make buildings more energy
efficient, increase the number of electric vehicles and maximize the use of public transportation. These rules remain largely invisible to Californians. But they result in slightly increased prices, notably at the gas pump, where economists say the cap-and-trade program has added roughly a dime to the cost of each gallon since the beginning of this year. The state’s Public Utilities Commission estimates electric power rates have increased by 3 to 5 percent due to the renewable energy requirements. It is difficult to find companies that have left the state specifically because of climate policies, as opposed to California’s broad basket of regulations. But industry groups and their advocates predict this will happen in the future, as policies grow stricter.
UNKNOWN COSTS California officials do not know how much their climate rules have cost or saved. The Air Resources Board, the state regulatory body that oversees the greenhouse gas reductions, stated in a key document last year that the law’s effect on economic growth remains unknown. Mary Nichols, chair of the Air Resources Board, noted in an interview that jobs and investment are increasing in California. “We look at that happening at the same time that the cap and trade program has been in effect and we say ‘What’s the problem?’” she said. The long-term future of California’s greenhouse gas programs lies in two bills that have passed the state Senate and are being evaluated this summer by the Assembly. • Senate Bill 350 aims at three pieces of the energy puzzle — petroleum, electricity and buildings. It seeks to cut petroleum use in motor vehicles by 50 percent (a very difficult target, analysts agree), boost electric utilities’ reliance on renewable energy to 50 percent, and double the energy efficiency in buildings – all by the year 2030. • Senate Bill 32 would require the state to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 80 percent below 1990 levels by mid-century. It would codify into
law an executive order issued by Schwarzenegger, a step that helps ensure that the goal is binding.
GOALS HARDER TO REACH An illuminating view came from a study this spring by Energy and Environmental Economics (E3), a San Francisco-based consulting group hired by the state to evaluate future greenhouse gas reductions. To reduce emissions by 26 to 38 percent below 1990 levels by 2030 — a level not quite as ambitious as the 40 percent reduction recently ordered by Brown — the group forecast a range of results, from savings of $8 billion to costs of $23 billion per year in 2012 dollars. A cut of 33 percent by 2030 could cost about $50 per Californian annually, the study found. On the human level, modeling by Bloomberg New Energy Finance, an analysis firm, found that the cap-and-trade program could raise gasoline prices by 22 cents a gallon by 2025, though there is an outside chance of prices increasing by as much as 50 cents a gallon, according to Colleen Regan, a senior analyst. While many of these numbers are hazy predictions, it is clear that meeting longterm targets will be difficult. “On greenhouse gas emissions, California has always been an A student,” said Ashley Lawson, a senior carbon analyst at Thomson Reuters. “So to perform any better, you have to work really, really hard to go from an A to an A plus.” The rest of the country, which is replacing coal-fired power plants with less-polluting natural gas plants, “was able to go from a C to a B, with almost no effort at all,” she said. Critics like the Chamber of Commerce
say that the drastic emissions measures planned for the future could harm the economy and take away jobs. Supporters counter that past sky-is-falling projections have not come to pass, and that technological innovation is speeding up. When Schwarzenegger signed AB 32, above the howls of industry groups, electric cars had barely begun to hit the roadways, and a rooftop’s worth of solar panels cost more than a year at a private college. Prices have fallen rapidly since then, and California is getting cleaner. The question for the future is whether it can get clean enough. CALmatters is a nonprofit journalism venture dedicated to explaining California policies and politics.
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SAN FRANCISCO PUBLIC PRESS, SUMMER 2015 | SFPUBLICPRESS.ORG | A5
Income Disparity Displayed in a Smile of Bad Teeth Lack of access to dentists develops into major public health problem By Laura Wenus // Mission Local
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ooth decay paints a bleak picture of the Mission District’s growing inequality. Even as incomes rise, the kindergartners at Mission Education Center have been given the dubious distinction of having the worst teeth in the city — some 75 percent have had tooth decay, according to Department of Public Health statistics. In the 94110 ZIP code, between 15 and 19 percent of white kindergartners had experienced tooth decay, compared with 35 to 39 percent of Hispanic children. Health workers are particularly troubled by disparities in tooth decay among demographic groups. In an annual survey of San Francisco kindergartners performed by the Department of Public Health and the school district, since 2007, rates of tooth decay have dropped overall, but the gap between groups has only widened. Children of color are more than twice as likely to develop untreated tooth decay as are white children. The big divide, however, is income, and the challenge is to change behaviors in at-risk groups. “You never know what will make them change,” said Margaret Fisher, a dental hygienist in alternative practice who works with the Department of Public Health and helps lead the San Francisco Children’s Oral Health Collaborative. Not everyone has the means to sustain themselves and their family on fresh fruits and vegetables and water and milk. They might know that a liter of soda is not the best option, “but maybe that’s all they can do at the moment,” said public health dentist Lisa Chung, also a co-lead at the Oral Health Collaborative. Chung also described access to care as a “chronic issue,” especially for low-income communities that rely on Denti-Cal, the dental portion of Medi-Cal. It is difficult to find a dentist who will accept Denti-Cal, Chung said, and those that do are often overbooked. The latter is a particular problem now because this year, Denti-Cal reinstated the adult coverage that it had dropped in 2009. Now affordable dentists are flooded with adult clients. “Frankly, adult dentistry is a lot easier” and doesn’t involve crying children, said Carson Bentley, a dentist at the Native American Health Center. But dentistry early in life is critical. Bentley and the Oral Health Collaborative recommended at least one dental visit for children before they turn 1, and to receive topical fluoride application through tap water, toothpaste and dentist-applied varnishes, as well as resin sealants for molars to prevent cavities. Irene Hilton, a public health dentist and a board member of the San Francisco Dental Society, said she runs into misunderstandings about the seriousness of allowing children’s primary teeth to rot, under the assumption that the teeth fall out anyway. Kids whose baby teeth were neglected and developed cavities tend to suffer from tooth problems well after their adult teeth come in because the harmful bacteria have already settled and flourished in their mouths. In the worst untreated cases, children have died from complications of tooth decay. Serious tooth decay in young children can also manifest as “failure to thrive,” a lack of growth and weight gain as a result of not being able to make a transition to solid and healthy foods — all as the result of an entirely preventable affliction. Education on any number of issues is important. Sugar is, of course, another target of preventive dental care, and both San Francisco dentists and city legislators are taking aim. Educational campaigns about the negative health effects of sugar-sweetened beverages and sugary foods adorn Muni vehicles and government buildings as well
Studies show that children from ethnic minority backgrounds are twice as likely to develop untreated tooth decay as white children. Alexandra Malebranche, a first-year pediatric dental resident at the University of California, San Francisco, gives a dental screening to an 8-year-old girl at a wellness fair in the Bayview during Sunday Streets in 2012. Photo Cindy Chew // special to the Public Press
sweetened beverages on city property and prohibit the as many nonprofits. San Francisco General Hospital city from spending any money on sugary drinks or announced recently that it would stop selling sugarincluding their sale in any city contracts and grants. sweetened drinks on-site and would host a nutritionMore dramatically, the conscious fair to celebrate. health code now includes a “We feel that we have mandate that any sugarybest practices, we have the drink advertising in the knowledge … but it’s trans“We feel that we have best city include a health warnlating that into communiing, similar to those for ties that are suffering from practices, we have the cigarettes, that takes up 20 disease that is the issue,” knowledge ... but it’s translating percent of the ad space. The said Chung. “Knowledge measure will go into effect doesn’t always equal behavthat into communities that are next summer. ior change. We feel like we suffering from disease that is “This is a looming disaster could be more effective.” for our health care system,” At a government level, the issue.” after massive spending by District 8 Supervisor Scott the American Beverage Wiener said at the Board of Lisa Chung, public health dentist at Association helped prevent Supervisors meeting where Children’s Oral Health Collaborative a ballot measure for a soda he proposed the restrictions. tax from getting its required “These are not just harmless two-thirds majority vote, San products that taste good.” Francisco supervisors are apThe city has also allocated parently taking just such a top-down approach. funding for an oral health coordinator, who will help They unanimously passed three regulations at a unify the efforts of dentists, the Department of Public recent board meeting that prevent advertising of sugarHealth, health care workers and educators to prevent
children from falling through the cracks of dental care. A wide range of oral health stakeholders, including the Department of Public Health, Mission Head Start, the San Francisco Dental Society, and the University of California, San Francisco, have come together with educators and other city staff to create a strategic plan for oral health around the city. They hope to improve access to dental care for pregnant women, infants and young children. That means, in part, integrating dental health with general medical care, since many young low-income children are seen by a doctor many times in their lives before they ever get near a dentist. But it also means elevating oral care to the same level of medical importance as other health concerns. “A lot of times, oral health is considered an add-on or some sort of luxury,” Wiener told a meeting of community stakeholders and oral health professionals in the Mission recently. Health workers are hoping to change that and want the community’s feedback on how to do it. And part of the answer, as always, was winning hearts and minds. “Families are struggling with choices,” said Estela García, executive director of the Instituto Familiar de la Raza. “This is a community problem.”
Hayes Valley Resident's Artwork Unites Disconnected Neighborhood Collage turns man’s front gate into an attraction By Erika Rae Langdon // Public Press
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Above: This year, Todd Young is featuring a San Francisco landmark on his gate each month, showcasing the Castro Theatre for June’s Pride celebrations and City Hall under an American flag for July. Photo by Dayvon Dunaway//Public Press Right: Young has mastered the craft of decorating his front gate with lavish depictions using recycled and cheap tablecloths for a palette. Photo courtesy of Todd Young
odd Young thought he was creating artwork for his mother’s enjoyment. Each month for more than a year, Young, 48, has created a collage on the metal front gate of his Hayes Valley home and photographed it for his mother. “I always try and transform the place to look different, so it’s not just ‘the house with decorations,’” said Young, who has lived in the home for five years. “My mom was like, ‘Oh, I would love to have a wall calendar with your decorations in it!’” In December, he created a calendar using the year of photos as a gift for his mom, Jeanne Young, who lives in a Kansas City, Mo., suburb. What Young did not expect was his neighbors’ interest in his gate — or the calendar. Even less expected was the way his project has united a sleepy neighborhood where people usually politely nod when they recognize one another and then move on. As Young and his partner, Joe Casserly, spent more time in a pair of lawn chairs on a patch of AstroTurf in front of their home, they got into friendly conversations with neighbors passing by, which led Young to join the Fire Department’s Neighborhood Emergency Response Team program. “Now that I know my neighbors, after an earthquake, it would be nice to be able to help them,” said Young. People began stopping to watch him create the gates, and they stayed to chat. Allan Higgins, a Page Street resident for 12 years, walks by so often with his dog that Young keeps a Tupperware container of dog treats so they can talk while the dog enjoys a
snack. “I love that everyone stops to appreciate the gates,” Higgins said. “It’s quite the attraction.” See the gate at 220 Page St. (near Octavia) or search on Twitter for photos at #Page220. Video story: sfpr.es/HayesValleyPage220
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Bay Area to Get Second-Largest Bike Share System in U.S. Transit officials clear way for privately funded program By Patricia Yollin and Bryan Goebel // KQED News Fix
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ay Area transportation officials have approved a contract to expand government-sponsored Bay Area Bike Share from a pilot of 700 bikes to a permanent program of 7,000 bikes, which will make it the second-largest bike share system in the United States. The Bay Area's Metropolitan Transportation Commission unanimously approved a contract with Motivate, the largest bike-share operator in the country, to run the program, which will be funded using private dollars, like the model for Citibike in New York City. “In just an incredible blink of an eye, I don’t think you’ll be able to remember the days when bike share wasn’t a part of the urban fabric of all of these cities,” said Jay Walder, the CEO of Motivate and former head of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority in New York. Walder told KQED that several companies have expressed interest in sponsoring the program. The choice of sponsor is subject to approval by the commission. The branding and color scheme for Bay Area Bike Share will change to reflect the new sponsor. Officials said that they would immediately begin outreach efforts to decide where to place new bike stations. They launched a new site where Bay Area residents can suggest locations for stations. Suggestions began coming right away. Motivate already operates Bay Area Bike Share, a three-county pilot that began in August 2013 and currently exists in San Francisco — where 90 percent of trips have occurred — as well as Palo Alto, Mountain View, Redwood City and San Jose. The program has been very popular, to the point that people have complained that there are not enough bicycles or bike stations. The San Francisco Bicycle Coalition has pushed for a larger and more robust system. Bike sharing is designed for short trips, including commutes and errands. Motivate’s Bay Area fleet currently consists of 700 bicycles at 70 self-serve docking stations, which can be accessed 24 hours a day through short-term or ongoing membership in the program. The first batch of new and improved bikes is expected to be in place by summer of 2016 and complete in 2017. “We are going to make it so much easier for our residents and workers here in the East Bay to make the healthy, economical choice to bike to and from their jobs, school and everyday trips,” said Renee Rivera, the executive director of Bike East Bay.
Sunnyvale resident Serena Wang, at the downtown Caltrain station, commutes to San Francisco for work. “I like the service but wish there were more available bikes,” Wang said. “A lot of the time they’re gone.” Photo by Peter Snarr // Public Press
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The Tipless Restaurant Movement
Justin Lovell works at tipless restaurant Sous Beurre Kitchen where patrons pay only the prices on the menu and no longer have to calculate a tip. Some Bay Area restaurants have eliminated tips to balance pay between the cooks and wait staff. Photos by Peter Snarr // Public Press
Advocates say this means more, fairer wages for everyone By Liz Pfeffer // KALW Crosscurrents
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lyssa Arian has worked in San Francisco restaurants for a decade and, like most servers, she got into it for the tips. “Some nights, you leave with $80 or $90,” she said. “A hundred dollars is kind of the average mark for what you want as a server, sort of anywhere in this city I think, as a minimum.” Since February, Arian has not earned any tips. She works at Sous Beurre Kitchen, a new French spot in the Mission District that does not allow tipping. At a full-service restaurant, you know the drill. You eat your food, you get your bill and then you calculate the tip. But not at Sous Beurre Kitchen, Berkeley’s Comal or Oakland’s Camino. Instead, these and other Bay Area restaurants are ditching the tableside math and going for a transparent approach to pricing: where the amount you see on the menu is the amount you pay. Advocates say this means more and fairer wages for everyone. Before Arian interviewed at Sous Beurre, the restaurant’s management asked Arian if going tipless would work for her. Other people had rejected the policy. Arian was not sure but decided to give it a try. Today, she cannot hide her enthusiasm. In general, Sous Beurre servers make less than they would with tips, on average $25 per hour. But if they work 40 hours a week, they get benefits, sick days and vacation
time – in short, stability. That goes for the cooks and dishwashers, too. “The reality of the back of the house making far less than the front of the house has just always been something that we’ve had to not think about and deal with internally,” said Lauren Giunta, a cook at Camino restaurant in Oakland. Camino went tipless in January and cooks now start at $16 an hour. Giunta has been there for two years already and she is earn-
“We've always kind of wanted to find a way to address the inequities between the kitchen staff and floor staff.” Allison Hopelain, Camino owner
ing even more. “One job is enough for me, I don't have a lot of financial needs, I don't support a family, I don't have a bunch of obligations other than my student loans,” she said. “So for me, it is a living wage.” Cooks and dishwashers typically do not earn tips directly. They get a small share of whatever the servers earn. A tipless restau-
rant makes sure that everyone earns money every night and that the house can afford to pay them and even to give them benefits. That is why Sous Beurre Kitchen went tipless from the start, said Michael Mauschbaugh, the restaurant’s chef and owner. “When I decided I wanted to go out on my own, I wanted to make sure my employees felt like I had their best interests in mind,” he said. “And that's why I decided to reapproach the entire business model.” Mauschbaugh builds a 20 percent service charge into the menu price of every item he serves. He said it is already making a difference for his workers. Dishwashers and line cooks are earning above minimum wage. Their hourly rates are between $13 and $15, and $16 and $18, respectively. Minimum wage is the bigger force at work here. Currently, it is $12.25 in San Francisco, and it will reach $15 by 2018. Oakland’s minimum wage increased in March from $9 to $12.25 an hour. For restaurant owners, the cost of doing business is going up, no matter what. In Oakland, Camino owner Allison Hopelain said that tipless is the wave of the future. “We’ve always kind of wanted to find a way to address the inequities between the kitchen staff and floor staff,” Hopelain said. “And then with the minimum wage being raised, with Measure FF being passed, it sort of gave us this moment to do it.” University of California, Berkeley labor economist Sylvia Allegretto is paying close
attention to the tipless trend because it affects a lot of people. Restaurant jobs are growing much faster than jobs overall, and her research shows that close to 1 in 10 workers in the U.S. is in the restaurant industry. But the industry is still very unstable. “You go to work, you might think you're going to work seven or eight or nine hours, but if it's slow, they’ll send you home,” Allegretto said. “It's very hard to count on some kind of ongoing consistent pay from a lot of these jobs.” Allegretto believes that the no-tip trend is interesting, but it is too soon to see if it can catch on. “This is getting a lot of press, but right now, very few restaurants are doing this, and they mostly seem to be higher-end restaurants where they’re just getting rid of tips,” she said. California restaurant workers are a little better off than their peers around the country. California is one of just seven states where tipped employees earn mini-
mum wage as base pay, as opposed to a subminimum wage that tips are supposed to supplement. Federally, that is $2.13 an hour and has been so since 1991. California’s restaurant workers make $9 an hour, at least. In this state, the conversation can get a little more philosophical. Allegretto said it raises questions about whether tipping should exist at all and what it means. Fred Sassen co-owns Homestead, a casual but higher-end neighborhood restaurant in North Oakland that went tipless recently. A big part of his reason was that he did not see the point in tipping when there is a more equitable way to compensate people. “In the United States, we are one of the very few industries that puts its employees and its livelihood in the hands of a patron to be generous,” Sassen said. He and other owners are putting that responsibility on themselves. To them, tipless really means asking patrons to pay more up front so that owners can pay the staff more fairly.
San Francisco's Building Boom Not Denting Housing Demand SoMa housing prices soar more than 40 percent By Noah Arroyo // Public Press
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ere are two maps that offer some perspective on San Francisco’s housing crisis. The map on the left shows how much the supply of housing grew in each section of the
city. The South of Market, or SoMa, neighborhood nearly doubled in size between 2000 and 2013, based on data from the Planning Department’s annual housing inventories. Of the 29,198 housing units built citywide during that period, 35.4 percent were in SoMa. Growth in the rest of the city lags far behind, though some development is coming. As the San Francisco Public Press previously reported, residents of the city’s western areas have long been nervous about allowing new housing construction without first seeing improvements in nearby transit conditions. City voters approved a $500 million bond for public transportation, but it will not help the western areas. In the large Richmond and Sunset neighbor-
hoods, which have barely grown since 2000, little development is scheduled, according to the city’s Development Pipeline data. Meanwhile, a massive project is under way in the Bayshore area, and another will begin soon in Ingleside. Both will take about two decades to complete. The map on the right, from real estate website PropertyShark, shows how residential prices changed citywide from 2004 to 2014, soaring in some areas, but not all and even slipping in some. Slices of SoMa, as well as the Duboce Triangle and Twin Peaks neighborhoods, saw prices soar more than 40 percent. The Mission District became 47 percent more expensive. The Planning Department blames these increases on construction failing to keep pace with supercharged demand and job growth. Supervisor Scott Wiener said that growing the city’s housing supply is the only way to rein in housing prices.
Above, left: This map shows how much the housing supply grew in San Francisco. Map by Noah Arroyo // Public Press Data Source: San Francisco Planning Department Above, right: This map shows how residential prices changed citywide from 2004 to 2014. Map by PropertyShark
A8 | SFPUBLICPRESS.ORG | SAN FRANCISCO PUBLIC PRESS, SUMMER 2015
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ISSUE 1: SUMMER 2010
ISSUE 2: FALL 2010
ISSUE 3: SPRING 2011
Report on the environmental and logistical challenges of adding thousands of new housing units to transform Treasure Island into an eco-enclave. Featuring an investigation into Macy’s selling doctored gems without proper labeling.
A report on Muni’s elusive quest for on-time service. The issue also includes stories on obstacles to reviving the city’s MidMarket neighborhood, and a choose-yourown-adventure graphic on the future of Pier 70 redevelopment.
Half of Bay Area newspaper jobs evaporated in the past decade. What caused the media meltdown? Can tech media startups make up for what's been lost?
ISSUE 4: FALL 2011
ISSUE 5: WINTER 2011
ISSUE 6: SPRING 2012
San Francisco’s budgeting process is broken. In a time of fiscal austerity, many city departments ignore audits that could save millions of dollars. Includes a take on the “participatory budgeting” trend.
Under the Healthy San Francisco program — the city’s attempt at local universal health care — quality of the care is great. But with uncertain funding and high hidden costs maintaining the program is a challenge.
State budget cuts and unsteady leadership have hindered local law enforcement agencies and nonprofits trying to stop human trafficking. But signs of better coordination are emerging.
ISSUE 7: SUMMER 2012
ISSUE 8: FALL 2012
Regional planners hope to make more of the Bay Area like San Francisco — walkable, BARTable and energy efficient. But “smart growth” is facing resistance from cities, and financial pressure from the cashstrapped state.
An investigation into San Francisco’s uneven response to domestic violence exposed holes in the tracking of criminal cases and a declining rate of prosecution for abuse within the home.
ISSUE 10: SPRING 2013
ISSUE 11: SUMMER 2013
Under San Francisco’s 10-year-old minimum wage law the city recovered back wages for only a fraction of workers cheated by their bosses while technically the city boasted the highest minimum wage is the nation.
Regional efforts are taking aim at limiting greenhouse gas emissions. California’s cap-and-trade market promises major reductions. But loopholes abound.
ISSUE 13: WINTER 2014
ISSUE 14: SUMMER 2014
ISSUE 15: FALL 2014
Reporters examined tax records from PTAs and data from the city’s public schools. While fundraising helped a small number of elementary schools avoid the worst effects of recent budget cuts, belts continued to tighten at schools with more economically disadvantaged students.
This experiment with solutions journalism paired reporting with the Hack the Housing Crisis conference to explore innovative ideas for keeping rents down and adding more housing while preserving San Francisco’s diverse communities and cultures.
Attempts to alleviate homelessness with subsidized supportive housing are not keeping pace with growing demand. Reforms could give those waiting for a room an idea of when they might get off the streets or out of a shelter.
ISSUE 9: WINTER 2013 Thousands of homes in San Francisco are more vulnerable to earthquakes because of delays in mandatory retrofitting. Before this report was published, many landlords and tenants did not know their homes were among those needing upgrades.
ISSUE 12: FALL 2013 San Francisco spends more than ever on job training, placement subsidies and a slew of supportive services. Is this effectively boosting employment? For many programs it is hard to say, because the system is so fragmented.
ISSUE 16: WINTER 2015 Despite efforts to encourage diversity and give parents more choice in where their children enroll, San Francisco public schools are increasingly segregated. Last school year, a single racial group formed a majority at 6 out of 10 schools. Our investigation explores the reasons behind this trend.
More available online at sfpublicpress.org/back-issues
SAN FRANCISCO PUBLIC PRESS, SUMMER 2015 | SPECIAL REPORT ON SEA LEVEL RISE| SFPUBLICPRESS.ORG | B1
Major S.F. Bayfront Developments Advance Despite Sea Rise Warnings Builders plan to invest more than $21 billion in offices and homes in flood-prone areas, where waters could climb 8 feet above today’s high tide by the end of this century
On a really bad day in 2100, water could be 8 feet higher than a normal high tide today — 4.6 feet of sea level rise plus 3.4 feet of storm surge. Scientists caution that with climate change expected to accelerate, what is now considered a “100-year flood” — with an expected 1 percent chance of happening in any year — is a moving target. San Francisco Bay can also swell during king tides, when the sun and moon align to magnify normal variation. Another factor: San Francisco is losing elevation, in part due to earthquakes. Sources: Projections from the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, based on a 2012 National Research Council report on West Coast sea level rise. San Francisco also studied projections by the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the California Ocean Protection Council and the California Coastal Commission. Illustration by Emily Underwood // Public Press
By Kevin Stark, Winifred Bird and Michael Stoll // Public Press
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An apartment tower rises in Mission Bay, bringing new neighbors for Jack Wickert, 78, a retired music teacher and playwright who lives in a houseboat on Mission Creek. Asked if he was worried about sea level rise, he quipped: “I’ll rise with it.” Photo by Peter Snarr // Public Press
EXPERT: THE ENVIRONMENTAL PLANNER “The problem with long-term sea level rise is it’s like an earthquake that never stops, a fire that never goes out. Eventually, the water comes up and gets into an area that is now land and changes it to water.”
ike every body of water that opens onto a global ocean, San Francisco Bay is virtually guaranteed to rise several feet in coming decades, climate scientists say. But that has not deterred real estate developers from proposing and building billions of dollars worth of new homes and offices in bayfront areas that current climate change predictions show could flood by century’s end. Land-use records and environmental applications reveal that the building boom, fueled by a white-hot tech economy, is moving too fast for regulators to keep pace. Most cities and regional agencies have not yet adopted tools to address flooding in areas where thousands of acres are threatened by sea level rise. Developers say they have engineering and financial solutions to deal with any reasonable future flooding risk. But critics, including climate scientists, urban planners and environmental activists, say the current wave of construction might leave taxpayers on the hook for enormously expensive emergency protections and repairs. Researchers studying climate change predict that the rise in ocean levels will accelerate later this century as the atmosphere heats the ocean and melts glaciers. Many of their models show that by 2100, occasional flooding could reach as high as 8 feet above current high tide, in the event of a severe coastal storm. Even the scenario widely considered “most likely” — 3 feet of permanent rise — would put thousands of acres of the current shoreline underwater. Developers are planning or currently building at least 27 major commercial and residential complexes around the bay on land lower than 8 feet above high tide, as estimated by recent aerial surveys. And more than a dozen Bay Area cities continue to issue permits for plans that address future flood risks vaguely, if at all. Google, Microsoft, LinkedIn and Facebook are among the marquee corporate names driving the bayfront explosion. Some cities are even courting companies to build near sea level, often on landfill created in the mid-20th century in former salt marshes. Much of that land could return to the sea, unless cities erect seawalls, levees and other monumental edifices. In many areas new development includes
desperately needed housing. Projects now in the pipeline in San Francisco would add 25,000 new apartments. On Treasure Island alone, developers are ready to break ground on a forest of residential towers that could house 12,000 people, and at Mission Rock and Pier 70, developers have pledged to build more affordable apartments than the city requires.
PUBLIC COSTS Corporate and government data show that the highest-profile building projects on the shorelines of San Francisco, Silicon Valley and the East Bay will cost more than $21 billion to build, excluding the value of the land underneath them. That does not account for the likely public cost, coming within decades, of protecting these settlements with dikes, levees and artificial wetlands — or for the economic toll of abandoning development in designated buffer zones as waves rise. A few local governments, including Mountain View, are beginning to spend money on sea level rise infrastructure projects that can protect waterfront business districts. And San Francisco is in its second year of interdepartmental planning to address sea rise. But the city has yet to update its flood plain ordinance or planning and building codes to address increasing flood risk on the waterfront. The San Francisco Public Utilities Commission has updated its flood maps, which guide public works investments, but other agencies do not impose those guidelines on private property. Mayor Ed Lee and the Board of Supervisors last year resisted a call from the chair of the city’s civil grand jury to stop approving new shoreline development until stricter building rules are passed. Officials said that changes to city codes might be necessary, though until now state environmental laws and reviews have been sufficient. Official maps upon which the city’s 2008 flood ordinance is based do not account for future sea rise. Developers say this means the city lacks the legal grounds to prevent building there. In the past five years, San Francisco land-use agencies have approved residential, entertainment, retail, medical and office projects on nearly 50 waterfront parcels that are less than 8 feet above sea level. Major projects are somewhere in
ABOUT THIS REPORTING PROJECT In recent years, researchers in many disciplines have mapped detailed projections for potential flooding as sea levels rise. And, importantly, these models now mostly agree. The Public Press compared these models against local and regional policies and with recent building permit data. The research reveals that billions of dollars worth of planned development could be threatened by rising waters within a human lifetime.
Will Travis, sea level rise planner and consultant, and the former executive director of the San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission who retired in 2011 after 16 years
the approval process for Treasure Island and in parts of South of Market, Pier 70, Candlestick Point and Hunters Point. The most contentious is the Golden State Warriors’ $1 billion plan for a mixeduse facility in the Mission Bay neighborhood south of downtown. Opponents of the project, centered around an arena for the 2015 NBA champions, have focused on how it would affect traffic and bay views. But the basketball team’s engineers admit in an application for environmental review that the site could under some scenarios temporarily flood “to depths between 2 and 4 feet” by the year 2100. Team engineers express confidence that they can design the buildings to resist storm surges by raising entrances, waterproofing basements, installing floodgates in the garage and judiciously deploying sandbags. The Warriors are expected to present the proposal to the Planning Commission this year before the scheduled release of a city-sponsored report showing Mission Bay’s vulnerability to sea rise. Also at potential risk are hundreds of millions of dollars worth of facilities that opened this year in other parts of Mission Bay, where many streets and sidewalks are less than 10 feet above the bay’s current level. That includes University of California, San Francisco, Benioff Children’s Hospital and the San Francisco Emergency Services Center, where the city’s Police and Fire departments have set up new headquarters. Some nearby projects do include plans to address sea rise. At the San Francisco Giants’ $1.6 billion Mission Rock development, which includes 1,500 apartments with views of AT&T Park, the plan is to elevate the land to accommodate 4.6 feet of sea rise, plus storm surge. Development projects are springing up all around the southern half of the bay, from San Francisco to San Jose, and north to the Port of Oakland and the island of Alameda. Maps created for the San Francisco Public Press by graduates of the Geography Department at the University of California, Berkeley, using published development plans and oceanographic data, show that current or proposed building projects that are at least partly in low-lying areas add up to more than 5,100 acres. (See maps on pages A1 and B4–B5.) SEA LEVEL continued on B3
REPORTING: Kevin Stark, Winifred Bird, Michael Stoll, Emily Dugdale, Lulu Orozco, Paul Lorgerie, Sophie Murguia, Caroline Cakebread and Tanya Dzekon EDITING: Laura Impellizzeri, Kevin McKean and Katherine Bourzac CARTOGRAPHY: Marcea Ennamorato, Maia Wachtel and Brittany Burson of the UC Berkeley Cartography & GIS Education Lab PHOTO & VIDEO: Eric Lawson, Peter Snarr and Dayvon Dunaway ILLUSTRATION & DESIGN: Erika Rae Langdon, Clark Miller, Emily Underwood and Anna Vignet ONLINE: Amanda Hickman SPECIAL THANKS: John Upton of Climate Central
READ MORE ONLINE: SFPUBLICPRESS.ORG/SEARISE THIS PROJECT WAS MADE POSSIBLE BY DONATIONS FROM PUBLIC PRESS MEMBERS, AND BY A CHALLENGE GRANT FROM THE SAN FRANCISCO FOUNDATION Illustration by Anna Vignet // Public Press
B2 | SFPUBLICPRESS.ORG | SPECIAL REPORT ON SEA LEVEL RISE| SAN FRANCISCO PUBLIC PRESS, SUMMER 2015
Bay Area Governments Study Sea Level Rise, but Few Set Limits on Development Cities and counties working to revise obsolete land-use plans based on inconsistent flood maps By Emily Dugdale // Public Press
T
he San Francisco Public Press surveyed 13 Bay Area cities and counties where building projects are planned in waterfront areas vulnerable to sea level rise. While most are studying the issue, few have passed new regulations to limit growth or require developers to flood-proof their properties. The results show a huge gap between awareness of the threats of climate change and concrete action to protect vulnerable waterfront communities in coming decades. Reviewing published reports of plans for large-scale commercial and residential construction projects across the Bay Area, we focused on San Francisco, plus five other counties and seven cities where the most intense development has entered the permitting process. In the chart below, we graded governments by their level of response to the threat of sea level rise. All cities and counties responded that they were studying and planning, but fewer than half had completed vulnerability assessments. Two completed the drafting of an action plan. But carrying out changes, such as setting new zoning or land-use rules for private development, proved more of a challenge. We also determined whether each government’s state-mandated climate action plan addresses sea level rise, and whether it had maps showing where future flooding was likely to occur. Among the findings: • Only six of 13 governments have gone beyond studying the problem. • None has adopted a sea level rise action plan. • San Francisco is the first city with a written policy for evaluating
public works investment accounting for sea level rise, though the plan does not cover private developments. • San Jose has made some zoning changes in the bayside community of Alviso, but has fewer rules for elsewhere in the city. • We were unable to find evidence that any of the governments had calculated the cost to taxpayers of protecting future developments. • Every government surveyed has some plans to protect or expand coastal wetlands as natural protection. Cities and counties cite at least three problems that keep them from acting more swiftly. First, while virtually all scientists predict that the bay will rise, nobody knows for sure how by much, or how fast. “We’re having to do planning where the conditions are continually changing,” said Jack Liebster, planning manager for Marin County. “And water doesn’t really respect city and county boundaries.” A second problem is that a rising San Francisco Bay will require regional solutions. A fix in one city can worsen flooding down the shore. (See story, page B8.) Third, all the jurisdictions have struggled to fund environmental plans. “Getting people to think about long-range problems, when they don’t even know how to fill the potholes today, is difficult,” said Brian Beveridge, codirector of the West Oakland Environmental Indicators Project, an environmental justice organization. “We’re at the beginning of a long-term public discussion that’s going to be tough, frankly,” Beveridge added. “It’s going to fall down along lines of class and political power — who will be protected and who will be thrown to the dogs.”
Facebook’s new west campus can fit 2,800 employees in its 430,000 square feet of new office space in Menlo Park. The main building, designed by Frank Gehry, has an elaborate rooftop garden. The tech giant says the structure is elevated above any foreseeable flood risk, though in environmental filings with the city the company says it is not responsible for maintaining nearby levees. Photo courtesy of Matt Harnack, Facebook
SEA LEVEL RISE PREPAREDNESS BY CITY AND COUNTY Drafted Studying Hazard adaptation effects of Plan inventory or sea level adopted complete mitigation rise plan
Builders Revised required local to respond flooding to sea rise maps threat
Status
Key Actions
COUNTIES San Francisco
Capital Planning Committee has issued guidelines to assess sea level risk in publicly funded construction. Planning Department, which regulates private development, may suggest changes to building codes in the next few years.
Alameda
Only county in our survey in which every city has adopted a climate action plan addressing sea level rise. But no countywide plan has been adopted.
Marin
Developing plans to build up degraded wetlands, while abandoning some vulnerable land to San Francisco Bay. “The time is really right,” said Planning Manager Jack Liebster. “The community is really asking for this now. It’s not just staff saying we need to do this.”
San Mateo
With $24 billion in property and contents at risk from extreme sea level rise flooding, the most of any West Coast county, 110,000 people may be at risk, a Pacific Institute study found.
Santa Clara
Creating a complex tool to estimate the economic effects of ignoring sea level rise, which can be shared with other counties. Demetra McBride, director of sustainability, said: “Everyone is looking at the cost of measures, and that can be daunting. What no one was really looking at was the cost of inaction.”
Solano
• • • • •
Port of San Francisco projected flood risk for 2050 and 2100 Studying multibillion-dollar sewer upgrade to prepare for rising seas Mission Creek vulnerability study coming this year Developed plan to protect structures at Ocean Beach Formed interdepartmental coordinating committee on sea level rise
•
Currently assessing vulnerability and protection strategies with regional agencies Three cities — Alameda, Berkeley and Oakland — got Rockefeller Foundation funding to hire “resiliency” officers
• • •
Completed more than 20 projects to adapt to sea level rise and extreme storms Seeking funding for countywide vulnerability assessment
• •
Published vulnerability assessment in 2011 Hosted workshops introducing representatives from all 20 cities to federal, state and local experts
• •
Largest salt pond habitat restoration project in the Western U.S. Studying vulnerability of water supply and wastewater systems
Working with cities to study sea level rise risk in the Sacramento River Delta area. Benicia is set to present a Carquinez Strait adaptation plan, said environmental consultant Alex Porteshawver.
• •
Published sea level rise study in 2010 and strategic plan in 2011 Suisun Marsh restoration will limit threat to water quality and marshlands
A very low-lying, vulnerable community. Climate Central’s online tool shows that 30 percent of the city would be inundated if floods reached 8 feet.
•
The city’s general plan will soon be revised to include projections and proposed mitigation for sea level rise
City has vast expanses of marshes and open space, so it has focused on strengthening natural barriers. “People are interested in sea level rise and they know it’s important,” said Maggie Wenger of the Bay Conservation and Development Commission.
• •
Produced resilience study in 2014, now part of the general plan Environmental Services Manager Erik Pearson said city is evaluating where to protect shores and where to “allow nature to take its course”
Menlo Park
New general plan will likely include zoning updates for waterfront that may address sea level rise specifically, senior planner Deanna Chow said.
• •
Will revise general plan by June 2016 Working with neighboring cities to fortify levees and protect San Francisquito Creek area
•
Mountain View
Hosts tech giants LinkedIn, Google, Microsoft and Intuit. City Council in May gave Google only a quarter of the new 2.2 million square feet available in the North Bayshore zone. A 2014 city plan discusses strategies including retreat, requiring developers to build higher and encouraging “adaptive planning” such as levees.
Developed a study that evaluates and creates cost estimates for protecting the city’s low-lying shoreline community most at risk The city recently proposed to build a seawall to protect North Bayshore developments
Oakland
West Oakland Environmental Indicators Project worked with other groups to study sea level rise and social equity. “This city, like most, is still assessing which institutions and facilities need to be protected,” said co-director Brian Beveridge.
• •
Redwood City
Facing complications of massive development in the at-risk bayside • area of Redwood Shores, where Dreamworks and EA Sports are currently constructing new offices. The city is planning for sea level rise • of 3 feet.
Environmental Protection Agency in March stepped into the dispute over whether old Cargill salt ponds fall under U.S. jurisdiction One opponent, Save the Bay, proposing alternative plan to build a 3-mile levee and restore 100,000 acres of marshland
Designed “flood risk management levees” to protect the community of Alviso, a wastewater facility and other low-lying lands, according to the Planning Department’s Whitney Berry.
South Bay Shoreline Study and Salt Pond Restoration Project evaluated flood risk, and proposed levee improvements Some developments placed in floodplain management area, where all occupied floors must be above 100-year flood level
CITIES Burlingame
Hayward
San Jose
EXPERT: THE OCEANOGRAPHER
•
• •
Port of Oakland is raising facilities above projected sea level rise Hired Victoria Salinas as chief resiliency officer to coordinate response to rising bay waters
FIND MORE ONLINE SFPUBLICPRESS.ORG/SEARISE
“Long-term planning in cities is 20 or 30 years out at most, but in fact things often last 100 years or more. The elevation for the Embarcadero was set 140 years ago. The Ferry Building was finished in 1898. What will they look like 100 years from now?” John Englander, oceanographer, author of “High Tide on Main Street” and president of the new International Sea Level Rise Institute Illustration by Anna Vignet // Public Press
• • • • • • • •
Articles and graphics from this section Interactive map showing future developments threatened by sea level rise Video tour of 27 shoreline megaprojects, using Google Earth’s 3-D views From winter 2015 edition: Voters OK Pier 70 project in potential flood zone Exploratorium science museum could be underwater by end of 66-year lease 10 things we learned from S.F. Public Utilities Commission’s David Behar UC Berkeley’s Karen Hill: Students designing solutions to protect shoreline Extended interviews with academic, government and business experts
INTERACTIVE SEA LEVEL RISE MAPS FROM PUBLIC AND PRIVATE AGENCIES: • • • • • •
Pacific Institute: sfpr.es/SLRmapPI View the Pacific Institute’s report: sfpr.es/SLRreportPI Surging Seas, a project of Climate Central: sfpr.es/SLRmapCC Our Coast Our Future: sfpr.es/SLRmapOCOF National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration: sfpr.es/SLRmapNOAA CAL-Adapt: sfpr.es/SLRmapCALA
SAN FRANCISCO PUBLIC PRESS, SUMMER 2015 | SPECIAL REPORT ON SEA LEVEL RISE| SFPUBLICPRESS.ORG | B3
The Golden State Warriors basketball team wants to build a $1 billion sports facility and office complex at the southern edge of the Mission Bay neighborhood, as illustrated by the developer. An opposition group, calling itself the Mission Bay Alliance, cites traffic, parking and building heights as reasons to reject the project — but has not focused on the threat of sea level rise. A draft environmental application released in June acknowledged that the property could flood by the end of the century if the bay were to rise by 6.4 feet. The company said future adaptation strategies could include setbacks, seawalls, dikes, berms, shallow basements and additional topsoil to raise surrounding land. Mayor Ed Lee and team majority owner Joe Lacob pledged that the arena would be built regardless of the opposition. Image courtesy of MANICA Architecture, rendered by Steelblue
SEA LEVEL from B1
AROUND THE BAY Regional planning is hard, and the Bay Area is struggling to coordinate. There are efforts underway. Individual cities are planning to build expensive protections, and new organizations are aligning the responses of cities and public agencies. Some state-level responses are in the works. The challenge is that local development is governed by a patchwork of inconsistent zoning and differing interpretations of state law. In a survey of 13 communities around the bay with the most intense waterfront development, the Public Press found that six had progressed beyond studying the threat of sea rise but none had an action plan. And only two — San Francisco and San Jose — had changed rules for any departments that oversee land use. When asking for details about flood protection, cities typically rely heavily on developers to summarize which predictions for sea rise are as relevant. These predictions are sometimes based on shorter time frames than the period it will take to finish paying for the construction. Developers’ long-range engineering suggestions are often based on just 3 feet of permanent inundation by 2100, and do not account for storm surge. Climate change science is still evolving, but the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission found that government and academic experts, including the National Research Council, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the National Climate Assessment, state and regional climate agencies and independent research groups, largely agree on a matrix of predictions that endorse the 3-foot “moderate” benchmark. None of the 13 cities surveyed requires developers to prepare for the less likely 4.6foot scenario. The debate in local planning circles is whether to plan for the moderate outcome, or a less likely high-end one. Several public and private science groups have posted interactive maps online in the past three years that show which areas would flood under various scenarios. But their creators say it has been hard to persuade city planners to use them to assess flood hazards. In a 2009 report for the California Energy Commission, the Pacific Institute, an Oakland-based research group advocating for corporate environmental stewardship and social equity, estimated that property lost in the event of 4.6 feet of sea rise by 2099 would cost the Bay Area $62 billion (nearly two-thirds the cost for all of California). This inundation would require rebuilding the airports serving San Francisco and Oakland, and moving parts of interstates 101 on the Peninsula and 80 in the East Bay. It could also put 270,000 people in danger during severe floods, the report warned, and “continued development in vulnerable areas will put additional areas at risk and raise protection costs.”
FOLLOW THE MONEY “Now is the time to look seriously at what will happen 50 or 100 years down the road,” said Gary Griggs, who directs the Institute of Marine Sciences at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and contributed to the National Research Council’s most recent report on sea level rise on the West Coast. “What is the value of making a development, housing project or mall if we know it will have to be removed later, except for some short-term temporary gains?”
Developers stand to profit handsomely from the waterfront land rush, but governments also benefit in the short run. The proposed megaprojects promise tens of millions of dollars in tax revenue. Some cities are offering developers tax credits, low-cost land and flood-control infrastructure to encourage building on their shorelines. But there are signs of change. The Port of San Francisco in 2012 sketched a $2.7 billion concept to wrap a 10-mile-long, elevated supplemental pier around the existing Embarcadero piers, and is considering adding pumping stations and dikes. Acting alone, cities risk pushing floodwaters into neighboring areas. In the short term, to avoid ringing the whole bay with barriers, communities could surround themselves with small levees and extend them inland up creeks. This would keep water from neighboring communities out, until it got too high. The Bay Conservation and Development Commission, formed 50 years ago to stop developers from filling in the bay, is urging caution and trying to play a regional coordinating role. But its jurisdiction stops just 100 feet inland from the current shoreline. The commission was chartered to ensure public access to the land, not to tell developers how to build. To address the commission’s concerns, many development plans propose a strip of grass — heralded as “parkland” or “open space” — separating buildings from the bay. This does little to protect property if seas rise even a few feet vertically, sending floodwaters thousands of feet inland. The common roadblocks that environmentalists face nationwide in raising concern over adaptation to climate change, such as distrust of science or lobbying by the fossil fuel industry, play only a small role in Bay Area politics. Here, the obstacles involve pressure from the real estate, construction and tech businesses emphasizing short-term economic opportunity over more precautionary environmental perspectives.
CAPITALIZING ON UNCERTAINTY San Francisco planning staffers say they evaluate each application for its response to the threat of sea level rise and suggest a range of adaptation strategies. According to public records, in the last five years the city has approved more than 50 projects, each worth at least $1 million, in low-lying waterfront areas. The estimated development costs of these projects exceed $4.5 billion. A report in June 2014 from the city’s civil grand jury — a volunteer committee that examines local government — concluded that San Francisco was not moving nearly fast enough to protect public safety in the event of sea rise. David Behar, climate program director for the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission who last year headed the city’s interagency Sea Level Rise Technical Committee, said scientists’ increasing confidence in their projections and the degree of agreement among them support taking action. This year, Mayor Ed Lee convened a new panel, the Sea Level Rise Coordinating Committee, chaired by Gil Kelley, the director of citywide planning, and Fuad Sweiss, the city engineer. He said the group would produce a “high-level assessment” of risks and vulnerabilities, and consider recommending stricter rules for private development. Maryta Piazza, corresponding secretary of the civil grand jury, told a Board of Supervisors committee in September 2014 that the city should impose a moratorium
on private developments until its codes are updated. “If we don’t stay ahead of the trend,” Piazza said, “as we are now we’ll be forever catching up, fixing up, and ending up spending much more money in the long run.” Kristina Hill, an associate professor of landscape architecture and environmental planning at UC Berkeley, said long-range planning is essential because sea level rise will be exponential. “We are living in the last two stable decades of sea level rise,” Hill said. “Around 2045, 2050 or 2060, it’s going to get faster.” Roger Kim, a representative of Lee’s office, said more research was needed. Lee said in a memo to the civil grand jury that requiring new buildings to withstand sea levels projected for 2050 or 2100 was unnecessary because many developments are not designed to last that long. He echoed developers, who often argue that if sea level rise becomes a problem, future generations can find engineering and financial solutions. He added that any future regulation should be written with more nuance than
with Peter Wijsman, a consultant with the Dutch engineering firm ARCADIS, which has engineered solutions to sea rise in the Netherlands. Wijsman said options for Mission Bay ranged from “learning to live with water” to “armament” for the shoreline. Officials also discussed a “Venicestyle” system allowing water to flow around flood-proof ground-level shops and building entrances. When UCSF began planning its new medical center in the 1980s, it stabilized the land in Mission Bay by adding more fill on top of the sand brought in from SoMa during the 19th century and debris added after the 1906 earthquake and fire. Paul Franke, a senior planner for the medical center, said the grade was raised by 2 to 5 feet to ensure that hospital and research buildings could withstand 3 feet of sea level rise. He said that was meant to make the project last “in perpetuity.” When the city reviewed Mission Bay’s original sitewide permits in 1998, officials generally planned for 100-year floods, those with a 1 percent chance of happening each
“At the end of the day, this will be a levee-protected community. There’s no getting around that.” Brad McCrea, from the Bay Conservation and Development Commission, talking about Treasure Island determining whether a new building will flood. Rather, each development faces a different threat from storms, depending on its unique geography and the consequence if it is flooded. For example, a park is resilient to flooding in a way that an electrical substation is not. Regulations need to let planners adapt approvals to the circumstances, he said. “It may be unwise — and expensive — to require immediate measures to adapt to wide-ranging, highly uncertain SLR projections further out in time,” Lee wrote.
RETHINKING MISSION BAY On April Fools’ Day 2009, the cover story of Synapse, the student-run weekly paper at UCSF, was headlined “Mission Bay: The Underwater Campus.” With sea waters likely to threaten the health science school’s new campus within decades, the paper joked, adaptations could include a “campus housing fishing hole,” “surgical scuba gear,” and a 10-block “Third Street Ridge” cutting through Mission Bay to act as a seawall. Little did the editors know that at least one of these farcical suggestions could become reality. In September 2014, consultants drafting a report to the city’s Public Utilities Commission and the Capital Planning Committee said sea level rise should not be addressed in a piecemeal fashion. The 303-acre neighborhood, which was an inlet of the bay before it was filled and used for a sprawling rail yard, must be rethought comprehensively. One suggestion from the consultants is to put Third Street on top of a levee that would reduce flooding risk in most of Mission Bay. “The entire shoreline is too low to be protected, so what can we do about that?” Laura Tam, environmental director at SPUR, a Bay Area urban planning and advocacy group, asked at a City Hall hearing. “We cannot just protect individual buildings. We need something that protects the whole area in the long term.” Tam co-authored the forthcoming report
year. They used older predictions of sea rise and less precise topographic mapping, focusing on relatively short time horizons (8 inches by 2025). But Franke said UCSF will monitor the science over the next 50 years to ensure “we were not tragically off in our predictions.” Meanwhile, the hospital is planning more facilities even closer to the bay and recently bought a parcel east of Third Street near 16th. As an arm of the state, UCSF gets its permits from the Division of the State Architect, not the city. But San Francisco planners do have regulatory power over the Warriors arena. Developer Strada said it plans to explain in reports mandated by state law how it will safeguard the facility, whether by raising the land, permitting some flooding or building barriers. With the Warriors’ environmental review scheduled months before the Mission Bay
sea level rise report is due, and given the mayor’s unwavering support for the sports facility, it is hard to see the Planning Commission derailing the plan because of the threat of sea level rise. Representatives of Prologis, the developer overseeing all Mission Bay planning, did not respond to repeated calls for comment on long-term plans.
COSTLY FIXES At Treasure Island, the towers approved by city officials will include 8,000 homes and 235,000 square feet of retail space. Kheay Loke, a manager with development firm Wilson Meany, says the project makes sense because the area already has roads and electricity, so developing there is more environmentally sustainable than building in the suburbs. For the company, it means not having to install new infrastructure. For years, the property’s developers have emphasized their plans to conserve energy, maintain open spaces and build walkable neighborhoods, linked to the rest of the city by public transit, including ferries. In an interview in a downtown conference room with a view of the island, Loke said there was an easy — if “sacrilegious” — solution to sea level rise. “Fill in the bay,” he said. “You go 50 feet out, and you build yourself a levee.” Wilson Meany and co-developer Lennar Urban already plan to fortify existing berms around the 400-acre island to make them broad enough to build higher in the future. And they plan to raise the land, at a cost of $1.2 billion. Construction will continue through 2035. “We can adapt and protect,” Loke said. “Sea level rise and flood protection are problems that money can solve.” In this case, the money probably will come from the island’s future taxpayers. Treasure Island property owners will pay a special fee, called a Mello-Roos tax, to fund any future adaptation measures needed after the developers leave. Brad McCrea, regulatory program director at the Bay Conservation and Development Commission, said Treasure Island’s developers brought “eyes-wide-open expertise” to their planning. But he said
SEA LEVEL continued on B7
EXPERT: THE PROFESSOR
“What is our future vision for the shoreline? One vision would be to build these developments but use the money they bring in to do wetland preservation and create a floodable area along the shore. That would be really progressive.” Kristina Hill, associate professor of landscape architecture and environmental planning, University of California, Berkeley Illustration by Anna Vignet // Public Press
B4 | SFPUBLICPRESS.ORG | SPECIAL REPORT ON SEA LEVEL RISE| SAN FRANCISCO PUBLIC PRESS, SUMMER 2015 1
MISSION BAY, BLOCK 1
2.7-acre mixed-use development WHERE: San Francisco DEVELOPERS: Strada Investment
Group, SOMA Hotel
STATUS: Construction in 2015-2017 COST: $220 million
Will turn part of the parking area now used by Giants fans into a residential and commercial complex. The plan is for 350 residential units, up to 50,000 square feet of retail space and the area’s first hotel with 250 rooms, between the stadium and the Golden State Warriors arena planned to the south.
3
PIER 70
28-acre mixed-use development WHERE: San Francisco DEVELOPER: Forest City STATUS: Environmental review
pending
COST: At least $200 million
2
CENTRAL WATERFRONT NEIGHBORHOOD
BERKELEY
Mixed-use development
WHERE: San Francisco DEVELOPERS: Many STATUS: Still in planning COST: Not set
OAKLAND
25
The mixed-use portion of the city’s Eastern Neighborhoods Program would create up to 1,500 new homes over five years, plus life sciences and medical facilities. Another 1,600 residential units could be added later. An environmental report says city Public Works hydraulic engineers will review building permits to suggest improvements “on a project-by-project basis to ensure that properties are removed from risk of flooding.”
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Rehabilitation of historic pier in the Dogpatch neighborhood. Up to 2,100 apartments (600 affordable), plus 2.5 million square feet of commercial and retail space. Nine acres of open space. Voters in November waived height limits there. Developers to propose structures to protect shoreline through 2100 and “a financing mechanism to fund future improvements.” $200 million is for infrastructure, not buildings.
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10
SAN FRANCISCO
8 1 5
SOUTH SAN FRANCISCO
3
2
SAN BRUNO 6
N
12
7
BURLINGAME
Densely populated area 3 feet sea level rise
13
MILLBRAE
12
6.4 feet (3 feet + storm surge) 4
8 feet (4.6 feet + storm surge) Proposed development Development zone Park or rural area
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EXECUTIVE PARK NEIGHBORHOOD
INDIA SPRINGS
MISSION ROCK
FERRY TERMINAL
HUNTERS POINT SHIPYARD & CANDLESTICK POINT
LINCOLN CENTRE CAMPUS
14 acres, mixed-use development WHERE: San Francisco DEVELOPERS: Yerby Co., Universal
Paragon Corp. STATUS: In planning COST: Undetermined
15.5-acre mixed-use development WHERE: San Francisco DEVELOPER: Build Inc. STATUS: To seek approval in 2017 COST: $200 million
28 acres, mixed-use development WHERE: San Francisco DEVELOPER: Giants Development
Services
STATUS: Construction starts 2017 COST: Estimated $1.6 billion
3 acres of ferry gates WHERE: San Francisco DEVELOPER: WETA STATUS: Construction complete by 2018 COST: $80 million (1st of 2 phases)
This project would demolish Pier 2 and build three new gates between Pier 1 to the north and Pier 14 to the south, while renovating the Ferry Building and Plaza. Developers plan to raise the new structures to make them “resilient to expected sea level rise conditions over at least a 50-year time frame, the assumed design life of the project.” Additional strategies to keep the Ferry Terminal viable until 2100 are under study.
700 acres, mixed-use development WHERE: San Francisco DEVELOPER: Lennar Urban STATUS: Construction starts 2017–2018 COST: Estimated $8 billion
20 acres, mixed-use development WHERE: Foster City DEVELOPER: BioMed Realty Trust Inc. STATUS: Begins 2016 COST: $149 million
Three new buildings with 555,000 square feet of laboratory and office space would be leased by San Diego-based biotechnology company Illumina Inc. for 15 years. Environmental report says existing 10-foot levees would block 1.5 feet of sea rise (plus “100-year extreme high tide”) expected by 2050, or a tsunami, making risks “less-thansignificant.”
Area opposite India Basin Shoreline Park could get 980 apartments and 300,000 square feet of retail and commercial space, plus a charter school. Traversed by 13-mile Blue Greenway bay trail. Marcel Wilson of Bionic Landscape Architects said the firm will “create a living shoreline that can adapt over time.” Wetland terraces could drain storm water, becoming marshes if flooded.
Currently a parking lot, new waterfront neighborhood with views of AT&T Park to host Anchor Brewing Co., 1,500 apartments, offices and 8 acres of open space. Plan revised in May makes 40 percent of housing affordable. Building height of 240 feet needs voter approval. Land raised to protect against 4.6 feet of sea rise by 2100, with other strategies if change accelerates.
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GOLDEN STATE WARRIORS ARENA
S.F. STATE UNIVERSITY
8 WASHINGTON
TREASURE ISLAND & YERBA BUENA ISLAND
BURLINGAME POINT
REDWOOD CITY SALTWORKS
At the southern edge of Candlestick Point, within Bayview-Hunters Point development zone. Would contain up to 1,600 residential units on land now occupied by offices and parking. Developers, acknowledging threat of rising seas, pledge to “implement an appropriate longterm design strategy” to protect new homes. They say the site will be safe if seas rise 3 feet by 2100.
12-acre sports complex
WHERE: San Francisco DEVELOPER: Golden State Warriors STATUS: Construction to be completed
in 2018
COST: Estimated $1 billion
The 18,000-seat arena would host the NBA champions in Mission Bay. Includes 100,000 square feet of retail space, 500,000 square feet of commercial space and 3.2 acres of plazas. Opponents cite high traffic and lack of parking. An environmental report downplays sea level rise threat, citing lack of regulatory clarity.
1.4-acre satellite campus WHERE: San Francisco DEVELOPER: Lennar Urban STATUS: Could open fall 2018 COST: Unknown
San Francisco State would be an anchor tenant at the former Hunters Point Naval Shipyard, leasing more than 60,000 square feet to accommodate its expanding enrollment. But the project remains largely under wraps. The school has not said what departments might move there or what the campus will cost, and turned down our request for a map of its plans. The environmental statement is another bit of homework yet to come.
3.2 acres, mixed-use development WHERE: San Francisco DEVELOPER: Pacific Waterfront
Partners
STATUS: On hold COST: Estimated $200 million
This residential tower, two blocks north of the Ferry Building, was stalled by referendum in 2013 over whether it could exceed the 84-foot waterfront height limit. Original proposal called for 134 apartments, 20,000 square feet of retail and a fitness club. Stalled a second time due to traffic concerns. Environmental report cites ground floor elevated 3.4 feet above grade for flood protection.
465 acres, mixed-use development WHERE: San Francisco DEVELOPERS: Treasure Island
Community Development, Lennar Urban, Wilson Meany STATUS: Construction 2016 COST: Estimated $1.5 billion
Built on landfill for the 1939 Golden Gate International Exposition, Treasure Island will get 8,000 homes, 235,000 square feet of retail and three hotels, plus 300 acres of open space. Developers plan to protect against seas 3 feet higher with a berm that could be raised over decades.
Former naval shipbuilding area to become 12,000 homes, and nearly 3 million square feet of office, commercial and retail space. A mall and 220-room hotel planned at Candlestick Point. Buildings will be set back and raised 4.6 feet above the current 100-year flood level at Hunters Point and 3 feet at former Candlestick Park site.
20 acres, mixed-use development WHERE: Burlingame DEVELOPERS: H&Q Asia Pacific,
Genzon Property Group
STATUS: Construction starts late 2015 COST: $300 million
Six buildings with office, life sciences and retail space are planned. The environmental statement acknowledges flood risk due to sea rise. Developers pledge to design buildings in the floodplain to remain dry if the bay crests 7.1 feet above current levels.
1,433-acre, residential
WHERE: Redwood City DEVELOPER: DMB Pacific Ventures STATUS: Withdrawn COST: Unknown
Original plan would bring 12,000 homes to Cargill industrial salt ponds near Dumbarton Bridge. Withdrawn in 2012 after fierce public battle. Developer’s attorney said “there is no time frame for any new proposal at this time.” EPA is studying whether the Cargillowned property falls under the federal Clean Water Act. (Initial $1.8 billion cost estimate represented labor expenses over 30 years.)
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A BAYWIDE BUILDING BOOM THREATENED BY RISING WATERS N
We found 27 proposals for major construction projects that could be flooded in decades due to climate change
Densely populated area 3.3 feet sea level rise
Reporting by Lulu Orozco // Public Press Maps by Maia Wachtel, Marcea Ennamorato and Brittany Burson // UC Berkeley CAGE Lab Illustration by Clark Miller // Public Press
6.7 feet (3.3 feet + storm surge)
W
8.3 feet (4.9 feet + storm surge)
•
aterfront property is always desirable, but a San Francisco Public Press survey has found that at least 27 major real estate developments proposed, planned or underway around San Francisco Bay could be vulnerable to severe flooding due to climate change. Together these projects (including one massive residential development in Redwood City whose plan was withdrawn and where the land is under federal environmental review) represent more than $21 billion of new investment on at least 5,100 acres of waterfront land. This metro region already has two-thirds of all West Coast property, measured by dollar value, that could be threatened by climate-driven flooding. Local officials around the bay are increasingly realizing that the current building boom has proceeded without adequate attention to rising ocean levels, which are the inevitable result of greenhouse gas pollution and global warming. The map on these pages shows planned construction projects as red blocks, with outlines defining neighborhoods with intensive development. In many of these vulnerable areas, cities are encouraging new construction with special zoning and tax incentives. • Light blue represents bay water up to the current, familiar shoreline. • The second lightest shade of blue is the bayshore flooded under a 3-foot rise in sea level (considered by scientists the “most likely” scenario for 2100). • The next darker blue shows areas submerged
Proposed development Development zone Park or rural area
SAN LEANDRO 27
HAYWARD
under 3 feet plus a 100-year flood. Darkest blue shows that severe storm scenario on top of a high-end projection for sea level rise — for a total of about 8 feet.
DATA SOURCES Sea level rise: Projections for San Francisco flooding are from U.S. Geological Survey LiDAR data from 2011, using sea rise scenarios projected by the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission. Total flood estimates are approximations; the estimate of 3.4 feet of storm surge is a baywide average. This map incorporates a dynamic computer model from Our Coast, Our Future, showing that floods can vary by location. Outside San Francisco, these projections are based on metric elevations, which we converted to feet to provide the best match for San Francisco’s scenarios. (See the interactive version: ourcoastourfuture.org.) Different baywide flooding models using ocean dynamics have been produced by FEMA, the U.S. Geological Survey, the Bay Conservation and Development Commission and the nonprofit research group Climate Central. Development: Information about projects in San Francisco comes from the Planning Commission, Department of Building Inspection and Port of San Francisco. Baywide maps derived from environmental impact reports, developer websites, and news articles and maps in the San Francisco Business Times, Silicon Valley Business Times and San Francisco Chronicle. Areas are approximate, calculated using the Spatial Analysis toolbox in ArcMap. Some elevations have changed due to construction since the last aerial elevation survey.
FREMONT
14
FOSTER CITY SAN MATEO
17
15
18
16
REDWOOD CITY
22
PALO ALTO
20
21
19
SANTA CLARA
SUNNYVALE
MOUNTAIN VIEW
SAN JOSE
16
18
20
22
24
26
CROSSING 900
FACEBOOK WEST
GOOGLE MOFFETT FEDERAL AIRFIELD
CENTENNIAL GATEWAY
BROOKLYN BASIN PROJECT
JACK LONDON SQUARE
2.4 acres, mixed-use development WHERE: Redwood City DEVELOPERS: Kilroy Realty Corp.,
Hunter/Storm Properties
STATUS: Est. completion 2017 COST: Estimated $180 million
Two buildings totaling 334,000 square feet next to Caltrain for Cloud storage company Box Inc. Redwood City Downtown Precise Plan says a “limited portion” of this development zone is vulnerable to 4.6 feet of sea rise, but stresses “uncertainty” in climate predictions. Developer representatives declined to comment.
22-acre corporate headquarters WHERE: Menlo Park DEVELOPER: Gehry Partners STATUS: Complete COST: Estimated $185 million
A pedestrian tunnel links the 1.4 billion-member social network’s existing headquarters and this new campus, centered on a 430,000-square-foot building, with a 9-acre green rooftop. Designed by Frank Gehry. Occupied space, with room for 2,800 employees, is elevated to avoid floods, and basement designed to resist rising ground water as sea levels change.
8.4-acre, mixed-use development
64-acre mixed-use development
12 acres, mixed-use development
1,000 acres, mixed-use development WHERE: Mountain View DEVELOPER: Planetary Ventures STATUS: Undisclosed COST: Estimated $200 million
WHERE: Santa Clara DEVELOPERS: Montana Property
WHERE: Oakland DEVELOPERS: Signature Development
WHERE: Oakland DEVELOPER: Jack London Square
STATUS: Starts construction 2016 COST: Estimated $400 million
STATUS: Completion 2024 COST: Estimated $1.5 billion
STATUS: Completion 2020 COST: Estimated $400 million
Google has leased part of the former airfield, including three hangars, another building, two runways and a golf course, for 60 years from NASA for aviation and robotics research. It plans renovations to three gargantuan hangars visible from Highway 101, and would manage the flight operations building, two runways and a private golf course. The environmental review is not yet public.
Former 49ers quarterback Joe Montana is among investors in a 622,000-square-foot office and retail development planned near Levi’s Stadium, where the NFL team plays. The project includes office and retail space, plus a Montanathemed restaurant. The environmental review is not yet public.
Oakland’s largest redevelopment in decades could add 3,100 homes (465 below market rate), 200,000 square feet of commercial space and 32 acres of open space. Would renovate marina at Oakland Estuary. Developers plan to raise land about 3 feet and say they are using Bay Conservation and Development Commission projections for sea level rise.
The popular waterfront commercial and residential area along the Oakland Estuary is being expanded to add office space, a 1,700-seat movie complex, supermarkets, restaurants and a 250-room hotel. A recent update to the environmental statement claims no significant flooding risk but does not detail its methodology.
Group, Related California
Group, Zarsion Holdings Group
Ventures
17
19
21
23
25
27
PETE’S HARBOR/BLU HARBOR
NORTH BAYSHORE DEVELOPMENT
GOOGLE MOFFETT PLACE CAMPUS
ALAMEDA POINT SITE A
OAKLAND ARMY BASE
SAN LEANDRO SHORELINE
14 acres, residential WHERE: Redwood City DEVELOPER: RWC Harbor
Communities STATUS: Construction starts “soon” COST: $76 million Plan includes 411 homes and a new marina between Smith Slough and Redwood Creek, west of the Cargill Saltworks. A 2003 environmental statement for this and surrounding areas predicts 1.3 feet of sea level rise by 2036.
55-acre, mixed-use development
650 acres, mixed-use development WHERE: Mountain View DEVELOPERS: Many STATUS: Unknown COST: Undetermined
WHERE: Sunnyvale DEVELOPER: Jay Paul Co. STATUS: Started in 2013 COST: Estimated $1 billion
Google, LinkedIn, Intuit, Microsoft and others competed to build 2.2 million square feet of allowed office space on a former tidal marsh. LinkedIn was awarded 60 percent. City proposes levees, floodwalls, pumps and erosion protection. Environmental report says this would protect against 2.6 feet of sea rise (called “worst case”) by 2067.
Google leased this land next to Moffett Field in a current 100-year flood zone and plans to build six eight-story buildings and a twostory “amenities building,” totaling 1.8 million square feet. A draft environmental statement asserts the development would not expose people or structures to injury or loss as a result of flooding.
68-acre, mixed-use development
360-acre, mixed-use development
WHERE: Former Naval Air Station
WHERE: West Oakland DEVELOPERS: California Capital &
Alameda
DEVELOPER: Alameda Point Partners STATUS: Construction 2016–2029 COST: Estimated $500 million
The former naval air station, shuttered in the 1990s, could get 800 more homes and 600,000 square feet of commercial space. Builder says it “protects against sea level rise as well as a 100-year storm” by raising land and building levees or floodwalls. “Additional flood protection measures” possible if sea level rise is worse than expected.
Investment Group, Prologis, City of Oakland, Port of Oakland STATUS: Completion 2018–2019 COST: Estimated $1.2 billion
Construction on this phase of the transformation of the former Oakland Army Base into a “world class intermodal hub” connecting cargo ships with trains and trucks started in 2013. The land — dredged bay sediment — is still settling. Engineers would “densify” the soil and raise it at least 1.3 feet.
52 acres, mixed-use development WHERE: San Leandro DEVELOPER: Cal Coast Cos. STATUS: Construction starts 2016 COST: At least $200 million
Plan includes 352 homes, 150,000 square feet of offices, a 200-room hotel, conference center, restaurants, library, amphitheater and recreational space with artificial beach. Cal Coast CEO Edward Miller said the firm is “very aware of the sea level issue” and is working with the city, Army Corps of Engineers and Bay Conservation and Development Commission.
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MISSION BAY PIONEERS: WORKING AND LIVING IN A NEW WATERFRONT NEIGHBORHOOD Interviews by Tanya Dzekon, Caroline Cakebread and Sophie Murguia // Public Press Photos by Dayvon Dunaway and Peter Snarr // Public Press
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ust a few years ago, Mission Bay was sparsely populated, home to abandoned rail yards and parking lots serving AT&T Park. But now the area is coming alive with a wave of development, with new housing complexes and office buildings popping up along the waterfront. This year the University of California, San Francisco, opened a hospital complex in the neighborhood, and the San Francisco police and fire
departments relocated their headquarters a block from the bay. If approved, the $1 billion Golden State Warriors arena and mixeduse development would break ground on the neighborhood’s southern end. But the Warriors project and other proposals may face difficulty, depending in part on the results of a study due in the fall on Mission Bay’s sea level rise vulnerability. For now, cranes and bulldozers continue their work, and residents and workers say they love the neighborhood. Few say they have any knowledge of, nor are they much concerned about, the long-term flooding risk.
SETTLING IN: Grace Wang, 26, student at UCSF UNSETTLED ABOUT PLANNING: Nicole Van Malder, 27, junior architect and student
NEW COMPANY, NEW JOB: Julian Enoch, 24, inventory management analyst at Old Navy
Van Malder is about to start studying at the California College of the Arts Mission Bay campus. She expressed concern about the shortage of public transit options and parking. “Where are all these cars going to go when the neighborhood is built?”
Enoch grew up in San Francisco, but has worked in Mission Bay for less than a year. “All the stuff past AT&T Park used to be warehouses. It’s crazy,” he said. Though Enoch said he is not all that worried by sea level rise, “I probably would be concerned about flooding if I was more educated about it, to be honest.”
Wang moved to Mission Bay from Orange County in late spring. “This part of the neighborhood is pretty cool,” she said, adding that the campus gets quiet on weekends. “I can tell it’s developing a lot.” She is not worried about sea level rise right now, but sees it as a concern in the long term.
LIVES ON THE WATER: Jack Wickert, 78, playwright and retired music teacher Wickert pays $400 a month to live in a houseboat on Mission Creek. A Mission Bay resident for 16 years (a San Franciscan for 72 years), he likes the new development, and is especially excited about the prospect of the Golden State Warriors moving in.
WILL MOVE OUT EVENTUALLY: Kyle Fowler, 30, UCSF graduate student
UCSF RESEARCHER: Diego Garrido Ruiz, 28, Ph.D. student
Fowler has been living in Mission Bay for 10 months in UCSF’s student housing. “It’s different, but there’s not much culture like in the Mission,” he said. He is aware of the potential of sea level rise, but plans to move long before it could affect him. “My fingers are crossed that I get to higher ground before anything happens.”
Garrido Ruiz, who hails from Mexico City, moved to San Francisco four years ago. He conducts research on the UCSF campus. He dislikes how expensive the neighborhood has become. He was more bothered by the idea of earthquakes than sea level rise. “Even last year when there was that storm of the century,” he said, “I wasn’t very concerned.”
LIKES THE DEVELOPMENT: Mikael Palner, 45, postdoctoral research fellow at Stanford Palner has been living in Mission Bay for two years and is now on parental leave from Stanford. The neighborhood, Palner said, is “going to be much better when all the development is done.” He has not heard anything about potential flooding from sea level rise but wants to know more.
WORRIED ABOUT COST: Jamie Butler, 51 Butler lives with her 21-year-old son in affordable housing at Fourth and King streets. She likes the neighborhood, but wishes it had more economic diversity. “If you don’t live in affordable housing, it’s very, very expensive. I feel like they’re building a lot of apartments and stuff, but there are no jobs over here, and not a lot for kids to do.”
AS SCIENCE GETS BETTER, DRAMATIC SEA RISE SEEMS MORE CERTAIN
WHY 8 FEET IS AN UNLIKELY BUT WORRISOME POSSIBILITY By Kevin Stark // Public Press
M
any objections to preparing aggressively for sea level rise center on the uncertainty in projections about how quickly global warming will cause the oceans to expand. But the science is increasingly clear. A 2012 study of the effects of climate change on the West Coast, published by the National Research Council, found that average high tides will be about 3 feet higher in San Francisco Bay by 2100, under the “most likely” scenario. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the National Climate Assessment, the National Research Council and several independent research groups have all hit on similar numbers. Most of the models also have an upper range, defined in terms of statistically less probable events or as a worst-case scenario in which the world continues its business-as-usual growth in greenhouse gas pollution. Under several predictions, the seas would rise about 4.6 feet by 2100. But it could get worse: Add 3.4 feet of surge during a “100-year storm” — severe weather with a 1 percent chance of happening in any year — and the total rise could hit 8 feet during such an event. No one knows how likely that is, but there is reason to be pessimistic. Sea level rise so far has tracked the upper bound of past projections, according to observations in recent years. Downward shifts in land elevations due to earthquakes or depletion of aquifers by cities and farms facing drought could make that flooding even worse. The National Research Council predicts that this subsidence could depress land height by an average of 6 to 11 inches by 2100 along the California coast
south of Cape Mendocino. This would effectively raise the total upper-range flood scenario by a similar amount. Moreover, sea rise is likely to accelerate this century and after 2100 — in part due to disintegration of the West Antarctic ice sheet, which scientists reported last year will eventually add at least 10 feet of water to the global ocean. As climate change makes our weather overall more violent, it becomes increasingly difficult to define a “100-year flood.” In his book, “High Tide on Main Street: Rising Sea Level and the Coming Coastal Crisis,” oceanographer John Englander noted that if all the land ice on Earth melted, seas would rise more than 200 feet. That would transform the San Francisco Peninsula into an archipelago. San Francisco officials have so far reacted with caution. But residents may take heart from one bit of advice enshrined in the city’s Environment Code in 2003 requiring city departments to act — and approve new developments — based on the “least environmentally harmful alternatives,” considering “both immediate and long-term consequences.” “Where threats of serious or irreversible damage to people or nature exist,” the ordinance states, “lack of full scientific certainty about cause and effect shall not be viewed as sufficient reason for the City to postpone cost effective measures to prevent the degradation of the environment or protect the health of its citizens. Any gaps in scientific data uncovered by the examination of alternatives will provide a guidepost for future research, but will not prevent the City from taking protective action.”
HIGH
100-year storm could add 3.4 feet to floods
In 2012, the National Research Council produced a simplified graph showing the range of sea level rise predictions for Northern California from more than a dozen different mathematical climate models.
MODERATE
LOW
Peter Snarr // Public Press
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he was skeptical of applying this kind of technology-centered approach everywhere around the bay, given that sea level rise could continue for centuries. “At the end of the day, this will be a levee-protected community,” McCrea said. “There’s no getting around that.” McCrea said Bay Area communities should be talking about retreating from the riskiest shoreline areas. “This is not about Treasure Island, but there are some basic questions here about where is the right place to build.” Will Travis, who headed the commission for 16 years until 2011, said the region needed a more “thoughtful, reasoned, rational and financially sound solution. “It will buy you 50 years of time to get our heads around this notion of ‘permanent temporary’ development,” he said. “Getting developers and local governments to think half a century ahead is very hard.” Developers are spending millions of dollars on public relations to persuade voters that they are building safe and environmentally benign projects. In November, San Francisco voters approved Proposition F — which technically exempted Pier 70, a development south of Mission Bay, from height limits, but in effect endorsed the construction of commercial space and 600 homes on 28 waterfront acres. Our maps suggest that large portions of the former industrial area could be submerged under several feet of water by 2100 in the event of 6.4 feet of flooding (the intermediate prediction for sea rise and extreme storm surge). After three years of public outreach, developer Forest City spent almost $3 million on the campaign, including paying $15,000 to the San Francisco Democratic Party, $10,000 to the Republican Central Committee and $25,000 the Sierra Club for mailing campaign fliers. The project won endorsements from the city’s last three mayors, all 11 current members of the Board of Supervisors and more than 50 community groups. Activists with the Sierra Club’s local chapter told a reporter last fall they never pressed the developer about sea rise. Forest City has not yet sought environmental permits, so its specific plans are not public. Other proposed waterfront projects that still need some approvals include the sprawling Hunters Point development that includes 1,600 homes now under construction at the old Naval Shipyard, and a commercial and residential complex rising at Candlestick Point to replace the eponymous stadium. Developers are raising the land there to keep buildings, streets and key infrastructure above the moderate estimate of the 100-year flood level — a few feet of storm surge on top of 3 feet of sea level rise.
PLANNERS VALUE FLEXIBILITY Chris Kern, a senior environmental planner for the city, said the lack of firm city codes allows easier adjustment to new scientific projections. It is sufficient that state law requires the city to assess whether new projects “expose people or structures to a significant risk of loss, injury or death involving flooding,” he said. The city interprets that to include future flooding from sea rise. The San Francisco Public Utilities Commission’s Behar said it was common for government to test regulations by applying them to public property before forcing compliance in the private sector. Perhaps surprisingly, the real estate and development industries are not uniformly opposed to regulation. Developers say working
under clear rules makes it easier and less expensive to plan. “Sea level rise adaptation should be government mandated,” said Loke, of the Wilson Meany development firm. Piazza, the civil grand jury member, said San Francisco should halt the rapid pace of development until it adopts comprehensive policies that protect both public safety and private property. If the city takes too long, all the gaps in the waterfront skyline will have been filled in by the time the rules go into effect. Tam, a longtime advocate for regional climate adaptation planning at SPUR, sees hope in the city’s new approach. “Five years ago, this topic was virtually unknown,” she told John Upton, a reporter for Climate Central, a nonprofit that researches and reports on climate change. “Today, many city departments have not only participated and worked together to produce this guidance, but they are working collaboratively to develop solutions.” Kelley, the director of citywide planning, said it was too soon to recommend new planning codes. “We need to know what the problem is before we come up with an answer,” he said. “This will lead to some discussion of what we might do.”
SILICON VALLEY GROWTH When Google first proposed in February to build a massive new headquarters in Mountain View, it issued promotional videos and renderings showing 3.4 million square feet of office space under undulating canopies of glass and plastic. Peter Gleick, president of the Pacific Institute, blasted the tech giant’s choice of location. “Their property at the south end of San Francisco Bay is extremely vulnerable to projected sea-level rise,” Gleick blogged. “Google is a forward-looking company. But
had concluded it needed a buffer zone to keep rising waters out. In Menlo Park, Facebook recently finished a new campus with a 430,000-square-foot building, featuring 9 acres of rooftop foliage, designed by Canadian architect Frank Gehry. According to recent U.S. Geological Survey data, parts of the site were below 8 feet in elevation before it was developed. In its environmental impact report, Facebook said that although the average height of the land was 9 feet, the buildings themselves would be “raised above future flood risk.” The environmental report also argued that Facebook was not technically obligated, under state rules, to judge environmental risk to the facilities, even though the company had taken various protective measures. As the report put it, the purpose of state-mandated review “is to evaluate the effects of the project on the environment, not the effect of the environment on the project.” Facebook representatives declined to speak on the record about the company’s flood plain adaptation strategies. Charlie Knox, a principal at PlaceWorks, a firm in Berkeley that helps cities plan for sea level rise, said the main Facebook building would probably be safe from flooding through the 22nd century. “They are pretty hip and they have over-anticipated sea-level rise,” he said. In an extreme event such a building, elevated on concrete pillars, would probably survive, though the land around it would be submerged. “People would be sitting in their offices looking at the water,” he said. “It is a model for adaptation.” Knox said technology firms know the risks they are taking by proposing and building tens of millions of square feet of new research and development facilities.
“If we don’t stay ahead of the trend, as we are now we’ll be forever catching up, fixing up, and ending up spending much more money in the long run.” Maryta Piazza, 2014 San Francisco civil grand jury
are they looking forward to, and planning for, the now-unavoidable impacts of climate change as they design new multibillion dollar infrastructure investments?” Mountain View’s North Bayshore neighborhood hosts Google’s current headquarters, as well as offices for Microsoft, Intuit and other companies. The city’s plan envisions a walkable community of corporate campuses, stores, hotels, services and entertainment. Flood maps show that much of the zone could be underwater with 8 feet of combined sea rise and severe storm surge. But the plan looks only to predictions for the year 2064, when, it asserts, seas are expected to rise a maximum of 3 feet. Mountain View has set aside more than $43 million for proposals to bolster existing levees, pump stations and tide gates, the Bay Area News Group reported in June. In May, the City Council voted to award the majority of the developable office space to LinkedIn’s Shoreline Commons mixeduse concept, based largely on its claims that it would “preserve business diversity” — a reference to Google’s already dominant footprint in the city. But Google has designs on several additional waterfront properties. In neighboring Sunnyvale, it took over a 60-year lease from NASA for part of the land at Moffett Federal Airfield, where the space agency
“There is a ton of good jobs, meaningful stuff that will help medicine and human life, and it is all going up like crazy,” he said. “And it is all in a place that sea level is going to rise.”
EAST BAY RENEWAL Large swaths of underused East Bay waterfront have been under construction for years, with some projects originally financed by redevelopment funds that the state pulled back after falling into deficit. At Oakland’s Jack London Square, the newest project includes a 1,700-seat movie theater, restaurants, supermarkets and a 250-room hotel with a marina and small beach. Developers said it faced no flood risk, though they did not address sea level rise in their 2004 environmental impact report. But an addendum to the report released this May asserted that the company was not “required to analyze or mitigate impacts pertaining to the impact of the environment on the project.” The construction, the company explained, “is not causing sea level rise, sea level rise will occur regardless of the proposed project.” Construction also is underway on 1 million square feet of warehouse space at the former Army base in West Oakland. Local officials laud this project as a restoration
EXPERT: THE POLICY PROFESSIONAL “If your employees can’t get to campus or the power goes out or the wastewater treatment tank goes out, it’s not just a private issue anymore. It’s public and private. So we need a publicprivate partnership to address this at a regional level.” Mike Mielke, senior vice president for environment and energy at Silicon Valley Leadership Group, a nonprofit group sponsored by businesses to influence regional public policy Illustration by Anna Vignet // Public Press
of the “working waterfront” because it will bolster a growing freight industry by connecting cargo ships with trains. In Alameda, development is continuing on the site of a Naval Air Station that shut down in the 1990s. Currently in the works are 800 apartments and 600,000 square feet of retail space in a $500 million project by Alameda Point Partners, which proposes to raise the land and build levees in the future to keep land below sea level from flooding. In addition to 26 current major development plans the Public Press found to be at least partly below the projected 8-foot elevation, we found a 27th that for now seems to be off the table. Starting in 2009, Arizona-based DMB Pacific Ventures sought permission from Redwood City to build 12,000 homes on 1,478 acres of bayside salt evaporation ponds owned by agricultural giant Cargill. It was withdrawn in May 2012 after a firestorm of protest from neighbors, some of whom were concerned about the environmental effects of building farther into the bay. Project attorney David Smith said there was “currently no development proposal whatsoever pending for the site,” though the project’s website said a “scaled back” plan was in the works. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers concluded in 2014 that the federal government had no jurisdiction over most of the Redwood City site. But the federal Environmental Protection Agency — which has spent more than $40 million to restore San Francisco Bay wetlands — announced in March that it was investigating whether the land falls under the Clean Water Act. This could be a test case for whether the EPA can include sea level rise in assessing future flood risk or limiting shoreline development.
SEARCH FOR SOLUTIONS Several regional initiatives aim to coordinate how bayfront cities cope with sea level rise. Most notable are the Resilient Shoreline Program, the San Francisco Bay Regional Coastal Hazards Resiliency Group and Our Coast, Our Future. The state has created a $2.5 million California Climate Resilience Account to pay for planning. Legislation is also pending on a statewide database of preparedness work. In the South Bay, a coalition of federal and state agencies including the Army Corps of Engineers, the Coastal Conservancy and the Santa Clara Water District are proposing the federal government spend
$162 million for wetlands restoration and levee construction. Also in the South Bay, a regional authority is widening old levees and building new horizontal ones around San Francisquito Creek. But creating consistent rules governing private property could be a challenge. “Regulations around climate change are in their infancy, or nonexistent,” said Behar of the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission. Jasper Rubin, a professor of urban planning at San Francisco State University, said the common solution of raising land to raise the height of buildings fails to address the “larger systemic issues.” If one property is raised, he said, it “doesn’t mean the rest of the waterfront’s not going to get inundated.” Kristina Hill, the UC Berkeley planning professor, said more experimentation is needed in waterfront construction techniques. But few businesses are invested in fortifying the properties they build beyond midcentury. It is hard to fund resilient architecture, Hill said, when developers “do not have a shared interest with the public about what will happen with those properties in the future.” Some environmental and planning experts are appealing directly to the public to change sea level rise policies. The King Tides Project publishes reports on coastal erosion and flooding that occur when sun and moon align, known as king tides. These events offer a preview of sea level rise. Project co-founder Marina Psaros started working with the Bay Conservation and Development Commission to urge cities to pass new flood zone regulations. “Our theory was we need to get heads of planning and public works directors aware, concerned, activated on climate change,” Psaros said. Discouraged by institutional inertia, she shifted her focus to public outreach, publishing dramatic photos of high tide events on social media. Knox, the consultant who works on adaptation planning around the bay, said that the time horizons of developers and governments are too short to deal with the effects of climate change. The waterfront will change noticeably even in a single lifetime, but sea level rise will plague coastal communities for generations. “One of the problems we face is that we do not live very long,” Knox said. “We think, ‘I’m going to move into this house and have kids here.’ People do not care what the house will be in 200 years. But now we have to think differently.”
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 (top) changed about 8 feet over a period of 6½ hours. The tide at Heron’s Head Park near Hunters Point (bottom) rose 5.75 feet over 5½ hours. Photos by Eric Lawson // Public Press
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Four Ways to Guard Against Sea Level Rise
By Winifred Bird // Public Press Illustrations by Emily Underwood // Public Press
Water brings both life and risk to the shoreline, so seaside residents have long built barriers, canals and other protections to guard against storms and floods. Now sea level rise is adding an extra challenge: Flood risk will grow dramatically in coming decades, and some land that is dry today will be underwater in our lifetimes. That leaves cities, including those around San Francisco Bay, with four main options.
1. RETREAT FROM SHORELINE The simplest response, abandoning land that is at risk, is also the rarest. Communities encourage and protect coastal properties “so they can get tax revenue to pay for services and even adaptation strategies,” said Jessica Grannis, a sea level policy expert at Georgetown University Law Center in Washington. The best and cheapest time to adopt this strategy is after a disaster — not rebuilding after floods in some areas. But planning for these decisions should be made prior to such disasters.
2. FLOOD-PROOF STRUCTURES Engineers typically do this by raising occupied floors above flood level or trucking in dirt to raise the land before starting to build. A 2014 study of the Gulf Coast by researchers at The Nature Conservancy and academic researchers concluded that elevating structures was among the least costeffective solutions, ranking behind seawalls, natural barriers and simple sandbags. But it is the most popular solution around San Francisco Bay.
3. BUILD LEVEES Dirt, rock and concrete can be effective barriers. Most of the urban parts of the bay and the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta are already protected by a patchwork of levees. San Mateo and Santa Clara counties are both studying what it will cost to make their levees stronger. But levees — and their more compact cousins, seawalls — are expensive and can fail. Officials at the Port of San Francisco say $5 billion in retrofits is needed along the 4-mile Embarcadero to keep some 700 acres of high-value property above the water line through 2100.
4. RESTORE NATURE Natural habitats such as marshes, sandbars and creek beds absorb the energy of storms, mitigating risk from sea level rise. Past development has tended to erase or bury these features, but recent restoration projects are changing that. A 2013 study by the Bay Institute, a San Francisco-based nonprofit group, showed that restoring a 200-foot-wide strip of marsh around the bay would cut the cost of protection in half — mainly by allowing engineers to build smaller, less expensive levees. A rising bay will eventually put many marshes at risk of inundation, though some shoreline ecosystems are designed to grow vertically as seas rise.
With Dozens of Local and Regional Governments, Baywide Planning Is Hard By Winifred Bird // Public Press
R
egional coordination will be essential if Bay Area cities and counties are to minimize flooding as the sea rises. A few initiatives have
launched, but none yet has the legal authority or resources to align all 41 governments that border San Francisco Bay. Rohin Saleh, a civil engineer with Alameda County’s flood-control and conservation district, said a levee in one town could
EXPERT: THE SCIENTIST
“If we are just looking for places for people to build houses, let’s think longer term so we do not have to waste all these resources, tear all these buildings down, displace all these people.” Gary Griggs, director of the Institute of Marine Sciences at the University of California, Santa Cruz Illustration by Anna Vignet // Public Press
worsen flooding in adjacent communities. “We are dealing with a volume of water, and the water needs to be pushed one way or the other,” he said. “That’s why it’s critical that we all work jointly and make sure that our projects not only don’t have a negative impact, but we are actually helping each other.” Several new projects map the threat and address the response, including the Coastal Hazards Adaptation Resiliency Group, which Saleh helped start last year. A major goal is creating uniform standards for waterfront development.
CAREFUL WHAT YOU FIX Development decisions are made by city planning and building departments, boards of supervisors and mayors. Imagine, for instance, that Redwood City approves a high-value office park on waterfront land likely to be flooded by 2050. Since water seeks low points, protecting the property could also require new levees in communities to the north and south. Who can nudge these governments to coordinate their approach? One candidate is the Bay Conservation and Development Commission. The state agency, founded in 1965, safeguards public access to the water and stops developers and public agencies from filling in marshes to create new land. Every project within 100 feet of the bay-
shore must get its approval. “They need to be our regional agency that prepares for sea level rise,” said Kristina Hill, an associate professor of environmental planning at the University of California, Berkeley. “They need more authority.” Brad McCrea, the commission’s regulatory director, said the agency has an avid interest in sea level rise and presses every project to consider future flood risks in light of climate change. But the fact remains that no single agency has real authority to coordinate a regional response. Instead, there are several regional initiatives, including:
1. Resilient Shorelines Program:
Organized by the Bay Conservation and Development Commission, the Association of Bay Area Governments and two other baywide agencies, it aims to develop a regional strategy for sea level rise by 2021.
2. San Francisco Bay Regional
Coastal Hazards Adaptation Resiliency Group: The coalition of federal, state and local flood-control officials has been meeting since 2014 to coordinate local strategies to prevent shoreline flooding.
3. Our Coast, Our Future: Public
agencies and nonprofit organizations
teamed up to create a detailed interactive online map showing potential bay flooding under various sea rise scenarios. Its 2014 model is the most detailed digital tool that planners in many Bay Area cities have to work with.
4. Climate Readiness Institute: Bay
Area flooding is one focus of this collaboration among academics, governments, nonprofit organizations and companies, launched at UC Berkeley in 2014.
5. South San Francisco Bay Shore-
line Study: Federal and state agencies including the Army Corps of Engineers, the Coastal Conservancy and the Santa Clara Water District are proposing to spend $162 million for wetlands restoration and levee construction.
6. Other projects include a $2.5
million fund for planning called the California Climate Resilience Account; proposed legislation for a statewide preparedness database; and a regional authority in the South Bay to widen old levees and build new ones around San Francisquito Creek, which borders Palo Alto, East Palo Alto and Menlo Park.