Lawmakers push for action on sea level rise
California lawmakers are hopeful that the Sea Level Rise Mitigation and Adaptation Act, could force quicker and more effective action on sea level rise — a problem that threatens more than 70% of the state’s residents, who live on more than 3,400 miles of coastline.
Senator John Laird, who represents Santa Cruz County, parts of the Monterey Bay Area and south to San Luis Obispo, spoke at a press conference on the bill, Monday morning.
“I have personally watched the slow march of sea level rise and its impact on California’s coast over the past decades. As mayor of Santa Cruz over 30 years ago, we witnessed the effects of coastal erosion on our own city. In fact, there was a presidential declared disaster due to the high seas and erosion in that period,” said Laird, who also serves as the director of California Natural Resources Agency. “With SB-1, we can finally do away with a patchwork of efforts and address one of the greatest climate threats we know.”
The Sea Level Rise Mitigation and Adaptation Act, introduced in December 2020, would mandate the California Coastal Commission to include sea level rise in their decision-making, as well require a more cohesive approach to tackling rising seas, by calling for local government, and regional and statewide offices to collaborate.
“We need a comprehensive approach, and we need multiple state agencies working with local jurisdictions on solutions,” Senate President pro Tempore Toni G. Atkins (D-San Diego) said Monday, lead author on the bill.
Impacts of sea level rise, spurred by greenhouse gas emissions, and melting sea ice, have
already been documented: more frequent high tide events, and El Niño conditions. By as soon as 2030, California could see half a foot of sea level rise, according to an August 2020 report published by California’s Legislative Analyst’s Office. A 2017 report authored by Distinguished Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences at UC Santa Cruz and other scientists, estimated that if no serious mitigation efforts are taken in the San Francisco Bay Area against sea level rise, the region could experience 1.6 to 3.4 feet of sea level rise by 2100.
When asked how the bill would spur action from the Coastal Commission, an agency that already incorporates sea level rise science into their decisionmaking, Sara Aminzadeh, commissioner of the California Coastal Commission, said the legislation would formalize addressing the issue.
“The Coastal Commission does already deal with sea level rise. Every single meeting, almost every single item,” Aminzadeh said. “But this bill would modernize the Coastal Act by calling sea level rise by its name, reaffirming the commission’s mandate to protect the coast and probably most importantly, committing the resources necessary to help local governments
plan for future sea level rise.”
Sea level mitigation tactics that work in one area, may not in another, Laird said. Those include hardening infrastructure — such as building seawalls — moving communities away from the coastline and further inland, as well as less environmentally and cost intensive options, such as beach rehabilitation.
“If you look at the tsunami hitting 10 years ago, there are harbors up and down the California coast, but it really devastated two: Santa Cruz and Crescent City because of the way they’re situated and the way they’re built,” Laird said. “And so that’s why one size does not fit all.”
If the bill is made law, those necessary resources are slated to come from a yet-to-be passed bond act, that lays out $970 million dollars for coastal protection and restoration, according to Atkins, of San Diego. Sen. Laird stressed that the bill allocates resources for coastal counties and cities to share solutions with each other. For instance, if one city has figured out a way to safeguard their coastal sewer system in the face of rising seas, officials could share that information to assist another area dealing with the same challenge, Laird said.
“This bill would give people the information and the tools to take it past just the planning process,” Laird said.