Bay fill may be defense as sea levels rise, many concede

In a region where transportation and housing are immediate concerns, state regulators at the Bay Conservation and Development Commission want to focus attention on a less obvious challenge: the need to prepare for rising sea levels.

And one tool that might be required to protect existing communities, officials concede, is the very action that led to the commission’s creation in 1965 — filling in portions of San Francisco Bay that now are covered with water.

“The reality is, to save the bay, we are going to have to put some kinds of fill into the bay,” said Zach Wasserman, an Oakland attorney who was appointed to head the commission in 2012 by Gov. Jerry Brown. This might include such seminatural features as wetlands or marshes, but also what Wasserman called “hardscape,” a reference to levees and other built forms.

Degree of rising

The commission’s emphasis on the local effects of climate change dates back at least to 2007, when it released maps showing what the impact would be if water levels in the bay rose by 3 feet, a change many researchers say could occur within the next century. When reviewing development or infrastructure projects along the bay, the commission’s planners include the filter of a 12-inch increase in the average tidal levels by 2050.

But Wasserman’s comments this week are a reflection of the commission’s increasing effort to bring a sense of urgency to environmental conditions that don’t have the clarity of threats like an earthquake or hurricane, but have the potential to submerge everything from bridge approaches and airport runways to residential neighborhoods built decades ago.

He spoke at the 27-member commission’s working group on rising sea levels, which was formed late in 2013 and was joined last winter by a working group on what are called “bay fill policies.” The commission also has received a grant from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to fund, in part, a technical look at whether current commission policies are flexible enough to adapt to a future where, in the words of the commission website, “Some flood protection strategies may require larger amounts of bay fill than BCDC has ever permitted.”

The task this year is to begin to shift the discussion among Bay Area governments and interest groups from a general sense of concern toward the beginnings of a regional discussion on how to respond.

“If we’re going to be successful about moving things forward, we need intensity,” Wasserman told the other commissioners. This includes laying out frameworks for how restoration efforts such as new wetlands might be funded, as well as making the case for replicating recent localized studies of what’s termed “adaptation” or “resilience” at a nine-county scale: “There need to be specific actions in terms of planning, communication and finance ... to start us moving forward.”

To do so, however, will bump against a Bay Area tradition of resisting any perceived threats to the body of water that in a very real way defines the region.

“I’m not convinced that we need to destroy some parts of the bay in order to save other parts,” said David Lewis, executive director of Save the Bay — an advocacy group founded in 1961 with a self-evident mission. At the same time, Lewis agreed there’s a need to revise the commission’s established policies in light of forecasts related to climate change: “We’ve been encouraging BCDC to update the regulations with regard to bay fill.”

Touchy topic

Another hint of the tensions that might lie ahead came in a recent meeting of the Bay Fill Policies Working Group. One topic on the agenda: whether the group should change its name.

“Some people familiar with BCDC’s history can get the heebie-jeebies if we now seem to be advocating bay fill,” said Larry Goldzband, the commission’s executive director. While there was no decision at the meeting, “We might end up with a phrase like ‘future shoreline adaptation’ instead.”

The state-created agency isn’t the local actor seeking to generate more interest in a topic still challenged from the political right as little more than a scare tactic popularized by Al Gore.

The San Francisco chapter of the Urban Land Institute has released a report analyzing the region’s current policies and responses to the threat of higher average water levels. It calls on local governments to work together on resilience plans and suggests that private businesses can be a resource in tackling the financial obstacles to large-scale proactive measures.

“The kind of planning decisions that need to be made are daunting,” said Elliot Stein, executive director of the local chapter of the development trade group. “If ever there was an issue that begged for regional collaboration, this is it.”