Stronger Today, More Resilient Tomorrow

By Michele Rodriguez, AICP, LEED AP

Climate change poses a serious threat to California's economic well-being, public health, natural resources, and the environment. Some of the state's largest industries will be detrimentally affected, including agriculture, wine, tourism, skiing, recreational and commercial fishing, and forestry. It will also increase the strain on resources, such as water supply and electricity in the hottest parts of the state.

Likewise, incidences of infectious diseases, asthma, and other human health-related problems are expected to rise. As are sea levels.

The Bay Area both shares the state risk and has some of its own — due in no small part to its topography, population density (including a high percentage of low-income residents), major infrastructure, and the large number of large businesses headquartered there. With a population of 7.4 million people, the Bay Area is the fourth largest metropolitan area in the U.S.

San Francisco itself is surrounded by water on three sides, and the Bay Area's coastline is some 1,000 miles. Six major fault lines transect the region. The cyclical pattern of earthquakes along the Hayward Fault indicate that the next big one could be coming soon — and the region is preparing for that through HayWired, a project of the U.S. Geological Survey. (Read more about HayWired in a future issue of Planning.)

To get ahead of these concerns, the City & County of San Francisco Office of Resilience and Recovery developed Resilient San Francisco, which lays out several hazard adaptation goals in addition to other strategies to achieve resiliency. These efforts will focus on retrofitting seismically dangerous buildings and critical infrastructure, including general hospital, water, and sewer systems; energy systems; and transportation networks, in addition to post-disaster interim housing strategies.

Sea-level rise adaptation studies are also under way to identify long-term urban resiliency strategies that use hardscape and natural green adaptation solutions to protect the region from a rise that scientists expect could be between 11 inches by 2050 and 36 inches by 2100 if unmitigated.

Stark indicators of future sea-level rise greet visitors to Half Moon Bay in San Mateo County during a public awareness event in several coastal communities. Photo courtesy County of San Mateo.

Following the state's lead

A 2018 report from the California Environmental Protection Agency, Indicators of Climate Change in California, illustrates in stark terms the declining snowpack and dramatic retreat of glaciers in the Sierra Nevada, unprecedented tree mortality in California forests, a rise in ocean temperature off the California coast, and the shifting ranges of many species of California plants and animals.

Fortunately, California is carrying on its tradition of strong leadership in environmental policy, and the state government, as well as cities and counties, have stepped up and are setting strong examples for climate and hazard adaption and resiliency.

The California Global Warming Solutions Acts of 2006, AB 32, laid much of the groundwork for recent activities by requiring a sharp reduction of greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020 — a drop of about 15 percent below emissions expected under a business-as-usual scenario — and 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050.

The legislation also required the California Air Resources Board — the agency that monitors and enforces air quality improvement measures — to adopt regulations to achieve the maximum technologically feasible and cost-effective GHG emissions reductions. The implementation of AB 32 is reducing risks associated with climate change while improving energy efficiency, expanding the use of renewable energy resources and cleaner transportation, and reducing waste.

According to David Clegern, CARB's public information officer, the latest inventory in 2016 shows that California's GHG emissions continue to decrease, a trend observed since 2007. In 2016, emissions from routine GHG-emitting activities statewide were 429 million metric tons of CO₂equivalent (MMTCO2e), 12 MMTCO2e lower than 2015 levels. This puts total emissions just below the 2020 target of 431 million metric tons.

California is making other significant efforts to adapt to the changing climate, led by the California Natural Resources Agency. The Safeguarding California Plan, updated in 2018, is the state's roadmap to protect communities, infrastructure, services, and the natural environment from climate change impacts.

A new "Climate Justice" chapter highlights how equity is woven throughout the entire plan. Climate justice addresses communities that tend to suffer most from climate impacts. They tend to be the poorest and least able to adapt because of a lack of resources and support. In the plan, state agencies showcase climate change adaptation examples that emphasize unique strategies to combat and adapt to impacts of climate change in concrete ways. Improvements include workforce development, energy efficiency, and solar panel installation to reduce greenhouse gases and stabilize energy availability during shutdowns and outages.

Another powerful state tool is Cal-Adapt, an online climate change resource that agencies and communities use to conduct research and develop adaptation plans. It provides drought scenarios, hourly sea-level projections, and other high-resolution climate projection data.

To help meet the significant health challenges climate change poses, there are Climate Change and Health Profile Reports from the California Department of Public Health to help counties prepare for health impacts through adaptation planning. These tools help to protect the most vulnerable people from health impacts caused by severe heat, drought, flood, vector-borne illnesses, food insecurity, sea-level rise, mold, indoor air quality, respiratory illness from wildfire smoke, mosquito-borne illnesses in warmer temperatures, increased stress and trauma from climate-related impacts, and socioeconomic disruption. CARB updates a statewide GHG inventory on an annual basis to track emissions caused by human activities in California.

Regional governments play their part

SB375 is another major piece of climate legislation. It mandates several changes to regional planning practice to better integrate land-use, housing, and transportation planning at the regional level. SB375 necessitates increased collaboration between state and regional agencies by requiring each of the state's 18 metropolitan planning agencies to adopt Sustainable Communities Strategies, which must be updated every five years.

In the San Francisco Bay Area, which encompasses 101 towns and cities, two regional Sustainable Community Strategies have been completed. Under the first strategy, each city in the region identified Priority Development Areas where future growth would occur, with a focus on development in urban areas with existing public transportation, energy, water, and waste infrastructure, as well as how nearly $292 billion in federal, state, and local funds will be spent through 2040.

The most recent SCS, Plan Bay Area 2040, was adopted jointly in July 2017 by the Association of Bay Area Governments and the Metropolitan Transportation Commission. The plan is designed to accommodate a population of 9.6 million, 820,000 new households, 1.3 million new jobs, and a transportation investment strategy of $303 billion.

This second SCS emphasizes growth and transportation expenditures in the three region's largest cities — San Francisco, Oakland, and San Jose, which account for 72 percent of total households and 77 percent of the region's total jobs — to meet greenhouse gas reduction targets set by the California Air Resources Board. Future growth is intended to reduce per-capita carbon dioxide emissions from cars and trucks to achieve performance targets.

One of the key action plan objectives is resilience, to enhance climate protection and adaptation efforts. Four of the 13 plan targets are related to social equity, but many equity stakeholders believe the alternatives and depth of analysis of displacement and gentrification impact didn't go deep enough.

The SCS action plan also includes 2040 performance target areas addressing displacement risk. The Bay Area Regional Health Inequities Initiative, a collaboration of 11 Bay Area public health departments, recommended more focus on communities with high social vulnerability and potential exposure to hazards.

Planners, coastal engineers, flood managers, and technical experts worked together to create sea-level rise mapping to help assess vulnerability. The sea-level rise analysis has inundation levels up to 16 feet, including shoreline overtopping exceeding five feet. These maps identified significant risk to the region's infrastructure, housing, and commercial buildings.

Meanwhile, the 2017 report Raising the Bar on Regional Resilience, from the Bay Area Regional Collaborative, focuses on flooding, earthquakes, and other hazard impacts to communities, and offers four case studies and six regional resilience action plans (see sidebar) that are to be achieved by 2021. And the Resilient by Design Bay Area Challenge looked at regional resilience to sea-level rise, severe storms, flooding, and earthquakes. The international interdisciplinary design teams of architects, urban planners, landscape architects, designers, engineers, and others identified 10 action plans on issues that include fluvial flooding, transportation infrastructure, housing, and regulatory changes.

There remains much work to be done to make the Bay Area more resilient, but significant progress is being made. Particularly for the most vulnerable populations, ongoing multiagency approaches to study, design, construct, and monitor coastal and bayfront properties are needed. Given the cost of this work, municipalities should prioritize critical infrastructure, historic resources, and major living areas. In addition, long-term funding strategies will be needed to shore up coastal areas, plan for elevated infrastructure, and require new development plans for rising sea levels. A hard-sciences approach to baseline data, long-term projections, and data gathering and sharing is required to adapt to the inevitable changes that are coming.

Michele Rodriguez is a management and land-use consultant with Municipal Resources Group and Rincon Consultants, Inc. She specializes in climate action planning integrated into long-range public policy, as well as current planning projects.

Local Approaches

Several cities and counties in the Bay Area are setting an example when it comes to adapting to climate change.

San Francisco

The city hosted the Global Climate Action Summit in September. International leaders celebrated significant actions taken to meet the Paris Climate Change Agreement and recommitted to the effort.

In advance of the summit, Mayor London Breed announced San Francisco's 30 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions (from 1990 levels) "while growing our economy by 111 percent and increasing our population by 20 percent. But in order to fully realize the ambitions of the Paris Climate Accord, we must continue to make bold commitments and accelerate actions that reduce emissions and move us towards a clean energy future."

Mayor Breed committed San Francisco to four key policy pledges:

1. Zero Waste: Reducing waste generation by 15 percent and landfill disposal by 50 percent by 2030
2. Decarbonizing Buildings: Achieving net-zero carbon buildings in San Francisco by 2050
3. Green Bonds: Issuing more green bonds to finance infrastructure and capital projects
4. 100% Renewable Energy: Switching all electricity in San Francisco to renewables by 2030

Berkeley

In 2009, the city adopted a community target to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 33 percent below 2000 levels by 2020 (so far, GHGs are 12 percent below that). The Berkeley Climate Action Plan addresses transportation and land use, building energy use, waste reduction and recycling, community outreach, and adaptation and resilience via programs on energy efficiency, renewal energy, electric vehicle charging, community-governed green power supply, microgrid study, green infrastructure, and green building.

A participant in the Rockefeller Foundation's 100 Resilient Cities initiative, Berkeley released its Resilience Strategy in 2016. It identified the city's most pressing challenges and crafted strategies to address localized climate change impacts from wildfire, earthquakes, flooding, and racial inequity.

Photo by Natalie Orenstein/Berkeleyside.

Marin County

With both a bay and coastal shoreline, Marin County ranks second of the nine San Francisco Bay Area counties for projected risk of impacts from sea-level rise flooding and storms.

The Bay Waterfront Adaptation Vulnerability evaluation focuses on the east Marin shoreline, developing early actions for adaptation planning, a toolkit of various engineering tools, and three demonstration projects to integrate flood protection, sea-level rise, and habitat based on sea-level scenarios — near-term (10 inches), mid-term (20 inches), and long-term (60 inches ) — built using the U. S. Geologic Survey's Coastal Storm Modeling System.

The county also conducted a pilot program using cutting-edge technology, scientific data, and a virtual reality viewer that can provide a 360-degree view of what sea level rise would look like at real Marin County locations, as well as to help users visualize adaptation strategies.

Photo courtesy Marin County Development Agency.

San Rafael

The draft update to the Climate Action Plan for San Rafael emphasizes a significant commitment to long-term public input and adaptation strategies, notes Sustainability Coordinator Cory Bytof. The city council has adopted general resiliency strategies and specific efforts to advance resiliency, such as localized pilot programs and adaptation strategies for a low-income, primarily Spanish-speaking part of the city. San Rafael also was a part of the Resilient by Design effort, and through that process design alternatives for elevating portions of the city were identified.

Paul Jensen, the city's community development director, notes several challenges to the city's climate adaptation efforts, including the fact that assessment and planning require the involvement of multiple agencies. Further, sea-level rise science and data continues to evolve, and municipalities have to make difficult decisions in priority setting.

Photo courtesy Laurel Dell School, Pepe Gonzalez, Y-Plan, Youth-in-Arts.