Pacifica must fight coastal erosion

City Council puts residents at risk

By Jim Wagner, Mark Stechbart        

Pacifica Tribune Aug. 30, 2017

When city council loses focus on the most critical issue facing Pacifica—ocean rise—homeowners and businesses will lose. Or maybe the warning should be homeowners will pay a huge price.

 

Ocean rise planning for Pacifica coastal areas is underway. Sounds ok, but this plan will decide who wins or loses—which properties are protected and which properties are left to ocean erosion.  Pacifica is faced with a policy menu ranging from uncontrolled erosion known as managed retreat to state-of-the-art engineered artificial off-shore reefs, berms, revetments, boulders and seawalls like the Dutch have used for 1,000 years.

 

What may shock anyone with a home or business investment along or west of  Hwy 1 is this city council has not taken a position against managed retreat. Yes you heard us right—managed retreat, letting the ocean chew its way east, is on the table for debate through this coastal planning process.

Moreover, the consultant hired by the city for $185,000 to plot the future of west of Hwy 1 has a decided fascination with managed retreat. As an example, the hired consultant wrote a letter to San Francisco stating the Sharp Park golf course should be closed and flooded to wetlands.  This plan would involve removing the protective sea wall, and letting the tides in.

 

Here’s the homeowner danger-- a flooded golf course with no western seawall blows a large hole in Pacifica right up to Hwy 1. It also brings the ocean to the doorstep of the south Palmetto neighborhood and west Fairway neighborhood.

 

Your city council hired this outfit on a 3-2 vote.

 

Managed retreat exposure elsewhere in town certainly involves the Rockaway business district, anywhere in west Sharp Park; the Linda Mar beach ; the middle school and all neighborhood houses.  A huge percentage of Pacifica businesses are west of Hwy 1; most of our hotels;  thousands of homes; a big chunk of our affordable rentals at the north end and millions of dollars of sewer, water, power and communication infrastructure. Let’s not forget the threat to Hwy 1, our only north-south arterial. How will anyone commute out of town if Hwy 1 is cut? How will anyone sell a home anywhere in town if potential buyers are afraid Hwy 1 will be cut?

 

Congresswoman Jackie Speier recently objected to a managed retreat scheme at Sharp Park, as follows:

“I write to express my opposition to proposals to abandon or prohibit the maintenance of the sea wall at Sharp Park golf course in Pacifica. Proposals like this continue a series of thinly-veiled and ideologically-motivated attacks, all unsuccessful in the courts, against the golf course, the wetlands protecting endangered and threatened species, and the nearby residential neighborhood.”

 

Here is our suggested work plan for Pacifica homeowners who want to keep their home value and businesses who desire to stay in business—we must make this city council agree to reject managed retreat as a "solution". Anything less threatens this community. Require the consultant to find and design solutions that protect this community.  Additionally, let’s continue to support our members of Congress, State Senate, Assembly and Supervisor as they secure funding to protect our coast.

 

In the last election, a billion dollar bond was approved to protect the interior of the SF Bay from ocean rise. SF Int’l airport, Google, Facebook, and Hwy 101 will be protected. So will Millbrae, Palo Alto, Foster City and Burlingame. None of those entities agreed to managed retreat, nor should they. So Pacifica can say no as well.

 

The rest of our task is clear. This consultant will make introductory presentations to the City Council and the Planning Commission in September, 2017. A technical working group and a Community Advisory Group will be organized, each of which will hold 3 meetings, starting in Dec., 2017. Stakeholder/community engagement meetings will also be in Dec., 2017.

 

As we raise this alarm, we will speak at these meetings even during the busy holiday period. You will get communications to your homes outlining progress, or asking for emails to hesitant council members who won’t commit to rejecting managed retreat.

 

Your home value and the economic vitality of this town are in question.   We can use existing technology to protect our coast and way of life, or you get to figure out how to move your house and get a boat for your commute.

 

( Wagner and Stechbart are long term Pacifica residents active in the Pacifica Business and Community PAC supporting forward looking solutions to Pacifica issues)

Submitted by Mark Stechbart