Thursday, November 29, 2018

Sea level rise preparation plan puts Pacifica property owners on edge


 - The Fairway Park West neighborhood in Pacifica has been the place Jeff Guillet and his family have called home for nearly a decade, but he’s concerned his property and its value could soon be at risk with the passage of a new coastal plan.
The City of Pacifica is working on updating the Local Coastal Program plan or LCP, which includes preparing for sea level rise over the next 50 to 100 years. It involves making tough decisions to prepare for the worst case scenario. Guillet claims his entire neighborhood is located in a hazard zone, made up of any land west of Highway 1 in Pacifica.
“My home is a third of a mile from the beach, 40 feet above sea level,” Guillet said. “There is no way that I’m going to be affected by sea level rise in the next 100 years.”
While the city has looked at maintaining ocean barriers and replenishing beaches with sand, it’s one controversial proposal that would negatively affect Guillet’s property that has him outraged. The proposal is called managed retreat, which means moving homes and businesses located in the hazard zone to allow nature to do what it wants and maintain the beach.
“We were shocked,” Guillet said. “I just feel angry that this is being done to me by my city that should be protecting me.”

Read (and watch) more here...


http://www.ktvu.com/news/sea-level-rise-preparation-plan-puts-pacifica-property-owners-on-edge


Posted by Steve Sinai

10 comments:

Cicero said...

Hi, we're from the government. Trust us.

The Local Libertarian said...

Up-zone the Fairway Park area. Remove height restrictions. Allow private builders to fund developing seawalls. Actually, Up-zone all the ocean shore border areas.
This will allow the residents to move on while more capable market players can address the risk and provide solutions.

Entire Bay Area has this problem. The governments don't have the funds to address this problem. So, do we just walk away from billions of dollars worth of property and business?



Anonymous said...

Here we go again....save the frogs, save the snakes, save the plover, managed retreat......
it doesn't matter what the issue is as long as the hippie socialists can use it to bludgeon the non-cult members and guarantee that "they've got theirs, screw everyone else".
Can't wait till these selfish, evil, enemy of Pacifica liars get what's really theirs.

Anonymous said...

I am not sure what we're from government means ?????
Yup we trust government. That is how the problem got fixed last 35 years. there is tons of bureaucracy if you deal with Government. We want private sector to fix the issue. Just like our neighboring cities that fix most of their problems with private capital and not long waiting for government.
It is 21st Century. Some middle eastern countries are building cities in middle of water while in America which is the strongest country and most technological one, still has issue to fix a sea wall or to drop a mass number of concrete blocks a mile away from the ocean shore to brake the wave pressure force so our beaches won't wash away.

It is all mismanagement that leads to these issues.

First of all not the whole Pacifica has fragile or poor soil quality. In some neighborhoods it may be a valid statement but if you drive by highway 1 we do have a great mass of Bed Rocks that are getting hit by wave forces last possibly 10,000 years and are still strong and standing. water can not damage rocky shores over night. So we can fix the softer soil shores by making sea walls and or dropping concrete blocks which are very popular through out the whole world to avoid or reduce water damage. Look at Netherlands. The whole country is built on Water. Let the young generation with more passion and knowledge and dreams to build this great city.
We are tired of crying about A SUBJECT for last 30 years.

Let's take action and be a little flexible with big investors like Paul Heule which we do not get very often and encourage them to build their hotels contingent to fix couple of issues in our city. I am not sure who is running this city that Intentionaly or Unintentionaly is hurting our city and they just steer away all the investors to neighboring cities.

It is time to wake up and act.

Anonymous said...

"More capable market players?" A bit elitist,don't you think?

wake up Pacifica said...

Pacifica is being flushed down the toilet by the Vote No on everything cult and you worry about sounding "elitist"???
In this backward town the faux enviros kill everything while brandishing their faux poverty and faux brotherly love badges of honor. These selfish hypocritical "elitists" look down their noses at the average Pacifican and laugh at the great screw job they're pulling off in plain sight.

The Local Libertarian said...

@11:57AM -- we are all market players. Except, each of us has a different appetite for risk. And different capability to undertake this risk. Higher the risk, higher the premium over actual cost of doing the job. How high is fully negotiable.

In any case, being or aspiring to be an "Elite" is not a bad thing. It is desirable.
May be you are confusing "fraudulent/kleptocracy" with "elitism" -- which btw is how it has been insinuated in the media for the past few years.

The Local Libertarian said...

Sea Levels have been increasing for centuries. Climate has been changing and will change. We cover up or apply sun screen when it gets sunny. Layer up when it gets cold. Where there is a river, we build a bridge to cross it. Where the land permits we farm. Where there is overflow we build dikes and retaining walls. So too we must deal with this.

How far will we run away? We didn't cause all of the global warming. But we may have an existential threat because of it. One day we'll die. Do we rush in for euthanasia because of that realization?

Stop this idiocy. Bring the conversation back to evaluating solutions. Retreat is not an option.


The Local Libertarian said...

Beat back the Retreat!

https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/communities/north-county/sd-no-retreat-wording-20180521-story.html

Interesting comments

Sharon said...

@LL thanks for you post, among the comments I found this, I altered the comment a bit to reflect our area as far as the pg. and table:

The California Ocean Protection Council has updated statewide guidance to reflect recent advances in ice loss science and projections of sea-level rise. This new document entitled “Rising Seas in California - An update on sea-level rise science” published April 2017 makes it clear that projecting a 5.5 ft. increase by 2100 is inappropriate.

link: www.opc.ca.gov/webmaster/ftp/pdf/docs/rising-seas-in-california-an-update-on-sea-level-rise-science.pdf , see page 31

The new report uses Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs) that are projections of greenhouse gas concentrations that result in radiative forcing levels of 8.5, 6.0, 4.5 and 2.6 W/m2. RCP 8.5 is the worst-case scenario. RCPs were introduced in 2011 as a way for researchers running different climate models to do comparable studies regarding how high greenhouse gas concentrations might rise by 2100.

Even using worst case scenario RCP 8.5 the local sea level rise by 2100 is not even close to predictions of 5.5 feet. The chance of the sea level exceeding 4.0 ft is only 8%.

Replacing coal with natural gas, combined with wind, solar and conservation (hybrid cars, LEDs and insulation) is pushing RCP's lower and reducing sea level rise rates to even lower levels. Sea level rise is not a myth! It has been rising locally about 2 mm/year for 100 years (at a constant rate) and now starting to rise faster - but no one knows how fast. We need to give probabilities with our estimates. Unfortunately there are people and organizations (including so called experts) that will exaggerate the rise rate.

Statements in the UT such as : "Seas could rise as much as 10 feet by 2100" with no probability stated leads to bad policy and plans (the chance of this happening are less that 1 in 1000). - not from me but from the Rising Seas referenced document.