Salt ponds in Redwood City where the new Saltworks development is proposed. Photo: Lauren Sommer.

What do Bay Area airports and some big Silicon Valley companies have in common? They sit right on the edge of San Francisco Bay, where sea level rise is expected to have a big impact by the end of the century.

That may seem far in the future, but state agencies are preparing for climate change now by writing new rules for construction along the bay’s shoreline. As you can imagine, developers and environmentalists aren’t exactly seeing eye to eye.

That’s evident on a patch of land at the edge of the bay in Redwood City. For more than a century, it’s been home to one thing: salt.

“As you look out, you can see it looks sort of like a frozen pond,” said David Smith, a Senior Vice President with DMB Associates. “On a typical season, you would hope to establish a layer of 8 to 12 inches.”

Cargill Salt owns these ponds as part of their salt-harvesting operations. Smith is with a developer that’s working with Cargill on a different vision for these more than 1,400 acres.

“Welcome to the Redwood City Saltworks site,” he said. Saltworks is DMB’s proposal for 8,000 to 12,000 new housing units. Smith said half of the site would be dedicated to open space uses including tidal marsh restoration, and then the other half would be an integrated, transit-oriented development.

Smith said it’s housing that’s sorely needed in the Bay Area.

“You have had the explosion of economic success of Silicon Valley. We should be ashamed of our inability or unwillingness to provide housing to support those workers and that economic activity,” he said.

David Lewis, Executive Director of Save the Bay, is on the other side of the issue.

“This site is not a site for housing,” he said. “Salt ponds in Redwood City are actually one of the last unprotected areas that could be restored to tidal marsh for San Francisco Bay.”

It seems like a pretty typical story: a developer wants prime land to build on, and environmental groups want to see wildlife habitat restored. But there’s a twist.

Bay Waters Rising

“What we’re looking at is a blue inundation zone and it depicts the projections for sea level rise for the region around Redwood City,” Smith said, pointing to map showing the low-lying parts of the bay’s shoreline at risk from sea level rise.

Smith says their plan calls for a three-mile levee to protect the development from the bay. Projections from state scientists show sea level could rise by nearly six feet by the end of the century.

“We’d like to ignore it. But if we ignore it, we’re ignoring it at our own economic peril,” said Will Travis, Executive Director of the Bay Conservation and Development Commission. BCDC is the state agency with jurisdiction over the bay.

“We’re building things now that will be around for a hundred years. And we should, we believe, think about how those cities, how those communities will remain viable and sustainable,” he said.

BCDC is writing new regulations for development along the shore, which they’ll use in future permitting decisions. They’ve been guided by a state plan from the Schwarzenegger administration called the California Climate Adaptation Strategy. It discourages building in low-lying areas and encourages wetland restoration.

“Wetlands are wonderful for dealing with climate change,” said Travis. “Wetlands soak up flood water. So the wider the wetland in the front, the lower the levee can be in the back.”

Battle Over Shoreline Rules

But when BCDC released the first draft of its new development policy two years ago, the agency faced a wave of protest, especially from folks who see bay-front property as prime real estate.

“It tried to do too much too fast,” said Jim Wunderman, president of the Bay Area Council, a group representing business interests.

“We should be absolutely concerned about sea level rise, but we shouldn’t allow the concern about it to say let’s just stop doing everything,” he said.

A number of bay-front cities had the same complaint. Public meetings got ugly.

“People said things that they probably weren’t proud of when the meeting was over, and I know we’ve had epithets hurled at us,” said Wunderman.

So BCDC backed off a little, saying that new development would be considered on a case by case basis.

David Lewis of Save the Bay said those changes concern him, because the policy is leading the way for others.

“Most small cities don’t have the resources to change the way they plan and permit developments with a big change like sea level rise,” Lewis said.  “I think BCDC’s at the forefront, and it should be brave about doing the right thing.”

Will Travis of BCDC says the changes were necessary, so the plan works for the dozens of cities it involves.

“We want to achieve environmental protection. We have to, but not at the expense of regional prosperity. So we’re trying to achieve that balance,” he said.

The challenge, Travis said, is making a global issue like climate change part of regional planning.

“A society likes dealing with climate change at the abstract. It’s when you actually get down to doing something about it that people have concerns,” he said.

In October, BCDC expects to finalize the sea level rise policy that will govern development along San Francisco Bay for years to come.

The Yolo Bypass, with Sacramento in the background. (Photo: Craig Miller)

An array of state programs to protect and restore rivers and wetlands is endangered by current plans to cut funding on Capitol Hill. That’s what a string of witnesses told the Assembly Water, Parks & Wildlife Committee in Sacramento this week.

At risk are programs that have leveraged federal money to restore hundreds of thousands of acres of wetlands and wildlife habitat in California, according to speakers for environmental and outdoor groups.

For a nearby example of how federal funds have been used, waterfowl advocate Bill Gaines pointed to the Yolo Bypass, almost within sight of the state Capitol. Gaines, president of the California Outdoor Heritage Alliance, said that over ten years, $5 million in federal money has fueled restoration of 4,300 acres of wildlife habitat.

Kim Delfino, who spoke for the activist group Defenders of Wildlife, told lawmakers that provisions in the federal budget bill known as HR-1 would gut funding for the state’s Land & Water Conservation Fund by 90%. Allocations have already dropped off precipitously in recent years to the program that funds improvements to local parks and beach access, among other things.

A hydroelectric dam on the upper Klamath River. (Photo: Craig Miller)

Also in jeopardy, according to testimony, are hard-won agreements to restore the San Joaquin and Klamath Rivers basins. The latter deal, which took 18 years to craft, requires the removal of four hydro-electric dams.

Gaines says wildlife refuge areas on the upper Klamath currently line up behind local farms for water allocations. “Without that money to remove those dams, the entire Klamath basin restoration agreement falls part and along with it, the water rights that the refuge complex up there so desperately needs,” said Gaines, whose organization represents a coalition of hunting, fishing and wildlife groups.

Zeke Grader, who represents commercial fishing interests, called the measure a “declaration of war” against the salmon fisheries and communities that rely on them.

Barry Nelson of the Natural Resources Defense Counsel testified that passage of HR-1 would “threaten the progress” that California is beginning to make on a host of water issues. Nelson said riders attached to the spending bill would deal a severe setback to current efforts to restore the San Joaquin River, and to secure the future health of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.

Photo of Distillery Point near Half Moon Bay, a contribution to the King Tide Photo Initiative. (Photo: jsutton8, Flickr)

This week, seasonal high tides, known as “King Tides” will roll into the Bay Area, providing a preview of what the region might face if sea level rises over the coming decades as predicted.

So the organizers of the Bay Area King Tide Photo Initiative want you to grab your camera and help document the tides.  The San Francisco Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve (NERR) has set up a Flickr site for the photos, where participants can upload their “before, during, and after” shots.

Organizers say the idea is to:

1. Identify and catalog coastal areas currently vulnerable to tidal inundation; and

2. Gather compelling graphics and pictures, so we can promote awareness of the specific potential impacts of sea level rise on the region to support climate change mitigation and adaptation.

Sea levels have risen about eight inches in the last century, and the San Francisco Bay Conservation & Development Commission (BCDC) advises planners to prepare for a sea level rise of about 16 inches by mid-century and 55 inches by 2100.  A rise like that could inundate 41 square miles of coastal land according to a 2009 Pacific Institute study.

Upcoming extreme high tides are expected to occur on January 19th (tomorrow) and 20th and on February 16th-18th.

In addition to NERR and BCDC, partners in initiative include the National Marine Sanctuaries, NOAA, the National Weather Service, and the California Coastal Commission.   For more about how to participate, see the project website.

(Photo: US Fish & Wildlife)

State and federal authorities provided an update Wednesday on the Bay Delta Conservation Plan (BDCP), which is tasked with restoring the damaged ecosystems of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and safeguarding California’s water supply.

“The 25 million Californians who rely on the Delta for clean drinking water are at severe risk,” said Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar, on a call with reporters.

It’s well established that the current system of water delivery that shuttles water from north to south through the Delta causes damage to wetlands and threatens native species, as well as leaving the water supply vulnerable to earthquakes and pollution.

“There is now a clear consensus that the status quo is unsustainable,” said Senator Dianne Feinstein, in a written statement.

The report released Wednesday focuses on three key elements, which Deputy Secretary David Hayes outlined on the call:

1. Improve water quality and restore the ecosystems
2. Rather than just pumping water through the Delta, water should also be moved around the Delta through an underground tunnel
3. Create a monitoring and adaptive management plan for the Delta, that would allow for flexibility

The 92-page “highlights” report is not a final plan, nor even a draft plan, which is not expected until next year.  Instead it is a “status report on the condition of the BDCP” and a “transition document” from the Schwarzenegger-to-Brown administrations, said Lester Snow, head of the California Natural Resources Agency.

Despite its preliminary nature, however, the report has sparked criticism from environmental groups such as the Environmental Defense Fund, The Bay Institute, and the Natural Resources Defense Council, which cite its lack of endangered species protections and a water conservation strategy, among other concerns.

“This plan is not ready for prime time,” said Gary Bobker, Program Director at the Bay Institute.  “Whether it’s the quality of the analysis, or paying attention to the best available scientific information, or facing up to some hard policy choices about the future, the plan simply does not pass the laugh test.”

Felicity Barringer has more on the BDCP and its recent history in an article for The New York Times.

As my colleague Paul Rogers reported this week, earth has begun to move in the biggest wetlands restoration ever undertaken on the West Coast. This week I took a brief tour of the Eden Landing Ecological Reserve, near Hayward.

What is and what will be: Hundreds of acres of salt evaporation ponds, in the background, are being restored to tidal wetlands, as seen in the foreground of this scene from Eden Landing in Hayward. (All photos: Craig Miller)

Scanning much of the scene, “Eden” wasn’t exactly what came to mind. Vast, white expanses of salt and gypsum deposits are more reminiscent of Utah than a bay estuary. These are the remnants of a once booming salt harvesting industry.

But fueled partially by federal stimulus funding, bulldozers and backhoes are now reshaping levees there as part of the larger South Bay Salt Pond Restoration Project, which will eventually return 630 acres of abandoned salt flats into tidal wetlands at Eden Landing, and thousands more in an arc around the south end of San Francisco Bay.

The project is a consortium of more than a half-dozen federal, state and regional agencies, and the non-profit Ducks Unlimited.

A sign at the Eden Landing wetlands restoration site is festooned with logos of various agencies and organizations involved.

Expanding habitat for plants and wildlife is a central goal of the restoration, but most planners and scientists seem to agree that tidal marshes are an elegant defense against rising sea levels.

A supervisor watches as a bulldozer reshapes a levee at Eden Landing. Crews are elevating some levees and will then break down others to allow tides to reclaim salt flats.

Will Travis, executive director of the Bay Conservation and Development Commission, which oversees shoreline development in San Francisco Bay, has explored ideas from as far afield as the Netherlands, looking for ways to cope with rising sea levels. He’s concluded that as low-cost, long-term solutions go, it’s tough to beat the wetlands that are already there (or were there). “Tidal wetlands are about as close to magic as you can get when you’re dealing with sea level rise,” Travis is fond of saying, “Because all wetlands are wonderful for flood protection.”

Wetlands act as giant sponges, helping diffuse high tides and storm surges. Projections for likely degree of sea level rise along the California coast are wide-ranging, but the planning parameter that’s emerged from various reports and used in the state’s climate adaptation strategy, is 16 inches by 2050, and 55 inches by 2100.

A three-foot leopard shark patrols the tidelands at Eden Landing reserve.

In our radio report, produced by Climate Watch intern Rachel Cohen, we talk with wetlands managers from the California Coastal Conservancy and US Fish & Wildlife Service, about what it takes to bring back the marshes.

Salt ponds form a red & brown mosaic in San Francisco Bay.

And there’s more about tidal wetlands and rising seas in an upcoming report from Quest, airing Tuesday, August 24th, at 7:30 p.m. on KQED Public Television.

Heavy surf along the Monterey Peninsula. Photo: Craig Miller

Speakers at this week’s sea level planning conference in Oakland cited everybody from H. L. Mencken to Yogi Berra (“You can observe a lot just by watching”). But the primary insight from the event may have been courtesy of Robert Frost: “…miles to go before (we) sleep.”

About 225 representatives from industry, government and academia gathered at the behest of the non-profit Bay Planning Coalition.  The effort was to push forward a planning agenda to help prepare the Bay Area and coastal California for rising sea levels due to the changing climate. There is considerable uncertainty surrounding how much sea level rise we should expect in the decades to come. There were indications at the conference that planners were starting to coalesce around predictions of 16 inches by 2050, and 55 inches by 2100, projections embraced by the state’s formal climate adaptation plan.

Greater still is the uncertainty surrounding how governments, businesses and public agencies will respond to the challenge. Estimates are that rising seas threaten $100 billion of “economic assets” statewide, half of which are in the Bay Area. While most speakers seemed to agree on the urgency of mobilizing a coordinated planning effort, few seemed certain where to start.

The palpable frustration in the room was voiced  by, among others, Calla Rose Ostrander, Climate Action Coordinator with the City and County of San Francisco. “I think we’ve set ourselves up to need certainty, to make decisions,” she told me, saying that public agencies in charge of roads and development feel paralyzed. “When we apply for funding for these things,” explained Ostrander, they (potential funders) say ‘How are you planning for it?’ And we haven’t been advised yet on how to plan for it.” That dilemma was echoed by Paul Thayer of the California State Lands Commission: “You can’t engineer for a range of sea level rise,” he said. And yet that would appear to be the task.

Oakland Int'l Airport, like much of the Bay Area's critical infrastructure, lies barely above sea level. Photo: Craig Miller

Funding is another area that remains fuzzy, amid all the inter-agency discussions, and one that was not substantively addressed at the conference. It is expected that rising seas will require billions of dollars in infrastructure upgrades. The Port of Oakland, for example, is awaiting the outcome of a study to determine what “perimeter defenses” will be needed to keep runways at Oakland International Airport above water.

Several speakers raised concern about rallying public support to confront a threat that is so diffuse. Will Travis, who heads the San Francisco-based Bay Conservation & Development Commission, predicted that “bringing it home” to households with more immediate worries will be the biggest challenge. And yet we can’t wait, warned Travis. “The longer we wait, the worse the problem becomes.”

Scientists as well as policymakers are pondering how to respond to rising sea levels. Nicole Heller of our content partner Climate Central recently attended a conference aimed at that end of the issue, and wrote about it in the Climate Central blog.

Photo: U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service

Policy makers have assembled “blue ribbon” panels to study the options and make recommendations. Volumes of studies and proposals line the shelves in Sacramento and elsewhere.

Last week a new idea surfaced for moving water through the Delta: Instead of channeling around it, tunnel under it.

This week the non-partisan Public Policy Institute of California released its recommendations for a mechanism to fund the enormous fixes that will be required: Those who benefit pay (ecologists use the term “ecosystem services” for all those bennies we get from natural resources and tend to take for granted).

Whatever the outcome, one thing seems inevitable, with or without human intervention. Driven by warming ocean temperatures, rising sea levels will continue to push saltwater farther upstream, changing the Delta’s character and the “services” it provides.

Recently a team of students at U.C. Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism produced a Flash presentation on some of the issues raised by advancing salt in the Delta. The multimedia report: Delicate Balance was produced for Climate Watch by Amanda Dyer, Martin Ricard and Jeremy Whitaker. We’re grateful to them for their time and creativity.

According to a study published by researchers at MIT, there was a global spike in atmospheric methane last year. The increase, on the order of millions of metric tons, was uniform around the world, not concentrated around major methane emitters, as one might expect. In other words, “background” methane levels are up all over, so that the atmospheric concentration is nearly 1800 parts per billion.

That’s a much lower concentration than carbon dioxide, which stands at about 385 parts per million. Methane also breaks down faster in the atmosphere. But it worries climatologists because it is far more potent than CO2 as a greenhouse gas; anywhere from 25 to 50 times more harmful, depending on how you measure it. Researchers Matthew Rigby and Ronald Prinn say atmospheric methane levels have more than tripled since the Industrial Revolution but has held steady in recent years. Recently something has thrown it out of balance but the MIT team could only speculate about possible reasons.

Methane escapes from a combination of both natural and human-induced sources. It leaks from oil & gas industry infrastructure and landfills, and is produced by livestock (and human) digestion. It’s also released by marshes and rice paddies. California is a major rice producer but the rice fields’ share of total U.S. methane emissions is relatively tiny.

Climate Watch is preparing an upcoming feature on  methane and climate change. Listen for it on The California Report in November.