The Smart Coast California Summit explored many considerations for dealing with sea-level rise
Experts providing scientific data relating to sea-level rise, Coastal Commission personnel, engineers, urban planners, local and county elected officials, policymakers who work for and consult with local and county governments, bankers, realtors — including Jerel Taylor, executive director of the Malibu Association of Realtors, and Congressperson Katie Porter, who represents constituents in Orange County, all convened at the Newport Beach Renaissance Hotel on Sept 5 and 6 for the fourth annual Smart Coast California Summit: One California. One Coast.
The mission of Smart Coast California, an Agoura Hills-based nonprofit organization, is to provide planning advocacy and information to California’s coastal communities and citizens, focus on stewardship of the state’s 1,100-mile coastline, foster community sustainability, and address property rights and environmental changes.
The summit featured an comprehensive array of speakers who provided timely presentations, including “California’sCoastal Future: An update from the Coastal Commission executive team”; “Adapting at the Local Level: Neighborhood Strategies for Coastal Resilience”; and “Trending Issues at the Intersection of Coastal Land use Regulations, Local Control and Property Rights and Blue Flag Beaches,” a presentation by Malibu City Councilmember Paul Grisanti, who is the immediate past president of Smart Coast California.
The Coastal Commission officials addressed the commission’s role in assisting local governments in enacting local coastal programs — Los Angeles and other jurisdictions have yet to do so — and in periodically updating LCPs.
“SB 272 now requires all coastal California areas to have Local Coastal Plans that account for sea level rise.SB 272 now requires all coastal California areas to have Local Coastal Plans that account for sea level rise.” Coastal Resilience Coordinator Kelsey Ducklow said. “In the past year, the commission has provided millions of dollars to local governments to update their LCPs. We have updated our policy guidance with the best available science and consider environmental justice to be a priority.”
Ducklow announced that the draft Sea-Level Rise Policy Guidance Update document, which is available on the commission’s website, will be available for public comment until Sept. 23 and members of the public are encouraged to provide comments via email to statewideplanning@coastal.ca.gov.
An agenda replete with climate change issues
Concepts discussed in other presentations focused on issues concerning coastal storm monitoring, a marked increase in landslides attributable to excessive rains, and replenishing beach methodologies for addressing the impacts of sea level rise with nature-based solutions aimed at improving coastal resilience — such as installing pre-dune habitats with indigenous plants and moving sediment from creeks and other tributaries to beaches. Current legal cases affecting sea-level rise and homeowners’ ability to construct structures to mitigate against damage as well as the homeowners’insurance crisis were also the subject of presentations.
The status of sea-level rise projections and adaptation strategies
In a presentation entitled “California report based on national SLR Technical report scenario-based framing,” Professor Laura Engeman, who is a coastal climate resilience specialist at California Sea Grant and program director for the Center for Climate Change and Adaptation at Scripps Institution Oceanography, addressed future California coastal impacts and opined that sea level rise will exacerbate coastal hazards.
“The continuing rise in sea levels across California is predicted to lead to an exponential increase in the frequency of coastal flooding, doubling with approximately every 2 to 4 inches of sea level rise and there will be an increased frequency of shoreline and cliff retreats,” Engeman said. “There will also be increases in groundwater intrusion and more damaging storm events.”
Engeman recommended a multi-phased approach for local governments that seek to make important decisions concerning how to address flooding and shoreline and cliff retreat. She suggested that policymakers first assess historic observations provided by data and long-term residents with historical knowledge concerning flooding in their neighborhoods so as to determine what areas are most vulnerable. Doing so will assist in establishing baseline rates of erosion and flooding, Engeman explained.
“After doing that, we should define an adaptation framework and strategies, evaluating whether current actions are working, and assessing whether making repairs after sea level intrusions is worth doing repeatedly, a determination that is not always a function of pure science, but rather can highly relate to whether there is societal and community tolerance for repeated mitigation,” she said. “Subsequently, cities and counties will need to implement and monitor response strategies, evaluate their efficacy and make needed adjustments.”
Addressing the various big elephants in the room, i.e., just how significantly the sea will rise and specifically when and where, the professor noted that there are numerous factors, including local geology on land as well as ocean morphology, that impact how to answer that query as to each region along California’s coast.
“Sea-level rise scenarios for California vary, depending on many factors, including how many El Nino and El Nina years we experience and what may happen with glacier thawing. However, the key takeaways are that scientists now predict there will be approximately one foot of sea level rise by 2050, which could increase to 1.3 feet, and that by 2080, sea level rise could double of triple the amount experienced by 2050, resulting in the sea-level rise being as high as two feet.” Engeman explained. “Moreover, there may be variances in the glacial ice melting and thermal changes in the ocean — a global community of glaciologists participated in the projections I’m giving you, but we will find out more information as the Glacial-Polar research team at Scripps makes assessments and NASA’s robots that are currently going under the ice sheets to evaluate conditions affecting the rapid ice melt provide data.”
Blue Flag Beaches
Speaking about more local initiatives, Grisanti’s Blue Flag Beaches presentation included addressing efforts to stop the flood of plastics into the oceans and waterways and waste management. He noted that a three-pronged approach aimed at reaching that goal includes city efforts, business engagement, and public engagement.
“Cities can implement ordinances to promote reusable products and eliminate single-use plastics, as Malibu has done,” he said. “They can also incorporate clean recycling programs, green waste programs, and water refill stations. Businesses can promote certified ocean-friendly restaurants. Residents will be more engaged if they are providedinformation resources regarding the impacts of plastic pollution on our environment and if governments and the private sector offer solutions regarding how they can reduce the use of plastics.”
Grisanti also discussed the role of cities in protecting water quality and public health, including utilization of best practices for wastewater management, such as capturing stormwater using green infrastructure, implementing robust recycled water infrastructure, and regulating water quality monitoring scrupulously. He also addressed protecting and restoring habitats and the importance of engaging residents and visitors in citizen science to measure water quality.
The lawyers, the insurers, the Realtors and the engineers
Attorneys embroiled in current litigation under review in appellate courts focused on what the term “existing” means in the Coastal Commission’s statutes. Why? The California Public Resource Code Section 30235 of the Coastal Act states that revetments, seawalls, and other shoreline protective devices “shall be permitted” when required to serve coastal-dependent uses or to protect “existing structures.” However, defining what constitutes an “existing” structure is under heated debate. Importantly, the commission has exclusive jurisdiction regarding issuing permits for shoreline protection devices.
In a recent trial court decision, Casa Mira Homeowners Assoc. v. California Coastal Comm’n, the trial court added another significant ruling to the decades-long jurisprudence germane to the temporal debate regarding what “existing” means in this context. The Casa Mira court ruled that the commission’s proverbial line in the sand regarding whose property is entitled to protection is unreasonable. The commission maintains that “existing” means that a structure must have been in place when the Coastal Act was enacted in 1977, and that thus, owners with structures built thereafterhave no entitlement to address coastal erosion by building seawalls or revetments. The court held that the commission’sposition that “all structures along the coast that become endangered or unstable due to erosion should be allowed to collapse,” is unreasonable, and is “contrary to the stated purpose of the Coastal Act.”
Contravening the commission’s position, the court ruled, “it is clear that the [Coastal Act] supports people protecting their existing structures from the danger of property damage due to subsequent erosion.”
The commission is pursuing an appeal and the resolution of the issue in higher state courts.
In a colloquy between Grisanti, a Malibu Realtor and Joe Prian, a Cambria realtor, the focus shifted to the duties thoseprofessionals have to inform both buyers and sellers of all risks relating to sea level rise and bluff stability. In an era of unsettled jurisprudence, meeting those obligations can prove to be a tough task.
Perhaps an equally tough task is that belonging to urban planning professionals and to engineers who are obliged to conduct design charrettes as they grapple with how to address mitigating the effects of sea-level rise and coastal erosion, a narrative that pervaded many of the presentations.
As panels began to address the coastal homeowners’ insurance acquisition crisis, the entire audience was alerted.Simply stated, just as recurrent wildfires have caused some insurance companies to entirely exit California and have caused insurance premiums to meteorically increase, so too the coastal erosion and other effects of sea-level rise are beginning to give insurance underwriters pause. Organizers of the summit promised further discussion of this effect of climate changes would be paramount at next year’s summit.
Keynote address
The two-day conference’s keynote address, presented by U.S. Rep. Katie Porter, provided an overview of the federal government’s role in addressing sea-level change and outlined past and proposed legislation that will affect California’scoast. Porter, who serves on the House Natural Resources Committee until her service ends in January,2025, focused on the urgent action to reduce carbon emissions and protect communities from the climate crisis and to continue funding critical water conservation programs that help provide reliable, clean water to California.
The two-day program was not livestreamed. However, a recording of the sessions will be available in a few weeks, according to Smart Coast California officials.