Environment
Managed Retreat, Our Last Stand Against California’s Crumbling Coasts
From San Francisco to the southernmost tip of California, beaches are running out of time. Sea walls and sand are only partial answers. Here’s how you can act before homeowners lose everything — permanently.
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From Long Beach to San Francisco, California coasts are dying.
This issue crosses the wealth gap, tourism, politics — all areas of public policy. But outside of climate action circles, no one is speaking a word.
Climate change is here to stay. Every year rising waterlines shift sediment away from the shores of Long Beach and San Francisco. Edging tides and absent legislation leave these areas exposed to storms and flooding. Even worse, most new coastline construction fails to inform businesses that their days along the coast are numbered.¹
Today, local governments take short-term steps to protect their beaches from rising tides. In 2001, San Diego spent millions of dollars replenishing their beaches with sand only to see taxpayer funding wash away during the first winter storm. Sea walls merely redirect wave damage. They aren’t strong enough to stop the raging tides.² In many situations, the only long-term solution to sea-level rise is managed retreat — an unpopular, time-intensive program that elicits fearful silence from policymakers and city developers.
Managed Retreat remains unpopular because it demands an incredibly expensive up-front cost. It also requires homeowners move out of their family residences. Out of annual city budget general funds totaling under $588 million, Long Beach can hardly buy multi-million dollar homes and move residents out of harm’s way.³ Pacifica and Imperial Beach have no such funding for buy-backs. Without help from bankrupt government agencies like FEMA, these beachfront towns must find new, creative solutions to their coastal crises.²
Whether cities choose to buy flood-zone housing or implement a buyback-and-rent system that allows existing owners to remain in their homes until danger becomes too great, managed retreat will prove an expensive challenge.² Such demands are unpopular. They could kill politicians’ careers before they’ve begun to fortify their cities’ climate resiliency plans.
Managed retreat has been approaching California city councils for quite some time. Acting now may be the only way city officials can guarantee buy-back programs for homes in at-risk communities.
The sooner we act, the better.
In the battle against sea-level rise, funding makes all the difference.
Two cities, Pacifica and San Francisco, illustrate how environmental activism or lack thereof leads to disastrous or successful actions to combat sea-level rise.
Pacifica, a city slowly running out of time and funding, battles citizen activist groups who demand their share of the shore. For managed retreat to work, citizen action groups and government committees need to work together. Instead, faulty communication and insufficient funds have made decisions favoring managed retreat increasingly difficult.²
San Francisco faces a similarly precarious situation — its high rises and iconic pier remain protected by a “century-old sea wall,” and the entire financial district lies in the middle of a historic marsh. The other end of the city, also threatened by sea-level rise, holds San Francisco’s sewage treatment facility, also protected by a network of sea walls.²
When first asked what residents wanted their community to look like as opposed to how they would manage sea-level rise, 82 percent of voters agreed to increase taxes for the $425 million sea wall foundation. Such a feat is usually only achieved after natural disasters. After years of debate and inaction, the San Francisco Bay Area Planning and Urban Research Association also decided to lower sea walls and replenish beaches on the opposite side of the city to protect the sewage treatment plant.²
By piloting focus groups and working with the community rather than laying down a plan imposed by city officials, San Francisco was able to make productive temporary decisions. The city made both funding against sea-level rise and support for limited managed retreat possible. The imperative here was not so much how to address sea-level rise but where.
Communication for Drastic Community Change
Community Dialogue about managed retreat is difficult because the issue is incredibly politicized.
Seventy-six percent of Americans agree that sea-level rise is a major concern. But only 37 percent believe that the changes from this are urgent enough to warrant managed retreat.⁴ This makes conversation difficult, but not impossible.
Community focus groups like those piloted in San Francisco help members move through the five stages of grief from losing their homes and businesses.⁵ This in turn helps individuals determine how their community will build resilient practices in the future.
Studies show that community building remains the strongest factor in disaster mitigation. In Staten Island after hurricane Sandy, “managed-retreat processes were most fundamentally shaped by the relationship and interactions of the two parties involved” — a wake-up call to government leaders.⁶ For communities to begin adopting managed retreat, everyone needs to share their ideas in City Hall. We need help from all members to mitigate this common threat.
Researchers Miyuki Hino, Christopher B. Field and Katharine J. Mach found that the most important determining factor for whether homeowners accepted buy-outs after the storm was whether neighbors had accepted this FEMA assistance.⁶ If human interaction helps councils and activist groups make progress to protect their homes, then cities need to build this communication framework in advance of impending sea-level rise.
Cities need to add managed retreat to their climate resiliency plans now because this is the only way they will be able to compensate homes and businesses as they move inland. Many cities such as Imperial Beach cannot compensate business owners for their property loss — in some cases, there’s not even enough income to clean up building shells littering the cliffs.
We can avoid this demise and focus taxpayer funding by choosing which areas to protect, and which districts communities must slowly release to the expanding tides.
Shoreline Communities Communication Toolkit
Communities must choose non-partisan, trustworthy messengers for managed retreat. Ideal messengers should cater to all communities, social classes and diversity groups in a region. and They must draw their authority from education and family-friendly conservation.
Museums, aquariums and public libraries represent the best messengers for managed retreat because they reach community members and encourage conversation. Zoos and Aquariums are well-known for their conservation initiatives, and public libraries add social capital to the communities they serve.⁷ Both of these venues can help educate community members about managed retreat in a way that stresses urgency and action, not fear and mistrust.
Libraries and aquariums should house virtual reality and information booths that inform community members how their work and home environments will change in the following decades. They should feature coloring pages for children and links to the Los Angeles Times Ocean Game, which helps contextualize why managed retreat is often the cheapest long-term solution for cities facing flooding due to sea-level rise.⁹
As the situation in California becomes more dire, homeowners and business owners will demand their city governments aid them against natural disasters. Property insurance along the coastlines does not account for loss of access due to sea-level rise. Tenants need to research the risks facing their oceanfront community, and they need to take action.¹⁰
Here’s what you can do
Community action remains the key to adaption in the race to protect our coasts against climate change. Education about coastal risks and writing letters to local government officials leads to community action. Here are some resources to get you started:
- NOAA
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration website is the number one resource for environmental activism groups and up-to-date environmental research. Under NOAA, individuals will find some of the following agencies and resources to get involved in climate action. - California Coastal Commission
These guys regulate coastal zones and fund research projects. Support the Commission at tax time by donating some of your tax return to their Protect Our Coast and Oceans Fund. - California Nature Conservancy
The California Nature Conservancy works to preserve ocean ecosystems and prepare residents for climate threats. Their Action Center is a great place to sign petitions for Climate Action and Ocean Preservation, and this organization is doing a lot of behind-the-scenes work to bring conversations about managed retreat into classrooms and conversation groups. - Surfrider Foundation
Chapters of this nonprofit organization work together to preserve beaches for public access. Surfrider blog articles explain challenges faced by coastal communities today. The Surfrider Take Action page offers concerned citizens an easy way to contact their local officials about shoreline environmental issues. Local chapters always need volunteers to give their time at beach clean-ups, so why not spend a day meeting other activists in your community? - Los Angeles Times Ocean Game
This 5-minute game helps children and grouchy neighbors alike contextualize climate change. Contacting policymakers to vote in favor of environmental protection is easy, but this game shows how these difficult government decisions affect different sectors of the economy. The Los Angeles Times Ocean Game represents a new type of storytelling in the age of digital media. After all, isn’t a picture worth one thousand words? - Urban Tides (USC SeaGrant)
The USC SeaGrant office is a federal-private partnership that funds research, education, and outreach for projects that protect California oceans. Urban Tides is one project that encourages citizen science outings. Sea Grant encourages community members to walk along the beach and photograph sea levels for later study. You can find photography instructions for documenting the tide at its highest point here.
With your help, we can begin to raise awareness for massive future change. We can work to build a better future for our communities. Individual coastal neighborhoods need to begin the conversation today.
Activists and politicians, watch out. Managed retreat is about to enter community conversation, and we need all hands on deck.
Thank you for reading! If you liked this article, why not give this one a gander?
Works Cited
[1] Urbina, Ian. “Perils of Climate Change Could Swamp Coastal Real Estate.” New York Times (Online), New York Times Company, 24 Nov. 2016.
[2] Xia, Rosanna. “The California Coast Is Disappearing under the Rising Sea. Our Choices Are Grim.” Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Times, 7 July 2019, www.latimes.com/projects/la-me-sea-level-rise-california-coast/.
[4] “Public Opinion of Sea-Level Rise and Coastal Impacts.” Climate Access.
[5] Platrik, Peter, and John Cleveland. “Can it Happen Here? Improving the Prospect for Managed Retreat by US Cities.” Innovation Network for Communities With Funding from the Summit Foundation, Mar. 2019.
[6] Hino, M., et al. “Managed Retreat as a Response to Natural Hazard Risk.” Nature Climate Change, vol. 7, no. 5, Nature Publishing Group, Mar. 2017, pp. 364–70, doi:10.1038/nclimate3252.
[7] Johnson, Catherine A. “How Do Public Libraries Create Social Capital? An Analysis of Interactions Between Library Staff and Patrons.” Library and Information Science Research, vol. 34, no. 1, Elsevier Inc, 2012, pp. 52–62, doi:10.1016/j.lisr.2011.07.009.
[8] Ferrari, Marco, et al. “Prefrontal Cortex Activated Bilaterally by a Tilt Board Balance Task: A Functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy Study in a Semi-Immersive Virtual Reality Environment.” Brain Topography, vol. 27, no. 3, Springer US, May 2014, pp. 353–65, doi:10.1007/s10548–013–0320-z.
[9] Rott, Nathan. “‘An Eye-Opener’: Virtual Reality Shows Residents What Climate Change Could Do.” NPR, NPR, 24 Nov. 2019,www.npr.org/2019/11/24/779136094/climate- planners-turn-to-virtual-reality-and-hope-seeing-is-believing.
[10] Stanger, Tobie. “What Flood Insurance Does and Does Not Cover.” Consumer Reports, Consumer Reports, 5 June 2020, www.consumerreports.org/flood-insurance/what-flood-insurance-does-and-does-not-cover/.
