Filling up a 400 seat theater at the College of San Mateo at 8 AM on a Monday morning with local citizens who want to know more about the impact sea level rise on San Mateo county is an impressive accomplishment. Dave Pine and Michael Barber deserve a lot of credit for putting it together.
Redwood City folks we spotted there included City Planner Blake Lyon, Planning Commissioner Ernie Schmidt, and Inner Harbor Plan consultant Jill Ekas, as well as the Port's Mike Giari, who is also on the Inner Harbor task force and at least two other task force members, Carole Wong and Gail Raabe. It would have been nice to see our own City Manager and Mayor join their counterparts from Burlingame and San Mateo but it's start.
For many attendees it was a wake up call on the enormity of the challenges ahead, with ocean level estimates as much as 5 feet higher by 2100. Even a 3 foot rise, which we know is coming at some point would lead to inundation of many waterfront properties, and major flooding in the face of a king tide coupled with a storm surge.
Ex BCDC Director Will Travis, now sees a bay that's expanding not contracting raising a different set of questions than when he was battling for turf with the houseboats in Sausalito that he now fancies.
Which raises the interesting question, he said, as to whether we should focus on shutting ourselves off from the rising waters with higher and higher levees and huge landfill projects, or take a page from the Dutch by adapting to the water.
Pictures of floating structures in Travis' slideshow made the same point. The answer of course is both. Levees, and tidal marshes, recreational boating. Innovative meetings of land and waters.
There are other adaptive measures to look at as well. Shoreline parks and playgrounds can be built up over time, and don't require much immediate fill. Actor Brad Pitt developed homes in post Katrina New Orleans that rise on pillars in flood. Expendable sacrificial floors is another idea that might work well in office towers.
An actual Dutchman in the audience had the final word for the day, with his comment that what was most noteworthy in Holland when a major storm hit recently that would have been a disaster in many places but hardly made the news at all. No panic. No flooding. "The Dutch are prepared" he noted, that "so we can just sit there and drink our coffee."
