December 5 vote on Regional Sea Level Rise Plan Will Set the Ground Rules for Sea Level Rise Adaptation in All Bay Shoreline Jurisdictions
December 4, 2024
SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. — The Bay Conservation and Development Commission (BCDC) will vote December 5, 2024 to adopt a Regional Shoreline Adaptation Plan to guide local planning for sea level rise resilience for the next decade. This process presents an immense opportunity for BCDC to secure resiliency for the Bay Area as a whole, while protecting our most vulnerable communities and ecosystems. However, the final draft eliminated strong actionable language that was present in the previous public draft to protect natural shorelines and prioritize natural and nature-based solutions to address sea level rise. The decisions made in this plan will rule how our region responds to sea level rise for decades to come.
An estimated 350 thousand residents in the Bay Area currently live in the flood zone and around $46 billion in economic assets are under threat. Additionally, Baylands habitats that currently provide globally significant biodiversity face threat of drowning. These habitats provide essential ecosystem services such as reducing storm surge and wave runup, sequestering carbon, filtering pollution, cooling temperatures, and preventing erosion.
Under a new state law, SB272, every shoreline jurisdiction in California is now required to submit a resilience plan by 2034 for how it will adapt to sea level rise. The Bay Conservation and Development Commission (BCDC) is the state agency in charge of approving those local plans. On December 5, BCDC will vote to adopt a Regional Shoreline Adaptation Plan (RSAP) that lays out the guidelines, minimum criteria, and standards that subregional (local) plans have to comply with. Approved local plans will receive priority consideration for State implementation funds.
Following extensive outreach (including the public, frontline community-based organizations, scientists, planning practitioners, nonprofits, and others), BCDC released a public draft of the RSAP in September 2024. A subsequent, final draft with significant revisions was published on Friday, November 22, 2024, two weeks in advance of the December 5 vote.
In response, Arthur Feinstein, Sierra Club’s Coordinated Bay Alive Committee Chair, released the following statement:
“We were disappointed to see that the recently released final draft RSAP weakened some key standards put forth in the previous public draft, including preservation of undeveloped shoreline lands for resilience purposes and incorporating natural and nature-based sea level rise adaptation strategies to the greatest extent feasible. Over 40 local environmental, climate action, and community-based organizations issued a joint statement urging BCDC to strengthen the plan and in the past two weeks over 650 local residents have signed a petition calling for the same.
Sea level rise is a crisis that will only get worse over time, putting our communities and the Baylands ecosystems that make up 75% of our State’s remaining wetlands at tremendous risk. The Bay Area needs and deserves a strong and effective regional sea level rise plan that ensures a coordinated adaptation response and that protects the future health of our Bay ecosystems and all our communities.”
About the Sierra Club
The Sierra Club is America’s largest and most influential grassroots environmental organization, with millions of members and supporters. In addition to protecting every person's right to get outdoors and access the healing power of nature, the Sierra Club works to promote clean energy, safeguard the health of our communities, protect wildlife, and preserve our remaining wild places through grassroots activism, public education, lobbying, and legal action. For more information about the Sierra Club’s Bay Alive Campaign, visit https://www.sierraclub.org/sf-bay-alive.