California Eyes Moving Homes Threatened by Climate Change Even as Erosion Dates Back Thousands of Years

The San Francisco Chronicle published a long feature on how climate change is so bad that California officials are considering moving houses that are threatened by rising sea levels and coastal erosion. But the facts show sea rise and erosion have been happening for thousands of years.

The article, written by a freelance journalist who embraces the climate change narrative, focused on the small town of Gleason Beach where several houses sit on cliffs high above the sea.

It featured a remark from a think tank fellow, who points out it is nature that is responsible for land changes.

“That cliff has been a problem since before the houses were built,” Richard Charter, a senior fellow at the Ocean Foundation advocacy organization, said.

The Chronicle article said, in part: 

Now, after decades of studies and debates, Gleason Beach has become the guinea pig for California’s foray into a bold and controversial strategy: to remove buildings and infrastructure from the coast and relocate them farther inland. The $26 million project, headed by Caltrans, involves moving nearly a mile of roadway several hundred feet inland and erecting a new, 850-foot concrete bridge.

This concept, called “managed retreat,” represents a radical departure from decades of coastal development philosophy, and runs counter to our proclivity to build houses and cities up against the ocean. It points toward a future in which entire communities or neighborhoods would have to be uprooted to stave off the harsh effects of climate change.

Erosion along California’s 1,271-mile-long coast, driven by sea level rise and more powerful wave surges, is coming to bear on communities — small and large — up and down the state. By the end of the century, as much as $150 billion in property and 600,000 people statewide could be affected by the combined forces of sea level rise, tides, storms and coastal erosion, according to a 2019 peer-reviewed study published in the journal Scientific Reports. The Bay Area alone accounts for two-thirds of the property and people at risk. The same study warns that Southern California’s bluffs could erode by nearly 100 feet and up to 67% of its beaches could vanish over the next 80 years.

The Chronicle author interviewed a professor of earth sciences at the University of California at Santa Cruz.

“We put these incredible concentrations of people and development literally right on the edge, because the closer you can get, the more valuable,” Griggs said. “Dealing with sea level rise and (cliff) retreat, I will say boldly, is the biggest challenge that human civilization may ever have to face.”

But according to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) weather has been affecting the earth “for thousands of years.” 

A 2000 FEMA report said, in part: 

The average annual erosion rate on the Atlantic coast is roughly 2 to 3 feet/year. States bordering the Gulf of Mexico have the nation’s highest average annual erosion rates (6 feet/year). The rates vary greatly from location to location and year to year. A major storm can erode the coast inland 100 feet or more in a day. The coastline often accretes partway back over the next decade. Both the Atlantic and Gulf coasts are bordered by a chain of roughly 300 barrier islands, which are composed primarily of loose sand and are the most dynamic land masses along the open-ocean coast. Barrier island coastlines have been retreating landward for thousands of years in response to slowly rising sea levels.

The Pacific coastline consists of narrow beaches backed by steep sea cliffs that are composed of crumbly sedimentary bedrock and are therefore unstable. In addition, the cliffs are heavily faulted and cracked, and the resulting breaks and joints are undermined easily by wave action. Cliff erosion is site specific and episodic. In some locations, the cliffs can retreat tens of feet at one time, whereas 50 to 100 feet away, there is no retreat at all. As a result, long-term average annual erosion rates are usually less than 1 foot/year, but these low averages hide the true nature of large, episodic events. Similarly, along the shores of the Great Lakes, rates of bluff and dune erosion vary from near zero to tens of feet per year because of annual variability in wave climate and lake levels.

The elephant in the room in the California scenario is eminent domain, or the government’s constitutional right to seize private property for the larger public good.

The Chronicle article admitted that eminent domain has “historically gutted communities — often communities of color” and politicians are trying to keep it out of the “managed retreat” plan.

“One of the reasons why managed retreat is so contentious is because it’s seen as something that’s imposed upon people against their will,” Democrat State Senator Ben Allen said in the article.

Allen introduced a revised bill in February to create a loan program to purchase threatened properties, making the state a landlord who then rents out the properties. The rent money would be used to restock the loan funding.

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