Department of Water Resources
A daily compilation for DWR personnel of significant news articles and comment
November 24, 2008
1. Top Item -
California
Sacramento
By Chris Bowman
The two-front approach acknowledges that rising sea levels, bigger floods, greater loss of species and other harsh effects of warming are inevitable, if not already occurring – no matter the state's success in slashing greenhouse gases.
Unlike the pioneering save-the-planet mandates to tighten automobile exhaust limits and renewable energy standards, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is not loudly trumpeting these defense moves:
• The state Transportation Department is proposing to move a 3-mile stretch of ocean-hugging Highway 1 in
• State wildlife officials are deliberating plans for "triage," to decide which species should be saved from global warming and which can't be saved.
• The state's San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission is consulting with Dutch engineers and holding an international contest to create designs for flood- resilient buildings.
On Nov. 14, Schwarzenegger issued an executive order to identify the state's biggest vulnerabilities to rising sea levels and draft an "adaptation strategy." State, federal and local managers of transportation, public health, wildlife, water and power supplies are being tapped for this task, along with business and public-interest groups.
"It's saying we need to take action today," Anthony Brunello, the state deputy secretary for climate change, said of the governor's directive. "We need to figure out what we should be doing."
To that end, the National Academy of Sciences will be asked to convene an independent panel of experts. The executive order calls on scientists to forecast a range of likely scenarios along the coast through the end of the century. That panel would recommend ways to minimize damage to coastal roads, beaches, sewage and water treatment plants, wetlands and marine life.
Meanwhile, all state agencies are to immediately identify risks and account for them in planning their public works projects.
Climate change alters projects
Some major projects under way already account for climate change.
A 50-year, $1 billion effort to restore thousands of acres of former Cargill Inc. salt evaporation ponds to tidal marsh in
"You will always have a viable and healthy estuary even as the waters rise," said Will Travis, executive director of the Bay Conservation and Development Commission.
Likewise, state water planners are adding an extra foot of water depth in designs for a weir to control flows important to fish and drinking water quality in the south Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.
"Hopefully, this will extend the life of the project," said John Andrews, executive manager for climate change at the state Department of Water Resources.
Extending the survival of certain plant and animal species threatened by rising temperatures will present scientific and ethical challenges, said Terry Root, a
Root and other scientists are urging state and federal wildlife managers to categorize species according to their ability to withstand warming or migrate to more hospitable terrain. In some cases, she said, it may become necessary to move some species to save them.
"I didn't think I would ever have to say this in my life, but I do think we have to start prioritizing species," Root said in a September speech at the state's annual Climate Change Research Conference in
Root reluctantly calls such categorizing "triage."
"Do we save this species or do we let this species go?" she said. "It is not an easy thing to be working on. It's going to be exceedingly painful."
Change of direction; big cost
Some of the needed changes will be expensive.
The surf just north of
"Rather than building up riprap and losing beach, we have been working with Caltrans on long-term solutions," said Tami Grove, an official with the state Coastal Commission, which regulates beach armoring and access.
Caltrans came forward in 2001 with a proposal to realign almost 3 miles of the highway, between the Piedras Blancas Lighthouse and the Arroyo de la Cruz Bridge in northern
Global warming weighed into the planning two years later, Grove said.
"Caltrans knew they had to realign. The question was how much. They had to factor in sea level rise," Grove said. "Our geologists and engineers worked with them to try to anticipate as we could the erosion that would be occurring."
Engineers figured the road should bend as much as 475 feet inland to protect the highway from erosion and storm surges for the next 100 years.
The $50 million project, which requires approvals from the coastal commission and
Other threatened sections of Highway 1 include those along
The governor wants, by mid-February, a Caltrans vulnerability rating of coastal roads and bridges, taking into account higher rates of erosion, land subsidence and storm surges.
Although sea level rise has been occurring since the end of the last ice age, its pace has accelerated in the past century as a result of global warming, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the leading international network of climate scientists.
The tidal gauge at the mouth of San Francisco Bay – the longest continuously operating gauge in the Western Hemisphere – has recorded a 7-inch rise in sea level in the 20th century.
A governor-appointed panel of scientific advisers on the Delta recently urged him to prepare for another 16 inches of sea level rise by 2050 and 55 inches by 2100. Projections are based on the expansion of warming ocean water and melting of continental ice sheets and glaciers.
A 55-inch rise would likely overwhelm Delta levees. A major flood could send saltwater through the drinking water intakes in the south Delta, contaminating supplies for 25 million people in the Bay Area and
Planning for a larger S.F. Bay
All the global warming predictions of accelerating sea-level rise have turned the mission of at least one state agency on its head.
The state Legislature created the San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission in 1965 to keep the estuary from shrinking. Diking and filling the bay to make room for ports, runways, garbage dumps and industry had reduced the size of the open waters by nearly one-third.
"Now, with sea-level rise, the bay is getting bigger, and we have no authority to do anything about it," said Travis, the commission's executive director.
The commission is pushing for building designs that can withstand or even rise above flooding.
Maps posted on the commission's Web site illustrate 2,100 global warming scenarios: Large portions of Bay Area cities, including airport runways, are swamped by 3 feet of tidal water.
"We have to stop thinking of protecting the bay the way it is now and abandon the notion of restoring it the way it was," Travis said. "We need to design a new bay to account for different water levels, different salinity, different temperatures and probably different species."
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http://www.sacbee.com/101/story/1422503.html
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