We can’t ignore climate change on Ocean Beach
The short story:
Prop I contains a critical flaw that would cost San Francisco taxpayers at least $80 million and reverse a decade-long effort to protect the West side’s sewage treatment infrastructure from coastal erosion.
The Ocean Beach Master Plan has been in the works for 14 years, and is scheduled to break ground next year. It will decommission the Great Highway between Sloat and Skyline to protect the sewage treatment tunnel and plant.
If Prop I passes, taxpayers will be on the hook for an additional $80m in project costs to build an environmentally devastating seawall.
The ocean is coming for San Francisco. It’s an inevitable reality as the city, surrounded on three sides by water, confronts sea-level rise caused by climate change. But we are beginning to prepare for and adapt to the rising seas. Unfortunately, a serious flaw in this November’s poorly-written Proposition I would derail the city’s massive effort to protect San Francisco from climate change, endanger the sewage treatment infrastructure we all rely on, cost taxpayers $80 million or even more, and most worryingly, cause serious environmental harm to our beloved Ocean Beach.
Most people know that Prop I would end the successful compromises developed for Golden Gate Park and the Great Highway, which currently allow recreational use for people every day of the week on 1.5 miles of JFK Promenade in Golden Gate Park and on weekends on the Great Highway. But few are aware that a key provision of Prop I would also prevent the city from implementing an award-winning plan to protect Ocean Beach and the Oceanside Water Pollution Control Plant from the dangers of sea-level rise.
If it seems strange that a ballot measure that claims to be about vehicle traffic would actually threaten the city’s sewers, that’s because few know of the Lake Merced Tunnel: a 126-year-old wastewater pipe hidden beneath the Great Highway Extension south of Sloat Boulevard. The tunnel carries 20% of the city’s sewage, and it’s falling into the sea, along with the road on top of it. Parts of the roadway have already collapsed, the erosion has progressed beyond the tunnel’s safety margins, and the city is already relying on layers of temporary sandbags to shore up the bluff. Climate change is already here on Ocean Beach, and we need to act now.
Coastal erosion on Ocean Beach and the Great Highway Extension
The Lake Merced sewage tunnel. Photo: SFPUC
Fortunately, 14 years ago, neighborhood groups, environmental advocates, state and federal agencies, and multiple San Francisco city agencies came together to create the award-winning Ocean Beach Master Plan to protect and preserve our oceanfront for future generations. After years of public workshops, community-led task forces, hearings, detailed engineering work, and preparation of hundreds of pages of environmental review documents, the city is finally ready to start construction next year on this crucial climate change adaptation project to protect critical infrastructure and prepare for the rising sea.
Map of Ocean Beach Climate Adaptation Project area covering the Great Highway between Sloat and Skyline Blvd.
The Ocean Beach Climate Change Adaptation Project would reshape the bluff to accommodate the impacts of climate change. The project plans to build low-profile protection for the vital Lake Merced Tunnel, stabilize the dunes and cliffs with native vegetation, create beautiful new park space and public art, and add a multi-use trail and new parking lot at Skyline and the Great Highway. To achieve this, the city has long planned to reroute the collapsing portion of the Great Highway Extension south of Sloat a short distance away via an inland route.
But according to the City Controller, a “yes” vote on Proposition I would mean throwing all that work away and likely starting over on an entirely new plan that would cost an additional $80 million or more and be environmentally devastating: a conventional seawall that could rise to over 30 feet.
Planners and State Agencies already evaluated the environmental impact of the design that Proposition I would require, and found it to be deeply flawed. According to the 1,000-page Environmental Impact Report for the Ocean Beach Climate Change Adaptation Project, the 30-foot wall on the waterfront needed to keep cars on the short Great Highway Extension would quickly accelerate erosion of the beach north and south of the wall, would require 100,000 cubic yards of sand to be trucked in every year (or moving every single year the volume of roughly all the concrete needed to build the Salesforce Tower), and could even lead to “bluff instability at Fort Funston,” a protected part of our Golden Gate National Recreation Area.
Renderings of what a 30-foot seawall on the southern section of Ocean Beach could look like.
It makes no sense to try to stop the sea by building a 30-foot wall, destroying our beach, and wasting at least $80 million in taxpayer dollars that could be going to priorities like schools and first responders. Construction estimates never end up being low, and Prop I could end up costing a lot more than $80 million due to all the additional planning, outreach, redesign, lawsuits, and delays. The community already united years ago to develop plans to protect the beach for future generations and prevent a sewage catastrophe by rerouting this short connector road a short distance inland.
San Franciscans may be divided on parks and roadways, but we’re united in our belief that climate change is real and that the time for climate action is now. Similarly, we all agree on the need to protect Ocean Beach from the rising seas and to keep our sewers from falling into the ocean. It is unfortunate that the wealthy backers of Proposition I failed to consider the community’s long standing plans to adapt to climate change when writing the fine print of their measure. But because of this fatal error, we must reject Proposition I and its $80 million, 30-foot wall on the waterfront that would endanger our critical infrastructure and devastate Ocean Beach and Fort Funston.
Authored by Zach Lipton, a volunteer organizer with KidSafe SF.