Rise in sea levels threatens California ports, infrastructure
cause flooding up and down the coast. Responding to the state’s survey questions, Newport Beach officials said there could be “flooding over most of our bulkheads when coupled with storm surge.”
The San Diego Unified Port District said a 55-inch rise was likely to result in substantial effects and flooding of some facilities in both urban and wildlife areas, according to the report.
Santa Barbara officials reported that amount of rise “would basically flood or inundate the entire area, destroying most all facilities as currently constructed.”
To help prepare for the sea level increase locally, the Port of Los Angeles plans to take part in a Rand Corp. study of sea level rising. Because ships have become bigger over the years, the port’s cargo container wharves are already about fifteen feet above sea level. The port’s oldest docks are twelve feet above sea level.
Long Beach has used fill from major construction projects to elevate some of its port facilities ten feet above sea level, said Al Moro, Long Beach’s chief harbor engineer.
Experts said some preparations would come naturally from the need to service ships of increasing size and height. “The big, modern ports should be able to handle small to moderate increases in sea levels,” Asaf Ashar, head of the Washington office of the National Ports and Waterways Institute.
White writes that a far more alarming assessment was released last week by the Munich, Germany, office of the World Wildlife Fund, the Munich-based insurer Allianz, and the Tyndall Center for Climate Change Research at the University of East Anglia. That study suggested that too little attention had been focused on the combination of rising water levels in conjunction with other events, such as hurricane damage along the U.S. East Coast.
In the Los Angeles-Long Beach-Santa Ana region, sea level rise could expose $96.5 billion of infrastructure to damage, the WWF-Allianz report said. It said cities like New York could face damages in the hundreds of billions of dollars if rising sea level is combined with hurricane storm surges.
For its survey, the California State Lands Commission used research from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California San Diego, the U.S. Geological Survey, Santa Clara University, the California Department of Boating, and Waterways and the Hydrologic Research Center.
Of 104 ports and shipping hubs contacted by the state for its survey, just 40 responded — and most of those appear to be unprepared, officials said. “The majority of the respondents have not yet begun to comprehensively consider the impacts of sea level rise,” the report said.
State Lands Commission officials said ongoing assessments of preparedness would be crucial in the coming years. They noted that the California Climate Change Center has estimated that nearly half a million people, thousands of miles of roads and railways, and major ports, airports, power plants, and wastewater treatment plants are at risk if a 55-inch rise in sea level is combined with a once-in-100-years flood event. “This is going to be part of a continuing battle and a continuing planning effort,” said Paul Thayer, executive officer of the California State Lands Commission. “One of our goals was to take the pulse of California’s maritime industry. It’s important that we start working on this. We have some time to do the right planning, but we have to use that time wisely.”
