San Mateo County is supporting this kind of integrated planning with their Sustainable Streets Master Plan. When cities upgrade streets, parks, and other infrastructure, they could be incorporating GSI at the same time, making these new investments more flood resilient. Examples include rain gardens, bioswales, and tree wells. In particular, green stormwater infrastructure (GSI) uses natural systems like vegetation, soil, and permeable surfaces to capture stormwater and filter out pollutants. The San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission (BCDC) is currently creating guidelines to shape local sea level rise plans.Ĭities must invest in updated stormwater infrastructure to reduce flooding and capture and clean stormwater before it reaches our waterways. There should also be coordination at the state and federal level to provide funding to low-income cities that may not otherwise have resources for sea level rise planning. This could happen, for example, when a sea wall in one city deflects storm surges towards an adjacent city without flood protections. Cooperation between cities and counties throughout the Bay Area is necessary to ensure that shoreline protection in one area doesn’t result in greater flooding in others. This coordinated effort should be replicated across the Bay Area. The County also conducted a countywide Sea Level Rise Vulnerability Assessment to identify areas that will be impacted by flooding and erosion and provide solutions. San Mateo County has taken steps in this direction with the creation of OneShoreline, a government agency that works across jurisdictional boundaries to plan and implement sea level rise resilience measures in the county. Preparing the county for sea level rise will require a coordinated effort among cities to plan and implement solutions such as wetland restoration, horizontal levees, and sea walls. This means that during storms, rainwater runs off these surfaces picking up pollutants (like motor oil, chemicals, and trash) on its way to creeks and the Bay. Additionally, urban areas are primarily covered in concrete, asphalt, and other surfaces that don’t allow water to seep through. As storms and groundwater rise become more extreme, Bay Area communities will continue to be impacted by flooded streets and homes due to outdated stormwater infrastructure. Historically underinvested communities will be the most at risk when flooding occurs because historic inequities placed affordable housing in higher flood risk areas and because they are more vulnerable to economic damages incurred. While the whole Bay Area will experience rising seas, San Mateo County is particularly vulnerable, with over 30,000 homes, dozens of schools and hospitals, and over 7,000 acres of wetlands at risk of flooding by 2070. Here in the Bay Area, we’ve been living under fluctuating coronavirus restrictions since March 2020, when a shelter-in-place order was. Sea levels could rise by up to 3.3 feet in San Mateo County by 2070 and 6 feet by 2100 according to the county’s Sea Level Rise Vulnerability Assessment. Today, June 15, 2021, California has officially reopened.
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