The project also includes plans for a portion of the city’s Great Highway be permanently closed to car traffic to create public trails and beach access for pedestrians.
By Sam Ribakoff, Courthouse News Service
Caught between the possibility of hundreds of thousands of people losing the ability to flush their toilets and an eroding beach, the California Coastal Commission begrudgingly approved on Thursday a project to construct a seawall along a portion of San Francisco’s Ocean Beach.
Buried beneath Ocean Beach along the southern portion of San Francisco’s Great Highway lies a storm and wastewater drain called the Lake Merced Tunnel.
As climate change raises sea levels, the cliffs that encase the tunnel are ever more vulnerable to erosion, and the possibility of the tunnel itself being destroyed. If that happens, wastewater could flood the beach.
To prevent that from happening and to protect other nearby city infrastructure, the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission proposed a $175 million project to build a 3,200-foot buried seawall.
The project also calls for the cleanup of rubble and rocks on the beach which are used to temporarily halt the surf. The city hopes that will make the beach 80 feet wider.
With a little more beach, the project also envisions the portion of the Great Highway around the area to permanently close to car traffic. In its place, the highway will turn into public trails and beach access for pedestrians.
For the state agency tasked with protecting the California coastline and ensuring everyone has access to it, promising more people will have more opportunities to enjoy a beach should have been an easy call, but members of the California Coastal Commission struggled with the idea of approving the construction of a seawall instead of mandating the city move the tunnel further inland.
“We’re kind of in a rock and a hard place, no pun intended,” said Commissioner Susan Lowenberg.
Even though she wouldn’t have approved of the construction of the tunnel on the coast, the reality is that it’s there and the possibility of not doing anything and letting the sea destroy the tunnel and other city infrastructure is worse than building the seawall, she said during the commission’s monthly meeting in San Francisco.
“I just don’t think we have a choice, unfortunately,” she added.
During the meeting’s public comment section, Jennifer Savage, the California policy associate director of the Surfrider Foundation asked the commission to force the city to come up with a report analyzing the cost and timeframe of moving the tunnel.
The seawall, she added, would restrict public access to the beach.
“We need to save every inch of public beach for public use,” she said.
Anna Roche, a senior project manager with San Francisco Water Power Sewer, countered that moving the tunnel or taking on other “nature-based solutions” for the area isn’t feasible.
The project is the largest “managed retreat” of infrastructure projects away from the risk posed by climate change in California history, Roche said.
While most of the commissioners were sympathetic to Savage’s argument, they ultimately unanimously sided with the city’s request to approve the project. The project, they reasoned, does as much to minimize negative impacts to the coast as possible.
To maintain the seawall, the city will have to regularly replenish the area with sand, which will cost $1 million per application.
Per the approval, five years after the seawall is constructed, the commission will review the project. In 25 years, the commission will have to reassess whether to retain the seawall or do something else to protect the tunnel.
“This is really a very bad situation we find ourselves in,” said Caryl Hart, the chair of the commission. “So unfortunately, we’re in a situation here.”
Last week, voters in San Francisco passed Proposition K, which will convert a sizable part of the city’s Great Highway into a public open recreation space, permanently closing it to private motor vehicles seven days a week.