Chula Vista bayfront project gets a boost as port prepares for climate change
Chula Vista's Bayfront is the future site of a $1.1 billion hotel and convention center. To protect the development from potential sea level rise, the Port of San Diego is elevating the land by 14 feet.
(Dennis Walker)
By Gustavo Solis
Chula Vista is rising. Literally.
To account for potential sea level rise, the Port of San Diego is elevating a portion of the city's Bayfront by as much as 8 feet in preparation for a $1 billion hotel and convention center.
The soil will also improve drainage and prepare the area for roads, utilities and other infrastructure required for the long-awaited development that will be key to Chula Vista's economic development by generating thousands of jobs and millions of dollars in tax revenue.
When all of the soil is moved, the area will be 14 feet above sea level.
The Chula Vista Bayfront elevation project is just one of several the Port is doing to prepare for sea level rise.
The Port manages 34 miles of waterfront real estate throughout San Diego. This includes hotels, restaurants, public parks, and museums.
For more than a decade, planners at the Port have calculated potential sea level rise into its future projects through vulnerability assessments. This year marks a significant shift in which those abstract plans have materialized into concrete projects, according to regional experts.
"Sea level rise, for a long time, has been focused on vulnerability assessments and how to integrate that information into local plans," said Dani Boudreau, the vice chair of the San Diego Climate Collaborative.
Apart from the Bayfront project, the Port is elevating the Shelter Island boat launch by two feet and building an oyster reef along Chula Vista's shoreline to prevent erosion. Additionally, the Brigantine's Portside Pier project is currently under construction.
This current batch of projects is only the beginning.
"Within the next five years, we are going to see some really interesting projects on the ground," Boudreau added. "A lot of them are already in the design phase."
The Climate Collaborative is made up of various cities and regional agencies such as the Port of San Diego. Their goal is to provide a regional forum to talk about different ways of preparing for the impacts of climate change, reduce carbon footprints, and mitigate greenhouse gases.
The collaborative helps its members develop best practices, share resources, and come up with a regional strategy.
Because of the nature of climate change, every stakeholder along the coast and even those near the coast need to be on the same page, said Philip Gibbons, program manager for the Port of San Diego.
"It's really something that's going to affect all of us," Gibbons said. "Sea level rise is not going to stop at the Port's jurisdiction, or Encinitas' jurisdiction, or Carlsbad. It's something that we all have to work on."
Because San Diego is so geographically diverse, there is no one-size-fits-all solution to climate change, he added.
For example, North County's coastline is largely made up of cliffs and needs to guard against erosion while the South Bay is more densely populated and more threatened by flooding.
To calculate potential sea level rise, the Port uses projections from the State of California Ocean Protection Council. Those assessments include short- and long-term projections. Because long-term projections vary, the Port considers conservative and liberal long-term projections.
In March, the California Ocean Protection Council released an updated Sea Level Rise Guidance report that stated sea level rise could be between 2.5 and 6.9 feet by 2100.
A more recent report, this one released in September by the California Coastal Commission, said that sea level rise could be as high as 10 feet depending on the condition of Arctic ice sheets.
"A significant finding from this report is that Antarctic ice sheet loss could have an outsized impact on sea level rise in California compared to the global average due to ocean circulation dynamics," the report states. "Further, the report states that rapid ice sheet loss could result in upwards of 10 feet of sea level rise along the California coast by 2100."
According to models from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, several homes in Coronado, Imperial Beach and Mission Beach would be underwater with four-and-a-half feet of sea level rise. Parts of Chula Vista's Bayfront, Shelter Island, and the San Diego Convention Center would be vulnerable to flooding.
Recent vulnerability assessments show that high sea levels combined with extreme weather events – which scientists predict will be more common in the future – have the potential to cause significant flooding in the the region, particularly San Diego Bay, according to the state's Climate Change Assessment.
"San Diego Bay is particularly vulnerable to sea level rise due to the core location of several important transportation hubs, the airport, naval base, and port, as well as being a business and population center," according to the assessment.
An economic impact study commissioned by the Climate Collaborative found that between $395 million and $451 million of commercial and industrial property throughout the county could be lost annually if sea level rises by 6.6 feet, according to the report.
Tourism and shipbuilding would be the most impacted sectors, according to the analysis.
According to experts, some areas of San Diego are already seeing impacts of sea level rise.
"We're seeing in San Diego that there are communities that are starting to see impacts already," Boudreau said.
Some of the visible impacts of sea level rise include nuisance flooding during high tide or small rain events and changes to storm water systems, such as finding seaweed and salt water further into the systems than before.
Tidal inundation already impacts many storm water outlets in Imperial Beach, where nearly 800 feet of wastewater pipe is exposed to erosion hazards and pump stations are currently vulnerable to coastal flooding, according to the city's Sea Level Rise Assessment.
The Ocean Protection Council echoes the same sentiment in their sea level guidance reports.
"Coastal California is already experiencing the early impacts of a rising sea level, including more extensive coastal flooding during storms, periodic tidal flooding, and increased coastal erosion," the council wrote in an April 2017 report.
Apart from working with the Climate Collaborative, the Port is also working with the U.S. Navy to prepare for sea level rise.
The Port and Navy are the two biggest land managers in San Diego Bay. The two recently signed a memorandum of agreement to align their sea level rise efforts.
Those sea level rise efforts will be constantly updated and evaluated depending on how climate change impacts the region in the future.
"We are not trying to completely solve the problem today because we probably can't do that yet," Gibbons said. "There's a lot of uncertainty about what sea level rise will be like in 2050 or 2100 so we are creating a framework now. We're really setting afloat a process to plan what will likely change over time."
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