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But, he added, “I wouldn’t put that all at the feet of the state. “It may be depending on your location that your property only has a certain economic life,” Lester said, due to erosion of a cliff or a flooded shoreline.
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There’s long been tension between state and local interests-and sea-level rise amplifies the friction, said Charles Lester, the Coastal Commission’s executive director from 2011 to 2016, who is now director of the Ocean and Coastal Policy Center at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Those cities often rely on property taxes from well-to-do residents with homes valued at more than $1 million. It argues that long-term planning is essential to prepare for unstoppable sea-level rise.Ĭoastal cities, meanwhile, are listening to beachfront homeowners, who fear that their property values could fall under what they see as heavy-handed requirements by the commission. The commission, which oversees development on about 1,100 miles of coastland, says its mission is to preserve the state’s movie-scene beaches for future use by all residents. How the commission responds could signal how aggressively it expects cities up and down the coast to address climate impacts. Del Mar is among the first to go before the commission with a plan addressing sea-level rise. If approved, the plans serve as guidebooks for development. “They’re really overreaching, as far as we perceive it.”īeach cities submit local land-use policies to the Coastal Commission.
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“We want to push back really hard on that,” said Terry Gaasterland, a Del Mar city councilwoman. Even if none of those happened, the city would have to reappear before the commission in a decade. Other triggers include the presence of extreme storms in three out of any five years or a bluff edge eroding to within 35 feet of a development. That would force the city to submit a revised plan with that state commission, which has broad authority over coastal development.
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Those include Del Mar’s beach narrowing to 25 feet or less in the winter and 80 feet or less in the summer for three out of five years. But its proposed revisions recommend that Del Mar add “triggers” to its plan that would require the city to revisit its adaptation strategies if certain climate conditions are realized. The report doesn’t ask the city to add managed retreat as a policy. 16 meeting recommends rejecting Del Mar’s plan unless the city accepts multiple revisions. That came after the state commission asked local governments to look at it as an adaptation strategy.Ī staff report prepared for the commission’s Oct. Del Mar rejected the idea of “managed retreat” as an option for dealing with rising seas by removing beachfront homes ( Climatewire, Oct. The city’s biggest statement, however, focused on what it won’t do. The city submitted a blueprint to the state commission with plans to add sand to beaches, build a levee near a river and make homes more flood-resistant. The California Coastal Commission will decide next week whether Del Mar, a beach town in San Diego County, needs to overhaul its climate adaptation plans. A battle over how aggressively California beach cities must plan for sea-level rise is headed for a major showdown, one that could send reverberations up and down the state’s coast.