Two years of planning for sea level rise was swept away when the Sausalito City Council rejected the draft shoreline adaptation plan.
According to the Marin IJ, last Tuesday the Sausalito City Council sent the 168-page plan plan back for more work, deeming it incomplete. The plan had also drawn criticism from waterfront businesses and property owners who said it could threaten their livelihoods.
The council instructed staff to add analyses of economic impacts, include costs for specific remedies that preserve the shoreline, explore financing that doesn’t involve local taxes and more directly involve waterfront stakeholders in those assessments.
The shoreline adaptation plan was two years in the making and detailed a range of near- and long-term responses along five sections of Richardson Bay, including the floating homes community in section 5.
Several council members noted that the city still has about half of the $1 million state grant it received in 2021 that could be used to develop other areas of the plan.
Terry Thomas of East Pier, who was part of the sea level rise task force that developed the plan along with professional consultants, urged the council to build on the existing plan and “go to all the property owners, work with all the small groups and find out exactly what we can do in our backyard.”
Sausalito Resiliency & Sustainability Manager Catie Thow Garcia told the Floating Times: “Pages 142-149 of the Shoreline Adaptation Plan go through the implementation measures for the Floating Homes area and include both near-term and long-term measures. For near-term, owners and residents explore community-based organizing to support collective actions such as financing, habitat enhancement, retrofit, and land raising. For long-term, efforts focus on elevating Bridgeway, the Bay Trail, and the Highway to protect inland areas. Private parking areas and access corridors are raised or float.”
Of course, floating homes are on the front lines of sea level rise. The accompanying photo shows flooding during a 5.8’ tide on a recent sunny, windless day. The shoreline adaptation plan projects that Richardson Bay will be 10 inches higher by 2050 and 4.3 feet higher during king tides and storms.
CAUTION: King tides will roll in again December 3 to 6. Consult the Floating Times’ interactive tide table for specific heights and times.