Many of the communities most exposed to flooding were built along historical creeks or on top of filled-in wetlands. When you overlay 5.5 feet of sea level rise on the map, the water is projected t…
Amid dramatic ocean swells and drenching atmospheric rivers, a new report lays bare a hidden aspect of sea level rise that has been exacerbating flooding in the Bay Area.
The report unfortunately does not include all Bay Area counties. May said they expect to publish updated groundwater level data for Santa Clara and Contra Costa counties in about a year. This emerging flood risk raises many tough questions, but the data so far make clear the need for urgent action. Hill, who directs the Institute of Urban and Regional Development at UC Berkeley, first realized almost a decade ago that this shallow groundwater layer had been overlooked in sea level rise conversations. Together with May and Ellen Plane, who is now an environmental scientist at SFEI, she analyzed data from 10,000 wells across the Bay Area and concluded more than twice as much land could flood from groundwater as the ocean continued to rise.
Officials in San Francisco are already taking this data into account as they consider new building projects. Other cities and counties are starting to rethink their flood-protection options — a traditional levee or seawall, after all, would do nothing to stop the groundwater as it moves with the rising sea.
Researchers hope to continue this mapping work for the rest of the Bay Area. Next up is Contra Costa County in the East Bay, where a number of historically contaminated sites are being considered for redevelopment along the industrialized shoreline of Richmond.
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