18 Sep Bay Adapt Summit Brings Leaders Together to Discuss Shoreline Planning Amid Federal Cuts

Carly Finkle, senior policy manager at the Canal Alliance, shows how high the tide can rise in the Canal neighborhood of San Rafael. Her walking tour on Sunday was part of the 2025 Rising Together: The Bay Adapt Summit, an annual gathering of professionals working on sea level adaptation in the Bay Area. (Ruth Dusseault / Bay City News)

By Ruth Dusseault
Bay City News

Despite the efforts of President Donald Trump’s administration to erase the concept of human-caused global warming by deleting climate-related federal funding, climate change is still happening. Bay Area leaders have not halted their efforts to prepare cities for sea level rise and increasing environmental hazards.

Government officials, environmental groups, urban planners and social justice consultants gathered this week for 2025 Rising Together: The Bay Adapt Summit. It was the second-annual summit, but it sold out fast. On Sunday, participants joined walking tours in cities at risk of flooding from sea level rise. On Monday, the summit concluded with an all-day meeting at the Exploratorium science museum in San Francisco.

“We’re saving ourselves and we need to take that seriously,” said Gregg Castro, culture director for the Association of Ramaytush Ohlone, in an opening land acknowledgement Monday. “The planet will be fine. We are doing this work to save ourselves.”

The big move since last year’s summit was the December release of the Regional Shoreline Adaptation Plan by the San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission. BCDC is a state agency with regulatory authority over the interior Bay shoreline and surrounding marshlands. In 2023, the state Legislature passed Senate Bill 272, which requires Bay shore governments to develop and submit a shoreline resiliency plan to the BCDC by 2034.

The December report illustrated a region-wide vision. It also contains guidelines that local governments must follow when developing their plans. According to the report, the cost of rising sea level adaptation projects by 2050 is estimated to be about $110 billion for the entire Bay Area, but the cost of doing nothing is projected to be $230 billion in damage.

To ready their plans, city councils have been issuing requests for proposals and searching for civil engineers, landscape architects and community engagement organizations.

“We’ve already had conversations with 75% of the jurisdictions required to make a plan,” said Dana Brechwald, assistant planning director for climate adaptation with BCDC. “We are permitting a variety of projects, including wetland habitat restoration that increases the Bay’s surface area by about 394 acres, adding 3 miles of public access trails and nearly 7 acres of open space.”

THE NEW FINANCIAL LANDSCAPE

The climate resilient retrofitting of America’s infrastructure felt imminent in 2021. That’s when former President Joe Biden’s administration passed the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. It doubled federal funding available for communities to better prepare for hurricanes, floods and other natural disasters.

The law expanded the Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities grants program, which funded 75% to 90% of costs to build climate hazard mitigation projects. The law included a new principle to promote equity by prioritizing 40% of the benefits to disadvantaged communities.

All of that was lost in the Trump administration. In April, the Federal Emergency Management Agency terminated the BRIC program, canceled all funded BRIC awards that were not currently under construction and called for the return of unobligated funds from the program. The cuts are under litigation from 20 states, including California, according to a tracker from the Harvard University Environmental and Energy Law Program.

New approaches to financing were discussed at a crowded break-out workshop at the Monday summit. Panelist Len Materman of San Mateo County’s special district OneShoreline suggested connecting sea level adaptation projects to other urgent issues like housing, a countywide property tax based on square footage per building so large corporations pay more, or having cities require developers to fund infrastructure improvements that connect with existing city plans.

Entrepreneur Zach Knight of Blue Forest uses projection models to calculate the cost of climate change to utility companies and compares that to the expense of preventative infrastructure projects like forest maintenance, reframing the corporate investment as cost-saving.

More finance options are available through the state. Planning grants are available for local, regional, and tribal governments through the Senate Bill 1 Sea Level Rise Adaptation Planning Grant Program. Proposition 4, a bond measure passed by voters in November, is estimated to generate about $10 billion statewide for a variety of climate resilience, water and natural resources management programs, according to the Public Policy Institute of California.

Last week, the Legislature voted to reauthorize the state’s cap-and-trade program through 2045. It had been set to expire after 2030. Under cap-and-trade, companies must reduce their emissions, buy allowances from the state or other businesses, or fund projects aimed at offsetting their emissions. Money the state receives from the sales goes to fund climate change mitigation, affordable housing and transportation projects, as well as utility bill credits for Californians.

THE SOCIAL COMPLEXITY OF SEA LEVEL ADAPTATION

Seasonal flooding happens frequently in the Bay Area, especially in communities located on infilled landforms which tend to settle and sink over time. Subsiding land combined with rising seas produces a dire scenario in an era of increasingly intense storms and increases the risk of displacement through evacuation. But building new infrastructure, like landscaped shoreline parks, can raise the value of low-valued land and lead to displacement through gentrification.

That predicament was seen in Sunday’s walking tour of the infilled Canal neighborhood in San Rafael. The tour was narrated by Carly Finkle, senior policy manager at the Canal Alliance, a nonprofit that serves the neighborhood’s vulnerable Latino community. Finkle said the land has settled into a bowl shape, with piles of rocks and homemade sea walls separating the below-sea-level neighborhood from San Pablo Bay.

“If a significant amount of water got in from waves that overtop in a big storm or an earthquake that breaks down the informal barriers that are blocking the water out, the amount of water that could be captured and standing in the neighborhood would be so much that buildings would need to be demolished and rebuilt,” said Finkle.

“The situation in the canal is really a hidden catastrophe waiting to happen. There could be 4 to 6 feet of standing water in parts of the neighborhood. It is not the kind of disaster where you can see it coming, gradually worsening year by year. I know that it often takes some sort of emergency to wake folks up, but I think that the situation is just really, really tough,” she said.

Canal resident Irene de Leon of Nuestro Canal, Nuestro Futuro Consejo de Residentes (Our Canal, Our Future resident advisory committee), spoke to the tour group about the difficulties living in the densely populated renter community and shared children’s drawings illustrating their wishes for a planned public space.

One of the tour group members was John Gibbs, of WRT Planning and Design. His company will be working with San Rafael on a specific plan for the Canal district that will include urban design and anti-displacement policies.

“I’m hopeful that the clarity that these residents have around their story serves as a key part and opportunity for funding,” Gibbs said. “How do you fund and bring policy that that elevates the community as one of the key finance factors?”

For more information, BCDC’s Regional Shoreline Adaptation Plan can be viewed at https://tinyurl.com/yc6p5asf.

Copyright © 2025 Bay City News, Inc. All rights reserved. Republication, rebroadcast or redistribution without the express written consent of Bay City News, Inc. is prohibited. Bay City News is a 24/7 news service covering the greater Bay Area.