San Francisco faces a triple threat from climate change: rising sea levels, extreme storms that dump record volumes of water into the city’s already stressed sewer systems, and flooding.
A new report, “Come Hell or High Water,” from the San Francisco Civil Grand Jury, shows that the city’s bureaucracy prevents it from adapting to the escalating flood risk linked to climate change.
The San Francisco Civil Grand Jury is a panel of 19 citizens who are independent from the government. They serve for a year to investigate and issue reports on significant local government actions or, in this case, government lack of action.
The 2024 report identified the climate actions that the city has initiated and evaluated progress against its objectives, focusing on flood management.
Since 2012, the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission has been implementing the Sewer System Improvement Program, a 20-year, citywide investment to upgrade aging infrastructure and address challenges, including the impacts of climate change. It has identified 23,700 residents that will be adversely affected by inland flooding.
The Port of San Francisco’s Waterfront Resilience Program, initiated in 2019, includes the ongoing Seawall Program, the Flood Resiliency Study, and related resilience planning and implementation efforts for the Port’s entire 7.5 miles of waterfront property.
In 2021, the Mayor’s Office created the Climate Resilience Program, or ClimateSF, to coordinate and oversee existing and future climate resilience projects.
ClimateSF is a partnership of the SFPUC and the Port, the Planning Department, the San Francisco Environment Department, and the Office of Resilience and Capital Planning. The charter for that partnership has the objectives of “coordinated planning and performance management” and “aligned communications and engagement.”
The report evaluated these climate initiatives and finds that “San Francisco lacks a comprehensive funding plan for climate change adaptation, that interdepartmental coordination is hampered by siloed agency planning, that the city pays for avoidable flooding costs, and that debt policies impose limits on the city’s ability to fund essential adaptation projects. All of this is aggravated by a lack of transparency about what is currently being done and what will need to be done to maintain Resilience in the face of climate change”.
The report’s recommendations include:
- Reforming the process of decision-making in the Climate Resilience Program;
- Providing more transparency in planning for climate adaptation in the city;
- Reassessing likely shortfalls in funding to respond to climate change;
- Improving interdepartmental coordination to address expected flooding and
- The city should use stronger messaging to notify the public about flood insurance options and identify the most likely affected areas.
Another report, a collaboration between San Francisco municipality, climate scientists at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and climate consultants at Pathways Climate Institute, shows that a warming world will make extreme precipitation and future storms more frequent, powerful, and longer, increasing flooding risks.
This two-volume report provides groundbreaking scientific data on precipitation events to guide San Francisco in developing planning tools and policies to adapt to a changing climate with increasingly extreme storms. The two volumes highlight the increasing intensity of large and small storms.
The report indicates that extratropical cyclones (ETCs) and atmospheric rivers (ARs) are types of storms that can happen independently or together. When they occur in combination—often called a “bomb cycle”—they significantly impact the West Coast, bringing strong winds, heavy rain, and severe weather that can persist for days.
As the climate continues to warm, these storms are expected to grow more intense. The duration of all storm types could increase by as much as 24% by 2024 and nearly 55% by the end of the century. The pairing of ARs and ETCs is anticipated to lead to the most substantial rise in total precipitation, with an increase of up to 17% by 2050 and up to 37% by 2100.
Both reports provide critical information on the impacts of climate change, the risk they pose to infrastructure, and the need for coastal cities like San Francisco to implement climate adaptation strategies to improve the city’s Resilience.
Sources:
Come Hell or High Water. Flood Management in a Changing Climate. (2024, June 11). City and County of San Francisco. Retrieved from https://www.sf.gov/sites/default/files/2024-06/Final%20Copy%20of%20Climate%20Report%2020240527_0.pdf
San Francisco Bay Area Precipitation in a Warmer World. (2024). San Francisco Water Power Sewer. Retrieved from https://www.sfpuc.gov/about-us/reports/san-francisco-bay-area-precipitation-warmer-world
Mak M, Neher J, may CL, Finzi Hart J, Wehner m. 2023. San Francisco Bay Area Precipitation in a Warmer World. Volume 2: Future Precipitation Intensity, Duration, and Frequency. Prepared for the City and County of San Francisco. Retrieved from https://www.sfpuc.gov/sites/default/files/documents/2023_CCSF_Extreme_Precipitation_Guidebook_Vol2_With_Forward_V.2_FINAL.pdf
Leave a Reply