San Jose Inside Investigates What Rising Sea Levels Will Mean for the South Bay’s Shore

Recently, the California State Legislative Analyst offered a nightmare prediction of Bay Area sea levels in 2100: they may rise 3 to 7 feet. Metroactive’s Katie Lauer researches the effect this rise would have on tiny Alviso (population 2,000), where San Jose’s First Street hits San Francisco Bay. Thanks to groundwater pumping, this waterfront town has already sunk to -15 feet below sea level.

Repairing the currently unsafe levees will cost more than $500 million, and the price of shipping the necessary dirt out to fix these barricades makes for dismaying math: “an estimated 477 million cubic yards of mud and dirt are needed for the South Bay’s levees to stay above rising water levels within the next century. That’s the equivalent load of up to 48 million dump trucks loaded with dirt.”

Federal and local funds are paying for the beginning of this work. But meanwhile, Google, Cisco, and other high-tech businesses are building on the banks of the Guadalupe Creek, which drains into the Bay. Lauer quotes Anne Guerry of Stanford’s Natural Capital Project: “I just feel like there’s a train wreck coming ... I think that we have to show less hubris about where we develop and how much control we have over the environment around us.”

Read more on SanJoseInside.com: “A Large Gulp to Swallow.”