Crowdsourcing Plans for Resilience

On Jan. 18, 2023, Pres. Joe Biden came to California to get a first-hand look at damage wrought by a violent set of megastorms. At Seacliff State Beach, on Monterey Bay south of Santa Cruz, Biden witnessed a park that had been all but completely destroyed. 

Just two weeks earlier, 35-foot waves had taken out half of a historic pier and destroyed significant sections of a timber bulkhead seawall. The surging sea ripped massive amounts of sand and gravel out from under the park’s day-use area and campground, seriously damaged above-ground infrastructure including a visitors’ center, and obliterated all of the park’s underground infrastructure.

“We know some of the destruction is going to take years to rebuild,” Biden said, and connected the effort to a broader theme of his administration. “We’ve got to not just rebuild, but rebuild better.”

Twenty two months later, that effort is well underway. A few weeks ago I attended a webinar hosted by Chris Spohrer, district superintendent of California State Parks and Bonny Hawley, Friends of Santa Cruz State Parks’ executive director. Along with 60 other attendees, I heard about some things that would constitute rebuilding better.

In place of an old-fashioned seawall—seven of which have been destroyed in Seacliff’s 100-year history—a reimagined Seacliff State Beach might include “living shorelines”—sand dune structures with native beach plants—and other Nature-Based Solutions. There is preliminary talk of creating an artificial reef and planting kelp forests offshore.

The webinar was the second public event in a process being managed by State Parks planner Scott Rohlf, who holds an earth sciences degree from UC Santa Cruz and a planner’s certificate from San Jose State. At the earlier live event, 300 people packed a hotel conference center. 

In an interview for Hilltromper ahead of the webinar, Rohlf told me that a key innovation of the Seacliff Resilience Plan is that it will essentially include crowd-sourced data, in the form of input from members of the public. Rohlf invites readers to take the online survey available at SeacliffResilience.org by Nov. 30.

A paper in the scientific journal Shore & Beach, authored by UC Santa Cruz’s Gary Griggs and four others, says the processes Rohlf and his team are developing at Seacliff could be a model for building a better future:

“The possibilities for coastal adaptation at Seacliff, based in part on California’s innovative state policies, provide an opportunity to consider sustainable and equitable planning approaches for local communities, government, business, and ultimately future generations.”

Read ‘Building a Resilient Future at Seacliff State Beach’ on Hilltromper.