MANAGED RETREAT

Natural Bridges, one of Santa Cruz’s most treasured state beaches, was named after three mudstone arches that stretched into the sea at the end of what’s now known as West Cliff Drive. These geological wonders provided a stunning backdrop for ocean lovers to take in the beauty of our local coastline, fronting a series of tide pools teeming with marine life, and a tranquil freshwater wetland buffered by a Eucalyptus grove inhabited by beautiful monarch butterflies. 

Over the past decades, the power of the Pacific Ocean has reduced these three arches to one, and it’s only a matter of time until local residents and visitors alike will have to refer to history books to have any inkling of just how the popular state park beach got its name. Tides, waves and winds wait for no one.

Steamer Lane helped put Santa Cruz on the map as a surfer’s paradise with its uniqueness as a consistent wave with favorable wind protection and a natural amphitheater-like setting. The Lane, like Natural Bridges, is transforming due to erosion of the cliffs, changes wrought by the repeated impact of powerful waves, particularly at high tide as they slam into the cliff face.

These changes illustrate how coastal communities such as Santa Cruz face the realities of rising sea levels exacerbated by climate change: more frequent flooding, coastal erosion and the inevitable loss of infrastructure. The mighty Pacific Ocean will continue advancing — unconcerned with preserving things as its human occupants have come to know them. 

Parking lot vistas along West Cliff Drive have already crumbled into the sea, roads like East Cliff Drive that were once two-way arteries have become one-way scenic drives, and even dead, lateral roads. At the same time, beachfront properties become more at risk and less desirable to own. Efforts to slow the natural processes of erosion and sea-level rise, such as coastal armoring and building seawalls and rock revetments, will only last so long and, as we’re coming to find out, have secondary consequences that can inadvertently speed those processes up and cost us the beaches and surf spots that make Santa Cruz so desirable. 

The recent huge storm events and erosion have a number of community members and coastal scientific experts beginning to agree that, as opposed to combatting the ocean, we should be seriously looking at other ways in which to adapt to these future changes. One approach being discussed is known as “managed retreat.” Managed retreat describes the strategic relocation of people, buildings and other assets from regions threatened by climate change and natural hazards. It’s not a new concept, but it’s gaining more importance lately in places such as Santa Cruz as a sensible option as to how we, as a community, can deal with issues such as eroding coastlines and rising sea levels. 

 

According to a 2017 study (Hino, M., Field, C. & Mach, K. Managed retreat as a response to natural hazard risk. Nature Climate Change) which looked at 27 cases of managed retreat in 22 countries, about 1.3 million people have been relocated through managed retreat over the past three decades. The strategies for retreat include gradual setbacks that require new developments or remodels to be a minimum distance from the ocean. In some extreme instances, like in Alaska or island nations in the South Pacific, this might necessitate relocating entire communities out of harm’s way. Any change, especially an abrupt one, brings many challenges guaranteed to come at a high financial and psychological cost for those affected.

In the City of Santa Cruz, as we’ve seen lately with the heated debate about converting West Cliff into a one-way throughway from its current two, the realities of implementing a managed retreat policy are incredibly complicated and require extensive public education and discussion. The County of Santa Cruz is continuing to examine changes to its coastal land use plan that regulates development and other activities in the coastal zone to try and find a balance between this tension of public and private properties.

“As we, as a population, finally come to grips with the realities of our changing shoreline, the idea isn’t to rip people away from their houses screaming and digging their fingers in, but to find a long-term future scenario that we all can agree on,” says Gary Griggs, a Distinguished Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences at UC Santa Cruz, where he has taught for more than 50 years.

Griggs is of the mind that ordering someone who’s spent exorbitant amounts of their hard-earned money on their beachfront homes to pack up and leave is likely to fall on deaf ears, but posits that if reminded of how much our coast has transformed in just the past 100 years, they just might be encouraged to consider this wisdom in a long-term strategy for managed retreat. Like the frog being slowly cooked in increasingly heated water, these property owners can understandably remain blissfully unaware of the threat to their homes. 

 

Perhaps images like those found in “Santa Cruz Coast (Then and Now)” can powerfully illustrate this point. The book, written by Griggs and his wife, Deepika Shrestha Ross, juxtaposes historical photos of our coastline with present-day images, highlighting the dramatic changes over time. The effects of erosion and sea-level rise are particularly striking in areas like West Cliff, serving as a visual reminder of just how much has changed in a relatively short period.

 

“Sea levels are rising, and there seems to be good evidence that waves are getting larger over time,” Griggs says. “So, I think it’s this challenge involved in how whatever we are going to do now, it’s only going to be temporary or short term. Can we fix West Cliff for 10 or 20 years? Yeah, that’s what all the recent repairs have been about. Going any further into the future, there’s really only one long-term solution, and most people don’t want to talk about it.”

 

Other coastal experts agree with Griggs that any plan for managed retreat should be done in a way that’s thoughtful, transparent and thorough.

 

“Managed retreat is complicated because we ultimately have to move out of the way, only a fool picks a fight with the ocean,” states Dave Revell, a coastal geomorphologist at Integral Consulting. 

 

He and his firm are working with Santa Cruz County on engaging in a discussion about the county’s future, which must address the management of both private property and public recreation and habitat resources in the face of increasing coastal processes of climate change.

 

“It’s been said that the devil is in the details,” says Revell. “It’s a question of exactly how we step away from the edge. It can’t be a mandatory evacuation.”

Revell believes this requires a vision and a path that cannot be rushed and has to be one of many phases we step along into the future. Many of the areas affected by erosion and sea-level rise contain not only critical infrastructure such as roadways and sewer lines but also private property and businesses that drive our local economy. The choices we make as a community to adapt or deal with coastal erosion will have implications on what kinds of development and recreation will exist in the future. Revell prefers to utilize sediment, nature’s organic adaptive resource to address destructive coastal hazards and buy time for these difficult conversations and hard decisions about managed retreat.

 

“Before any managed retreat policy or plan can come to fruition, there needs to be real community dialogue with all of the affected parties,” he says. “And that includes the oceanfront property owners, the local community that accesses the coast, and the people who come from far and wide to surf the world-class surf like the Lane, or as climate refugees running from 110-degree temperatures in the Central Valley to the beautiful weather of Santa Cruz in the summertime. We need a constituency who understands what those risks are, and how we can be transparent and equitable in making our decisions.”

David Carlson, Resource Planner for the County of Santa Cruz Community Development and Infrastructure department, believes this dialogue should inform policy updates. He and his colleagues are using statewide sea-level rise policy guidance and other assistance to local governments, which have come in the form of grant funds to the county for consultants such as Integral to complete technical studies on future sea-level rise hazards, economic impacts, and adaptation pathways. Based on the community’s long-term vision for the coastline, adaptation pathways phase in different strategies or projects in response to the unfolding impacts of sea-level rise over time. While these grant-funded studies are still in their early phases, he believes they are a crucial first step in going forward.

 

“Based on the information developed by these studies, along with robust public involvement, the goal is an update of the coastal hazard policies for the county that can be approved both locally and by the Coastal Commission,” Carlson says. “The hope is to broaden the discussion and consider adaptation pathways that diverse interests can agree on.”

 

Dan Carl, District Director of the North Central Coast and Central Coast Districts of the California Coastal Commission, has been working in the coastal management field for over 30 years, and is currently actively involved in both previously referenced City of Santa Cruz and Santa Cruz adaptation planning efforts. He echoes this need for a realistic and inclusive approach to this extremely complex and contentious issue. 

 

“The beaches belong to all of us and not just those fortunate enough to live right on top of them,” Carl explains, “and our collective consideration of how to deal with the very real effects of sea level rise should be rooted in this reality.”

 

Like it or not, sea-level rise is happening. Along with its natural erosion and destruction of development in the way inevitably requires a series of well-researched steps taken to adapt to the threats as they present themselves. Managed retreat looks to be the most feasible response to these changes over the long term, but when do we start and where? The first steps involve careful studies funded by grants that will identify the most threatened areas and identify reasonable tactics to adapt based on community involvement and realistic actions. The idea isn’t to inflame the public or property owners by rushing into anything too quickly but to get a dialogue underway based on these findings to initiate more awareness around the idea, so that, whatever we decide, it will be done carefully and transparently. 

With experts such as Carl, Revell, Griggs and Carlson working hard to make this pertinent information available to all parties involved, we can at least take solace in the fact that all possible options are being thoroughly considered. This will bring both public and private interests closer to some form of agreement as to how to move forward in phases into the future.

 

It’s important to be realistic and remember we are in the end at the mercy of an unrelenting, powerful force. 

 

“Anything we do,” says Griggs matter-of-factly, “will fail eventually. No matter what we do for our body, it’s not going to last forever. No matter how high we build our dams or levees, at some point, they are going to fail or be overtopped. The same goes for our changing coastline. We need to understand that anything we do to try and stop these erosive changes will be temporary. That’s just the nature of the forces we’re dealing with.”