Canadian Government may restrict or eliminate disaster relief funding for homeowners who choose to rebuild in flood prone areas of the Canadian Coast, in hopes to convince homeowners to move inland. This is a form of “financial retreat”.
This article contains inaccurate information and mis-quotes.
The County of Santa Cruz Board of Supervisors is set to vote on a revised Local Coastal Program (LCP) on September 24, 2019. They will be one of the first jurisdiction to develop an LCP based on the Guidelines for Sea Level Rise published by the California Coastal Commission. According to this article shoreline protection (armoring, revetment rocks, and sea walls) may not be the best answer to protecting the shoreline for erosion due to sea level rise. Permits for shoreline protection and building in coastal hazardous zones of Santa Cruz will be altered. Property owners will be facing significant costs to continue to protect their oceanfront properties.
In response to 3 deaths from collapse of unstable cliffs in Encinitas, a California Senator is requesting the State and Federal agencies pay for stabilization of the cliffs in Encinitas. Property owners and State Parks have been requesting permits for shoreline protection for years, but had been turned down by the California Coastal Commission. The Encinitas Cliffs are unstable and likely to further erode causing injuries and a severe safety hazard to the public on the beaches below.
Coastal Commission has been insisting that local governments include the concept of “Managed Retreat” to address sea level rise into their Local Coastal Programs (LCP) to get the LCP approved by the Coastal Commission. However, recent exchanges with various CA coastal cities and counties suggest that CCC may be softening on this requirement.
West Cliff Drive project to protect public walkways from erosion from sea level rise to cost $400,000
Cliff bluff collapses near Encinitas Beach killing 3 people on the beach. This happened because the bluff was not properly maintained and the CCC had repeately denied coastal property owners the right to protect the bluffs from further coastal erosion. The CCC is at fault, but the property owners may be liable.
Report predicts accelerated sea level rise of 10 to 20 feet in 30 years. However, other reports and studies indicate a much more gradual sea level rise over the next 50-80 years. What is the real truth about Sea Level Rise and Coastal Erosion.
Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that property owners can go straight to federal court to fight claims that local or state government prevented them from using their land as they see fit. The decision overturned a long-held precedent that trapped property owners in what Chief Justice John Roberts described as a Catch-22.
“Half Moon Bay hotel gets $1.6M fine for blocking beach access,” headlines an Associated Press report, but how such “blocking” took place is not exactly clear. As the June 14 piece explains, the California Coastal Commission (CCC) has fined the Ritz-Carlton hotel $1.6 million for “failing to provide public access to its nearby beaches.” The hotel “failed to display signs informing the public that beaches are free and open to anyone” and may have come up short on what the Commission wanted by way of free parking for beachgoers not staying at the hotel. So the $1.6 million fine was for what the Ritz-Carlton did not do, not for any actual “blocking” of beachgoers.