A Ramble Around Pacheco Marsh
We tour Pacheco Marsh, a once-rough patch of Bay shoreline that is now a green refuge for walkers, birds, and even paddleboarders.
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Search Results for: flooding
Slow Progress on Shade For California’s Hottest Desert Towns
Coachella Valley communities face record temperatures with little shade. Policy changes lag as local groups push for heat equity.
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Testing Adaptation Limits: Mariposa Trails, Marin Roads & San Francisco Greenspace
In KneeDeep’s new column, The Practice, we daylight how designers, engineers and planners are helping communities adapt to a changing climate.
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How To Explain Extreme Weather Without the Fear Factor
Fear-based messaging about extreme weather can backfire. Here are some simple metaphors to explain climate change.
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High-Concept Plans for a High-Risk Shoreline
OneShoreline’s effort to shield the Millbrae-Burlingame shoreline from flooding has to balance cost, habitat, and airport safety.
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In a Climate Disaster, Your Car Won’t Save You
Fleeing wildfires without a car might seem scary, but so is being trapped in evacuation gridlock — and the hellscape of car-dependency.
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On Napa’s Milton Road, No Resident Is an Island
On Edgerly Island, homes sit behind a sinking, century-old levee. The community is at risk from sea level rise – unless they can agree to pay the cost of resilience.
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California Makes Biggest Downpayment Ever for One Region’s Climate-Ready Projects
A NOAA grant will fund flood mitigation, wildfire risk reduction, and habitat restoration — and green job creation — across Santa Cruz-Monterey.
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Two Workshops Daylight Alameda-Oakland Shore Solutions
A collaborative planning committee is shopping strategies to safeguard East Bay shores from sea level rise, groundwater, and stormwater flooding.
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When Housing and Climate Crises Collide
Marin’s failure to develop truly affordable housing sparks debate about equitable growth and climate resilience in a fast-gentrifying county.
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Bolinas Can’t Ignore Pacific Advance Much Longer
As sea levels rise, a Bolinas architect is sparking a new conversation on coastal retreat. Steve Matson’s vision could relocate this Marin County village to higher ground.
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Feds Shoulder Marin City’s 80-Year-Old Drainage Problem
After decades of neglect, Marin City will benefit from a $13.5 million flood-reduction project fully funded by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
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Six “Unrealistic” Ideas for Deep Greening San Francisco
We need bolder visions for San Francisco’s future this election. From car-free downtown zones to sustainable sports complexes, here are six “unrealistic” ideas that challenge the city’s status quo.
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Ashland Trades in Car Lot for Community Zocalo
An unincorporated area of Alameda County identified by local government as in need of more park space got a new, climate resilient gathering spot and “town square” this summer.
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Be Prepared for So Much More than the Big One
A reporter visits the LA Disasters Expo to get expert advice and finds a suite of products for securing your home, building a community network, and preparing for emergencies.
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Getting Serious at the City & County Scale About Future Flood Threats
BCDC’s Regional Shoreline Adaptation Plan lays out four “Minimum Standards” that Bay Area municipalities must meet as they prepare for sea level rise.
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State Nudges Ocean Coast Planners to Be More Prepared
The California Coastal Commission has updated their Sea Level Rise Policy Guidance with new Senate Bill 272 guidelines and more certainty about near-term sea level rise.
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Knock-On Flood Threat Gets 4-Inch Reality Check
Contrary to now popular hearsay, building a seawall won’t necessarily flood your unprotected neighbors along the bayshore.
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Get Plugged In To KneeDeep!
Are you a young writer, artist, photographer, creator, or storyteller? We want you to be a part of our magazine.
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New Rules on Rebuilds, FEMA Says No to Wet Feet
New construction projects supported by federal emergency funding must be built to withstand extreme floods, including anticipated rise in sea level.
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Memo Distills Joint Approach to Flood Protection
Seven Bay Area agencies sign an agreement to beef up coordination on sea level rise adaptation projects and clarify who’s on first.
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Sizing Up Progress on Nature-Based Infrastructure
A May 2024 environmental conference covers levees, seawalls, reefs, wetlands, and other climate resilient shoreline designs for the Bay Area.
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San Rafael Schoolkids Grapple with Rising Canal
In a program to involve youth in climate adaptation planning, fifth graders made models of their homes and town, and designed improvements.
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Marshes Could Save Bay Area Half a Billion Dollars in Floods
UCSC scientist Rae Taylor-Burns has assigned marsh restoration projects a dollar value in terms of human assets protected from climate change driven flooding.
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How Collaborating with Community Really Works
A closely-watched co-design process has produced a hard-won plan for new nature-based, flood protection infrastructure and shoreline access points for North Richmond.
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Why One Family Moved to the Valley and is Moving Again
A Tracy resident talks about climate change in the Valley and on the Coast.
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Changemaker Gets to Know Gilroy
Mariah Padilla, a Bay Area native and city planning student, is exploring community-centric planning with Gilroy.
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100+ Easements for One Flood Wall?
This Marin County community desperately needs a new flood wall. Private ownership and a pricey bill stand in the way.
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The North Monterey County Climate Disaster that Wasn’t
Though the long-sidelined community of Pajaro is finally getting support to stop future flooding, will it be enough? Climate change is not the only culprit.
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Rising Waters Bring New Toxics Threat to Hunters Point
S.F.’s Hunters Point is already toxic for residents and the Bay. Sea level and groundwater rise, along with bigger storms, threaten to make the problem worse.
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The Itchy Cost of Hotter Summers
Mosquito-borne disease is on the rise thanks to climate change. Will the Bay Area get new mosquito species? Climate change might push them to cooler climates.
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Canal Residents Wade into Citizen Science
Organizers of the bilingual King Tide Day/Día de las Mareas Reales along the San Rafael Canal on February 10 hoped witnessing the highest tides of the year could help make the area’s vulnerability to sea level rise more real to residents.
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A Fix for Old Drains, Old Trees with New Rainfall
To get storm resilient, a stretch of El Camino Real in San Mateo may lose hundreds of historic eucalyptus trees.
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San Mateo Antes Up for Flood-Free Future
When San Mateo Creek topped its banks during last winter’s relentless winter storms, Danielle Cwirko-Godycki’s home became one of thousands in the city to flood.
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A Landscape Made to Flood in Sonoma
Tall oaks with submerged trunks are sure signs that the land is “flooded.” While for some areas that might be a negative, for Laguna de Santa Rosa it’s not only positive but protective.
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Isolated Town Forges Resilience on Mendocino Coast
After experiencing wildfire, flooding, power outages, and even a snowstorm in the last three years, Point Arena residents are taking climate preparedness into their own hands.
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Working and Playing in the Coastal Zone
KneeDeep profiles Arye Janoff and Bekah Lane. Janoff surfs and manages coastal dredging and restoration projects for the Army Corps; Lane monitors whales for the Marine Mammal Center. Climate change is their newest challenge.
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Beach Loss Looms for the California Coast
Even though Dan Hoover’s been surveying the same stretch of San Francisco’s Pacific coast for 15 years on his ATV, it never looks the same. In summer it’s wider and in winter narrower. With El Niño the beach will erode more than ever.
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Can Churches Lift Up Climate Resilience?
Churches are well -positioned to respond to the impacts of climate change and build climate resilience, especially in hard-to-reach communities or communities of color.
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Is the Bay Area Coasting?
Scientist and coastal engineer Kris May shares her views on global versus Bay Area climate experiences in 2023, and the Fifth National Climate Assessment.
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Nested Plans Neck and Neck with Rising Bay
Like Russian dolls, Bay Area preparations for sea level rise finally began fitting together this fall.
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Reflecting on Resilience
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Layer Cake of Risk Mapped for Five Bay Area Hotspots
Greenbelt Alliance worked with data and communities to identify 18 sites where social vulnerability, climate hazards and conservation priorities overlapped, then winnowed them down to five hot spots.
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Finding the Throughline in Multi-Hazard Planning
As climate hazards multiply, Bay Area communities, local governments, and agencies are searching for ways to address them more holistically.
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Crunching the Adaptation Numbers – Not Peanuts
Regional agencies made splashy headlines when they released a joint study on the likely cost of protecting Bay Area shores from rising seas: $110 billion. But the top-line number didn’t offer much insight into the complexities. A new inventory and map from the same agencies is much more revealing.
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Being Human in Big Weather
When it rained this May, it felt unexpected. Based on over 150 years of climate data for San Francisco, May typically gets several days with a light rain. But context is key, and we are coming out of three years of drought—a fact which will generally color memories in a drier hue. “If I’ve learned anything it is that people’s perceptions are usually wrong,” says Jan Null….
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Return of a Lost Lake
On the heels of the worst drought in 1,200 years, Tulare Lake, at the southern end of California’s San Joaquin Valley, filled and filled again in the heavy rains and runoff, inundating over 100,000 acres. As the Sierra snowpack melts over the next few months, the lake could spread, prompting water managers and locals to reconsider the future of this lake, long thought “dead.”
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New Flood Protection Standard for the Peninsula
In San Mateo County, new planning guidance may help cities account for rising seas when approving new developments. OneShoreline’s proposals are stricter than current requirements from federal, state, and local agencies, but those are also evolving. “The intent is to go where we already see regulators are going,” says Makena Wong, a project manager.
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Shores that Can Shapeshift AND Stay Put?
The region is obsessing over beach-building. Whether it’s a degraded salt marsh in downtown San Rafael or a sliver of wetlands near the old San Francisco shipyards, local practitioners are adding beaches as nature-based buffers against waves and rising seas to adaptation projects around the Bay.
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Why California’s Water Extremes Are Wilder than Ever — And What We Can Do About It
While alternating between drought and deluge is nothing new for California, climate change is making these swings even more dramatic. New research and new policies will help the state prepare as the boom and bust cycle grows ever wilder.
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