{"id":430361,"date":"2026-08-12T03:12:15","date_gmt":"2026-08-12T03:12:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/430361\/"},"modified":"2026-08-12T03:12:15","modified_gmt":"2026-08-12T03:12:15","slug":"san-franciscos-waterfront-could-get-a-17-billion-climate-makeover","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/430361\/","title":{"rendered":"San Francisco\u2019s Waterfront Could Get a $17 Billion Climate Makeover"},"content":{"rendered":"

San Francisco has a $17 billion plan to save its waterfront from rising seas. Now comes the hard part: funding it. <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

A man jogs around overflow from the high king tide at Pier 14 along the Embarcadero in San Francisco, California, on Jan. 11, 2024. San Francisco\u2019s ambitious waterfront plan could take decades to build, and years to land federal funding. \u00a0(Jane Tyska\/Digital First Media\/East Bay Times via Getty Images)<\/p>\n

San Francisco wants to reinvent its iconic bayside shoreline, lined with tourist spots like Fisherman\u2019s Wharf, towering skyscrapers and industrial areas, thanks to the projected 3.5feet of sea level rise<\/a> by the end of the century.<\/p>\n

The Port of San Francisco and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers have finished a massive study that would cost more than $17 billion over three decades to implement and render the city\u2019s existing shoreline virtually unrecognizable.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Imagine the Ferry Building raised by 7 feet, a taller and wider seawall to hold back the mud that downtown is built upon, and featuring nature-based solutions<\/a>, like the addition of living sea walls.<\/p>\n

\"\"Water flows onto the sidewalk during a high king tide at Pier 14 along the Embarcadero in San Francisco on Dec. 13, 2024.<\/p>\n

If the project doesn\u2019t become a reality, the port expects $23 billion in damages over the next century.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are talking about the part of San Francisco that is internationally, arguably, the most visible part of San Francisco,\u201d said Mark Lubell, a professor of environmental science and policy at UC Davis. \u201cIf you created a map of all the tourist destinations that are in San Francisco, and overlaid it with potential flooding, there\u2019s a lot of major tourist destinations that could be potentially flooded regularly in the future.\u201d<\/p>\n

Published on July 31 in the Federal Register, the San Francisco Waterfront Coastal Flood Study<\/a> addresses flood risks along the port\u2019s entire 7.5-mile jurisdiction, touching the Marina District and running southeast all the way to Hunters Point. The study analyzes coastal flood risks from 2040 to well into the next century.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"People walk along the Embarcadero during a high king tide in San Francisco on Dec. 13, 2024.<\/p>\n

The updates include rebuilding parts of the seawall, raising the shoreline, improving piers and creating shoreline habitat.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is really a chance to reimagine the waterfront thoughtfully, and now we have sort of a plan to protect it,\u201d said Michael Martin, executive director of the port. \u201cRising sea levels are really putting a time clock on all this, and we have to get started now to do something as impactful as this.\u201d<\/p>\n

Once funded, the project will take decades to design and construct. Lubell said he thinks the price tag will only become costlier the longer it takes to get approved, paid for and built.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But the plan is achievable, Lubell said, despite its ambitious scope.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not a fantasy plan,\u201d Lubell said. \u201cIt\u2019s a real plan that I think is technically feasible. But the time and money involved and the amount of effort is very large.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"San Francisco has a $17 billion plan to save its waterfront from rising seas. Now comes the hard…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":430362,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[101,103,102,104,106,105],"class_list":["post-430361","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco-headlines","tag-san-francisco-news","tag-sf","tag-sf-headlines","tag-sf-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/430361","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=430361"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/430361\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/430362"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=430361"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=430361"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=430361"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}