Higher ocean levels force Ventura officials to move facilities inland (LAT)

[somone]

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-surfers-point-20110116,0,85102.story

In Ventura, a retreat in the face of a rising sea
Higher ocean levels force Ventura officials to move facilities inland, an action that is expected to recur along the coast as the ocean rises over the next century.
By Tony Barboza, Los Angeles Times

At Surfers Point in Ventura, California is beginning its retreat from the ocean. Construction crews are removing a crumbling bike path, ripping out a 120-space parking lot and laying down sand and cobblestones. By pushing the asphalt 65 feet inland, the project is expected to give the wave-ravaged point 50 more years of life.

The effort by the city of Ventura is the most vivid example to date of what may lie ahead in California as coastal communities come to grips with rising sea levels and worsening coastal erosion. As the coastline creeps inland, scouring sand from beaches or eating away at coastal bluffs, landowners will increasingly be forced to decide whether to spend vast sums of money fortifying the shore or give up and step back.

State officials say the $4.5-million project in Ventura is the first of its kind in California and could serve as a model for threatened sites along the coast. "Managed retreat, as it's called, is one of the things that we're going to have in our quiver to deal with sea-level rise and increasing storms," said Sam Schuchat, executive officer of the California Coastal Conservancy, which helped fund the Surfers Point project.

Sea levels have risen about 8 inches in the last century and are expected to swell at an increasing rate as climate change warms the ocean, experts say. In California, the sea is projected to rise as much as 55 inches by the end of the century and gobble up 41 square miles of coastal land, according to a 2009 state-commissioned report by the Pacific Institute...

[DCKit]

1. 50 more years - or until they get hit with some crazy storms. nt

[Tikki]

2. Ventura's beaches are so amazing...

Watching the surfers off the point is one of the most tranquil experiences I do.

I won't be around in 50 years, but someone else will be needing that scene.

Tikki

[Jackpine Radical]

3. I just sent the link to my favorite denier.

[RKP5637]

4. Good!!! n/t

[GreenPartyVoter]

9. +1

[kestrel91316]

5. If it rises too much it will obliterate the Oxnard Plain, some of the most

fertile and productive farmland in the nation. It keeps us fed in the winter (well, that and Mexico).

[dixiegrrrrl]

6. Speaking of ocean rise....houses here literally are on shifting sands.

This is part of Dauphin Island,off Alabama coast.
This is what it looked like after a hurricane.
Hundreds of people with more money than brains insist on building houses on this sand spit,
then complain when a storm or the rising tides eat away their yards and homes.
Then they re-build.
A lot of houses were bought and flipped and re-flipped from '05 to the the real estate bust.

And then along came BP and oiled beaches and polluted water.

]

[indepat]

8. Having driven that stretch about ten years ago: wow, just wow

:cry:

[Odin2005]

10. Those people are idiots for getting houses there.

[Nihil]

11. Seconded. (N/T)

[Kolesar]

12. &the public has to pay to rebuild the bridges and restore the sand

It creates a building boon in Alabama, but the rest of us get screwed.

[Dead_Parrot]

7. Fortunately...

..that doesn't affect me.

</toolmonkey>