Restore Sloat

In Ocean Beach, the coastline south of Sloat Boulevard is an erosion 'hotspot' where the beach is disappearing due to coastal squeeze — this is getting worse due to sea level rise and the fact that the Lake Merced Tunnel, which runs parallel to the coast underneath the Great Highway Extension, sets a back to the beach. 

South Ocean Beach has long been the focus of a planned climate adaptation project led by the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission (SFPUC), and Surfrider is advocating that the City honor the intentions of the Ocean Beach Master Plan and preserve the public beach through this project. We are very concerned that the City's proposed project instead prioritizes protection of wastewater infrastructure from sea level rise at the expense of the beach.

SFPUC currently proposes to remove the Great Highway Extension from Sloat to Skyline Boulevard and replace it with a multi-use bike trail made of concrete; and to construct a mile long 'buried' seawall adjacent and parallel to the beach in order to protect the Lake Merced Tunnel in place.

Surfrider appreciates that sewage infrastructure should not be exposed to an ocean that is moving seaward. Our problem with the City's proposal is that the current proposal will result in the quick disappearance of the beach. This is because the concrete multi-use path will double down on the location of the Lake Merced Tunnel; which is far too close to the ocean. 

Constructing a wall to protect the tunnel in place will leave no room for the beach and will erode the beach even quicker — seawalls are well-known to kill beaches because they accelerate erosion. In the context of sea level rise projects in California, a mile long seawall on the coast is enormous. Such walls are not typically permitted by the State because they are so bad for the public beach.

SFPUC claims that the wall shouldn't be a major source of erosion because of plans to keep it buried by sand, but their 'sand management plan' is insufficient and the wall is simply set too close to the ocean for this to be realistic in the context of the winters of rough waves at Ocean Beach. Additionally, the concrete features of the proposed multi-use pathway and proposed stairways down to the beach will make it so that options for incremental or phased adaptation to sea level rise over time are extremely limited.

The San Francisco Chapter supports aspects of the project which include cleanup of the rubble and rock from the beach and the landward relocation of the Great Highway. However, we have the following significant concerns about the project:

• The City's EIR did not seriously consider relocation of the Lake Merced Tunnel as a project option. It would be valuable to understand a timeline at which relocation is realistic — with the sea rising dramatically over the next century, it is not a matter of whether the tunnel will need to move. The only question is when. 
• The City's project should commit to adaptive management for sea level rise which should end with relocation of the LMT at some point in time and detail incremental steps and/or triggers that would facilitate this plan. The shoreline is dynamic and sea level rise is causing quick changes on the beach. Any project that goes here should be able to respond to changing shoreline conditions in order to meet priority objectives; including preservation of the beach and beach access.
• The City's project should include strong monitoring commitments to the short-term portion of the project so that findings can be applied to phased adaptation.
• The City's project should detail how beach access will not be lost in the short-term. Surfrider considers beach preservation at Sloat during strong storm surge winters unrealistic — due to the lack of detail around a sand management plan to keep the wall buried, the seaward location of the wall, and the lack of adaptive capacity of the proposed 'dune' (which has a steep slope, no back dune, and very little space.) 
• The City's project should dramatically reduce or eliminate concrete features of the planned stairway and multi-use path
• The City's project should preserve 70 coastal parking spots.

We'll be at the Coastal Commission hearing on this project in June — join our listserv to stay tuned and help us protect South Ocean Beach.  The June hearing is potentially our last opportunity to make changes to the seawall and pathway design that could save the beach.

To read more about the concerns Surfrider expressed about the project during its EIR phase, read our official comments can be found here.