Short Wave - To Build, Or Not To Build? That Is The Question Facing Local Governments

Episode Date: August 23, 2021

NPR climate correspondent Lauren Sommer talks with Emily about a dilemma facing many local governments now. Should they develop in areas vulnerable to rising sea levels? On today's episode, we look at Sunnyvale, California, in the San Francisco Bay Area. It's a situation complicated by a landowner that really wants to continue expanding there, Google. In an episode last week, we asked who should be paying for climate change — taxpayers or private landowners with waterfront property? For more on this story, including pictures and videos, click here. Email the show at [e-mail] pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

You're listening to Shortwave from NPR. Hey, everybody. Emily Kwong here with NPR climate correspondent Lauren Summer. Hey, hey, Lauren. Hey, Emily. So today, we're going inside an incredibly important climate change decision. It's happening all over the country. And it sounds like this. This city council meeting is being conducted using teleconferencing and electronic means consistent with State of California Executive Order N-29-20.

Lauren, you know I love. I love good, crunchy local government meetings. I mean, they sound boring, but really important stuff goes down in these rooms. Right, yeah. Every day, local governments use one of their core powers, deciding where and how building happens in their city. This particular city, Sunnyvale, is in the San Francisco Bay Area. There's a massive housing shortage. And city planners are laying out their vision for revitalizing a particular neighborhood.

16,000 to 20,000 households, new streets, community facilities, two activity centers, office, and R&D space, public parks and plazas, and five potential new neighborhoods. Sounds pretty nice. I mean, something any city would probably want. Right. But there's a problem. All right. We have time for one last question. This neighborhood is on the shoreline of San Francisco Bay, which means it's in a flood zone. It's at risk from rising sea levels. So residents listening to this meeting had a question. Why increase development in the low-lying areas?

So basically, why build in a risky place at all? Yeah. And in this case, it's a little more complicated because the landowner that really wants to build is one of the wealthiest tech companies in the world, Google. So the city is facing a dilemma to build or not build in places that could be underwater. So to Dan the show,

show on the front lines of climate change, the burden often falls on local governments. We travel to one community grappling with this decision about whether they're putting people in the path of future disasters. You're listening to Shortwave, the Daily Science Podcast from NPR. So, Lauren, in our episode last week, you told us about Facebook, how the company has built its headquarters on the waterfront, and as sea levels rise, it and the cities around it will need to build defenses to keep the water back. And the big question in that story was, what's a fair amount for Facebook to pay for those defenses? And today we're talking about whether buildings should happen at all in areas vulnerable to climate change.

And it's a story that involves another tech giant Google. Yes. And for Google, the situation is a little different. And I should say, Google is among MPR's financial supporters. Yep, disclosure. Yep. They recently bought a lot of property in Sunnyvale with plans to build a major expansion on it. It's actually more than 70 property. close to the shoreline worth almost $3 billion. Whoa, okay, that's a lot. And what's there now? Yeah, this neighborhood, it's known as Moffat Park. It's really an office park right now.

There's lots of these low-rise, you know, office buildings with lots of big parking lots. What Google wants to build is different. It'll be offices, of course, but also housing, which isn't in Moffat Park right now. And it's not for employees necessarily. It'll be on the market for anyone. They're also envisioning green spaces and, bike paths, basically walkable neighborhoods. That's the direction a lot of cities are going in, right? Yeah. I mean, getting people out of their cars and moving away from the suburban model. Yeah, and changing our land use is a key strategy for dealing with climate change and cutting carbon emissions. But climate change is also a problem for this neighborhood because sea levels are rising

and they're rising increasingly fast. Right. Okay, so how soon will that encroaching water be a problem? Fairly quickly. I mean, there's already been about eight inches of sea level rise over the last century. By mid-century, San Francisco Bay could see about a foot to two feet. And by the end of the century, it could be as much as seven feet if humans don't substantially cut emissions. So basically, every high tide is getting higher. And the risk of flooding is greater if there's a storm or winds that create bigger waves. But seawater just doesn't come onto the shore. It can also come from, below and cause problems. Below, like under your feet? Yeah. I met up with Christina Hill, an associate professor of environmental planning at UC Berkeley, who explained that while we were standing on the shoreline. There's already seawater like with its toe under the land and it pushes the fresh ground

water up. And as the sea rises, that toe of salt water under the soil is going to rise also. So basically, if you can kind of picture this, the seawater is moving onshore but it's underground. It moves underneath the groundwater in the soil that's already there. So the seawater pushes that groundwater up closer to the surface. I didn't realize this. That sea level rise is happening underground too. Yeah. So does that mean the water actually starts reaching the surface and bubbling out? It can. It can start coming up through the storm drains. It can carry contaminants in the soil with it. But even if it only means the groundwater is sitting closer to the surface, that's a

problem when it rains because the runoff has nowhere to go. It's like a sponge that's already soaked and full of water, so you can't get any more water into it. That's when you get flash flooding. It seems like there are so many ways that rising sea levels can be a problem. Is this going to be an issue in Sunnyvale? That's something the city is looking at now because the land there is really low already. It's actually sunk because before Silicon Valley was Silicon Valley, it was farmland orchards. And the farmers pumped out a lot of groundwater for irrigation, but that makes the land itself sink. Okay, so now there's sea level rise and groundwater rise, and it's coming fast. What are city officials saying about how they're going to deal with it?

Yeah, there are choices, right? Some cities are looking at retreating, which is pulling back and moving people out of risky areas. But Sunnyvale officials say this neighborhood is already really developed and it's an important employment area. So they're opting to defend it, and that means building a big levy right along the shoreline that will hold the water back. So how long does it take to build a levy like that so the city is really protected? It can take decades. I mean, Sunnyvale's levy is part of this larger levy that will protect a lot of cities in Silicon Valley. The first section is being planned for the city next to Sunnyvale, but it's already taken 15 years of planning.

Construction hasn't started yet. And it's also going to cost double what was originally bus. So local agencies are having to come up with $100 million to make up the shortfall. And that's a lot of money for local government. So it sounds like if new buildings and housing get approved and built in the near term, there could be a period of time where there's no real levy yet and it's vulnerable to flooding. Yeah, right. That's an issue that some on the city council are really grappling with.

Can I get comfortable with housing in the context of sea level rise? I talked to Sunnyvale City Council member Russ Melton who said, this is a big decision because they're looking at approving up to 20,000 housing units in the flood zone, and there's no housing there now. Housing, that's where people live. They want to be able to go home and raise their family. So I feel this extra burden to be really judicious on where we allow housing to go. He says he won't vote to approve it until he sees a concrete plan for the levy and that it's true. fully funded, and so he'll know that there'll be protection. That vote could happen next year. Sunnyvale is spending this year doing an environmental analysis of this rezoning plan. Okay. So no vote yet. Meanwhile, what does Google have to say about all this, since they've already made a really big investment in their plans to build there? Yeah, I spoke to Jeff Holzman,

Google's director of real estate development for Sunnyvale. He says allowing their projects to go forward could help with the levy. I think that all of Sunnyvale needs to contribute. to the solution, and I think we're absolutely going to do our fair share in our part. Google is willing to help pay to build the levy if other businesses do as part of developing Moffitt Park, although no one is talking numbers just yet. We kind of need projects like Moffat Park and others to move forward so that it creates the economic ability to contribute into these solutions. The problem is going to exist whether we do more things in Moffat Park or not. I get his argument that if Sunnyvale is further developed,

there will be more financial support available to protect Sunnyvale that the area is kind of more invested in. But also, if you don't build houses there at all, there aren't houses that can flood, right? Right. And that's exactly what some experts I spoke to said. That's ridiculous and backwards, right? We're going to put people at risk, put families at risk so that we can change the economics. That's A.R. Sider, a professor at the University of Delaware's Disaster Research Center. She says that argument just puts more people at the forefront of disasters because the risk of flooding doesn't go away. I think we're setting ourselves up for a future where people think they're safe and we build

in reliance on this infrastructure. But then if we don't maintain it, if we don't continue to pay every single year, it will leave people more at risk than they are now. That's because levies can break. They need continual maintenance. And this levy probably won't be high enough to deal with sea level rise in the long run. So it'll have to be raised again. So really, the decisions that cities on the waterfront are making now about building or not building have long-term consequences, and they're committing to defending these areas at all costs. Yeah, that's basically it, because land use tends to get locked in for decades, you know, centuries even. And by building even more, it's just raising mistakes in terms of what you have to protect. You know, Sunnyville is not alone in this. That's why I really wanted to report these stories, because coastal cities are grappling with this everywhere.

You know, cities generally want to encourage development. It's how they get revenue from taxes. They want these big employers to come in. But as the climate changes, there are really important questions about where it's safe to build. These are serious risks that will take expensive solutions. And it's really hard for city governments to weigh the short-term benefits with those long-term risks. Lauren, we are so glad you looked into this for NPR. And thank you so much for bringing us this story and the other one.

too. Yeah, of course. Thanks. You can read more of this reporting online at npr.org. Lauren and a team of NPR producers put together maps and drone footage and a lot of other stuff. We'll put the link in our episode notes. This episode was produced by Thomas Liu, edited by Biet Leigh and fact-checked by Indy Kara. The audio engineer for this episode was Quasi Lee. Special thanks to Brent Bachman. I'm Emily Kwong. Thank you for listening to Shore. The Daily Science Podcast from NPR.