Report: Raise walls to stem coming tide

EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the first article in an occasional series on Newport Harbor and its future.

NEWPORT BEACH — Keeping this city above water is going to get harder in the coming years, some officials and experts believe.

For years Newport Beach has used bulkheads, beach sand replenishment, and dredging to keep land and water in their proper places.

But the price of dry land here may turn out to be eternal vigilance. Sea levels are expected to continue to rise, and the city’s harbor commission is recommending the bulkheads, or sea walls, around the city be raised to match.

The recommendation came after the commission heard a report — called “Global Warming and Sea Level Rise Effects on Newport Harbor” — from harbor resources manager Tom Rossmiller. While it admits that predictions vary, the report concludes, “There is certainly a very strong case for significant sea level rise.”

“This is not an issue that’s a pending disaster this week, but we do say that it’s a long-term project that the city should start thinking about,” harbor commission Chairman Ralph Rodheim said.

The sea walls are mostly at 9 feet above “mean lower low water,” a decades-old measurement based on a 19-year average of each day’s lowest tide. That’s the standard measurement, and the city uses experience to decide how far above it the sea wall should rise, said city engineer Lloyd Dalton.

But not all sea walls meet the city’s 9-foot standard, and already they occasionally prove inadequate to handle a big storm surge or an El Niño event. That means flooded streets on the Balboa Peninsula, like the city saw in January 2005.

And there’s the future to consider.

The city’s sea walls were mostly built in the 1930s and typically last between 50 and 100 years, Dalton said, so they may need to be rebuilt in the next two decades.

Most climate change scientists say the earth will continue to warm, which melts ice and causes sea level to rise. One prediction shows it’s 90% likely that sea level will rise by 4.5 inches by 2050, and by more than 8 inches by 2100, Rossmiller told the commission in the report.

Because of all that, the harbor commission is suggesting the city change its policy to raise the sea walls by a foot within 20 years.

That’s where things get complicated.

Much of the property on Newport’s waterfront is residential, so most of the sea walls are privately owned. That means homeowners would have to pay, and the cost probably would be a big one, City Councilman Don Webb said.

If the sea wall around Balboa Island is raised, it might be hard to get cars off the ferry there, he said.

“It would be nice if we could raise Balboa Island another 3 feet, but residents voted against that in 1920,” he said.

And Councilman Ed Selich, the only council member with a waterfront home, doesn’t think there’s cause for alarm.

The only concern he hears from residents is when winter weather conditions push water levels to the edge of some bulkheads, but “I haven’t heard anybody express the concern that it’s going to breach the bulkhead,” he said.

Both council members said they’d consider raising the sea walls if they believe it’s warranted. But they want more information first.

“I think eventually — and when I talk about eventually I mean the next 100 years — it will have to happen, but I’m not sure when that critical time’s going to be,” Webb said.

Just the fact that Newport is talking about this is unique, said Lesley Ewing, a senior coastal engineer for the California Coastal Commission.

“It’s the first time I’ve seen a sort of concerted effort to say that we’ve got sea level rise and we’ll redo our design standards to address it,” she said.

Despite Newport officials’ willingness to consider raising their sea walls, during interviews with them it becomes clear that nobody wants to say it has anything to do with global warming.

Harbor commissioner Seymour Beek said bringing global warming into the discussion makes it political, and it shouldn’t be.

“Anybody who knows anything knows sea level’s been rising for 100 years or more,” he said. “I think it’s ridiculous to even talk about it in the same context.”

Like Beek, other Newport officials don’t dispute that sea level will rise in the future. They’re just reluctant to attribute it to global warming.

“Climate change has been going on in the earth for billions of years, and in 1974 … Time magazine had a big article that the earth was getting colder because of all the emissions that we were putting into the atmosphere,” Selich said.

“I think the jury’s out on whether we have a global warming that’s caused by man, but I think the earth’s temperature changes — that’s why we have ice ages.”

Even the commission, which asked for the report, is keeping away from the issue. Rodheim said commissioners aren’t dismissing ideas about global warming — it’s just not an issue for them.

“Our role is not to discuss whether there’s such a thing as global warming, but to make sure that the city is safe, no matter what weather we have,” he said.

Ewing laughed when she heard city officials are reluctant to mention what’s become a controversial topic in politics as well as science.

“There’s a real connection between the water temperature, melting ice and sea level,” she said. “As there’s more water in the oceans, the water level will rise along the coast. I don’t know anyone who disputes those two statements.”