When Bay Area voters approved Measure AA in June 2016 they not only created a significant new source of environmental funding, they also made California history, levying a parcel tax across the entire region for the first time. The measure was the result of a carefully planned and meticulously executed effort over more than a dozen years that offers lessons for other regions, and may be a catalyst for a regional approach to rising sea levels and other challenges.
Photo: Rick Lewis
The original impetus for Measure AA was the 1999 release of the Baylands Habitat Ecosystem Goals report, with its recommendation of re-establishing 100,000 acres of tidal marsh, and the 2003 acquisition of the South Bay salt ponds by the state and federal governments, according to David Lewis of Save The Bay, a driving force behind the measure. Although the government and several charitable foundations provided some money for initial stewardship and restoration, “we quickly realized that it was a fraction of what would be needed to actually restore the ponds,” says Lewis.
After an attempt to work with state legislators to find a quick way to raise local funding fizzled, environmentalists began creating a comprehensive case for Bay restoration and for regional funding to support it. As part of the process, Save The Bay projected costs for restoring shoreline that had already been acquired for that purpose. Concerned that sticker shock might undermine support, some wetland advocates resisted the notion of publicizing the total cost. However, “we had to demonstrate need for more funding and the gap between the cost and what was currently trickling in from federal and state government,” says Lewis. Save the Bay also commissioned several public opinion polls which found that a large majority of Bay Area residents supported paying a small tax for Bay restoration.
In 2007 Save The Bay released Greening the Bay, a report that detailed the benefits of Bay restoration and the total estimated costs of restoring 36,176 acres of shoreline properties around the Bay—approximately $1.43 billion over 50 years. The report included a policy recommendation that a regional special district be established to secure local funding for and to coordinate Bay restoration.
“We looked at different ways to make it possible to pursue regional funding, including giving additional powers to an existing agency or creating a joint powers agreement,” says Lewis.
“No existing agency had responsibility for getting Bay marsh restored and the power to propose taxes or assessments. Also, property to be restored is in the jurisdiction of many different, counties, cities, and landowner agencies. Creating a new agency turned out to be the best approach.”
The recommendations in Greening the Bay secured critical early support from elected officials such as Sen. Dianne Feinstein and the Bay Area business community. Advocates worked with the lawmakers to draft legislation and in 2008 the state legislature approved AB 2954, creating the San Francisco Bay Restoration Authority and charging it with “raising and allocating resources for the restoration, enhancement, protection, and enjoyment of wetlands and wildlife habitat in the San Francisco Bay and along its shoreline.” The Association of Bay Area Governments appointed a Governing Board composed of local elected officials and recruited an Advisory Committee of stakeholders.
“We had taken two big steps over a four-year period: First, we defined the problem and made the case for what it would cost and second, we created an entity with the power to raise that money if voters agreed,” says Lewis.
The legislation creating the Restoration Authority did not include any funding, so the California Coastal Conservancy, the San Francisco Estuary Partnership, Save The Bay, and others volunteered staff time and resources to research legally and politically viable options they could propose to voters to raise money. They explored different geographical possibilities, different kinds of taxes and bonds, and different tax rates. They also conducted more public opinion polling and outreach to local elected officials as well as to the region’s business and philanthropy communities.
“This was something that our member companies quickly gravitated to as a way to make a difference for our environment, our communities and our economies,” says Carl Guardino of the Silicon Valley Leadership Group, an early and energetic supporter of the Authority.
As support grew, and the Authority’s Governing Board waded into planning, a voluntary committee began discussing how to develop consensus on a tax approach and build a successful political campaign.
The Authority ultimately settled on a $12-per-parcel tax, which was seen as modest enough to garner widespread support and, crucially, unlikely to attract opposition from large property owners with deep pockets as a tax based on property value might have done. The other crucial choice was including all taxable parcels in the nine-county Bay Area, rather than carving out a narrower territory, such as only parcels close to the Bay, says Lewis. “That would have significantly reduced how much money the tax raises, but the cost of the campaign would potentially have been similar.”
Timing was also critical, as periodic polling showed that support for a restoration tax waxed and waned with the economy. As 2016 approached the timing seemed right. “We decided to put in on the June ballot because it was less crowded than November and the money spent on the campaign would have more impact.”
Placing the measure on the ballot in all nine counties simultaneously turned out to be somewhat challenging. To begin with there were the fees charged by registrars, which were initially estimated to total $6 million. “We had to go back to the legislature and amend our enabling statute to say that the registrars could only charge us for the true incremental cost of including Measure AA in their ballots,” recalls RA Governing Board Chair Dave Pine. That lowered the estimate to about $2 million, which the RA borrowed from the Santa Clara Valley Water District, the Sonoma County Water Agency and the East Bay Regional Parks District.
The Restoration Authority also had to work with the registrars to ensure a common letter designation for the measure and make sure it appeared in the same place on all the ballots. “It was an enormous challenge to try to bring uniformity to the ballot process for a nine-county measure when this had never been done before,” says Pine.
The efforts paid off, and Measure AA passed with 70 percent of the vote, comfortably more than the two-thirds margin required.
Measure AA will raise $25 million per year over 20 years. That is far short of the total need identified in Greening the Bay, and restoration advocates emphasize that continued state and federal funding will remain crucial. Meeting with members of Congress and their staffs in March BCDC’s Larry Goldzband argued that it’s in the federal government’s best interest to leverage federal environmental dollars by directing any available funds to communities that are spending their own money on restoration. “Our basic thrust is that if a community is willing to tax itself to do this and there are federal funds available for it, then direct those funds to those communities that have demonstrated that they have skin in the game,” he says. However, whether such funds will be available during the next several years is far from certain, as the Trump Administration’s proposed budget eliminates funding for marsh restoration in the Bay.
Under its mandate, Measure AA funds are to be used for water quality, habitat restoration, protection and monitoring, flood prevention and shoreline access projects. Although sea level rise was not a primary concern when the RA was initially conceived, the years since have brought into focus the threat it poses to communities and infrastructure all around the Bay. Projects that serve multiple objectives are now fundamental to the Restoration Authority’s mission, says Dave Pine. “We’ve spent almost as much time talking about the flood control benefits as the ecosystem benefits of Measure AA.”
The RA is preparing to release its first Request for Proposals in September. Its statute requires that projects be consistent with existing plans such as the Estuary Blueprint (CCMP), BCDC’s Bay Plan, the Coastal Conservancy’s San Francisco Bay Program, SF Bay Joint Venture’s Implementation Strategy, and the Baylands Ecosystem Habitat Goals Update. “There is the intent to make this funding a tool for existing practitioners in the Bay that are already doing wetlands restoration with the long term view,” says EPA Region 9’s representative on the Advisory Committee, Luisa Valiela. Pine concurs. “Many of the people on our advisory committee were involved in preparing some of the region’s foundational studies on wetland restoration priorities, so those voices will be integrated in the grant making process.”
Some Bay advocates would like to see the RA step to the forefront of regional climate change adaptation. “I’ve heard people ask in public meetings, why can’t the Restoration Authority be given more explicit authority to do climate adaptation and be very forward looking,” says former Coastal Conservancy senior executive Marc Beyeler. “Climate adaptation activities are a natural extension of what we all want to do to build up natural resilient infrastructure. But the pace of climate change demands that we accelerate what we are doing.”
Many people involved in the RA and Measure AA campaigns believe that they can provide valuable models for other regions and/or efforts to address other Bay Area regional challenges.
“We have regional traffic challenges that transcend a city’s or even a county’s borders,” says SVLG’s Guardino. “We believe that this might lead to conversations about more regional solutions to these challenges.” Traffic will only be made worse by increased flooding on shoreline highways as the Bay expands.
“Measure AA sets an example for how we can do things across many counties,” says Pine. “People’s willingness to contemplate a regional tax for transportation has increased just because it has now been done.”
Writer John Hart has watched the ebb and flow of regional thinking in the Bay Area since the 1960s “I think that these regional ideas keep arising again because they have to—events kind of beat us toward regional thinking,” he says.
Cariad Hayes Thronson covers legal and political issues for Estuary News. She has served on the staffs of several national publications, including The American Lawyer. She is a long-time contributor to Estuary News, and some years ago served as its assistant editor. She lives in San Mateo with her husband and two children.
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Hothouse Earth
By Ariel Rubissow Okamoto
Photo by Megan Nguyen
Nothing could be stranger than sitting in the dark with thousands of suits and heels, watching a parade of promises to decarbonize from companies and countries large and small, reeling from the beauties of big screen rainforests and indigenous necklaces, and getting all choked up.
It was day two of the September 2018 Global Climate Action Summit in San Francisco when I felt it.
At first I wondered if I was simply starstruck. Most of us labor away trying to fix one small corner of the planet or another without seeing the likes of Harrison Ford, Al Gore, Michael Bloomberg, Van Jones, Jerry Brown – or the ministers or mayors of dozens of cities and countries – in person, on stage and at times angry enough to spit. And between these luminaries a steady stream of CEOs, corporate sustainability officers, and pension fund managers promising percentages of renewables and profits in their portfolios dedicated to the climate cause by 2020-2050.
I tried to give every speaker my full attention: the young man of Vuntut Gwichin heritage from the edge of the Yukon’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge who pleaded with us not to enter his sacred lands with our drills and dependencies; all the women – swathed in bright patterns and head-scarfs – who kept punching their hearts. “My uncle in Uganda would take 129 years to emit the same amount of carbon as an American would in one year,” said Oxfam’s Winnie Byanyima.
“Our janitors are shutting off the lights you leave on,” said Aida Cardenas, speaking about the frontline workers she trains, mostly immigrants, who are excited to be part of climate change solutions in their new country.
The men on the stage, strutting about in feathers and pinstripes, spoke of hopes and dreams, money and power. “The notion that you can either do good or do well is a myth we have to collectively bust,” said New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy whose state is investing heavily in offshore wind farms.
“Climate change isn’t just about risks, it’s about opportunities,” said Blackrock sustainable investment manager Brian Deese.
But it wasn’t all these fine speeches that started the butterflies. Halfway through the second day of testimonials, it was a slight white-haired woman wrapped in an azure pashmina that pricked my tears. One minute she was on the silver screen with Alec Baldwin and the next she taking a seat on stage. She talked about trees. How trees can solve 30% of our carbon reduction problem. How we have to stop whacking them back in the Amazon and start planting them everywhere else. I couldn’t help thinking of Dr. Seuss and his truffala trees. Jane Goodall, over 80, is as fierce as my Lorax. Or my daughter’s Avatar.
Analyzing my take home feeling from the event I realized it wasn’t the usual fear – killer storms, tidal waves, no food for my kids to eat on a half-baked planet – nor a newfound sense of hope – I’ve always thought nature will get along just fine without us. What I felt was relief. People were actually doing something. Doing a lot. And there was so much more we could do.
As we all pumped fists in the dark, as the presentations went on and on and on because so many people and businesses and countries wanted to STEP UP, I realized how swayed I had let myself be by the doomsday news mill.
“We must be like the river, “ said a boy from Bangladesh named Risalat Khan, who had noticed our Sierra watersheds from the plane. “We must cut through the mountain of obstacles. Let’s be the river!”
Or as Harrison Ford less poetically put it: “Let’s turn off our phones and roll up our sleeves and kick this monster’s ass.”
4th California Climate Change Assessment Blues
by Isaac Pearlman
Since California’s last state-led climate change assessment in 2012, the Golden State has experienced a litany of natural disasters. This includes four years of severe drought from 2012 to 2016, an almost non-existent Sierra Nevada snowpack in 2014-2015 costing $2.1 billion in economic losses, widespread Bay Area flooding from winter 2017 storms, and extremely large and damaging wildfires culminating with this year’s Mendocino Complex fire achieving the dubious distinction of the largest in state history. California’s most recent climate assessment, released August 27th, predicts that for the state and the Bay Area, we can expect even more in the future.
The California state government first began assessing climate impacts formally in 2006, due to an executive order by Governor Schwarzenegger. California’s latest iteration and its fourth overall, includes a dizzying array of 44 technical reports; three topical studies on climate justice, tribal and indigenous communities, and the coast and ocean; as well as nine region-specific analyses.
The results are alarming for our state’s future: an estimated four to five feet of sea level rise and loss of one to two-thirds of Southern California beaches by 2100, a 50 percent increase in wildfires over 25,000 acres, stronger and longer heat waves, and infrastructure like airports, wastewater treatment plants, rail and roadways increasingly likely to suffer flooding.
For the first time, California’s latest assessment dives into climate consequences on a regional level. Academics representing nine California regions spearheaded research and summarized the best available science on the variable heat, rain, flooding and extreme event consequences for their areas. For example, the highest local rate of sea level rise in the state is at the rapidly subsiding Humboldt Bay. In San Diego county, the most biodiverse in all of California, preserving its many fragile and endangered species is an urgent priority. Francesca Hopkins from UC Riverside found that the highest rate of childhood asthma in the state isn’t an urban smog-filled city but in the Imperial Valley, where toxic dust from Salton Sea disaster chokes communities – and will only become worse as higher temperatures and less water due to climate change dry and brittle the area.
According to the Bay Area Regional Report, since 1950 the Bay Area has already increased in temperature by 1.7 degrees Fahrenheit and local sea level is eight inches higher than it was one hundred years ago. Future climate will render the Bay Area less suitable for our evergreen redwood and fir forests, and more favorable for tolerant chaparral shrub land. The region’s seven million people and $750 billion economy (almost one-third of California’s total) is predicted to be increasingly beset by more “boom and bust” irregular wet and very dry years, punctuated by increasingly intense and damaging storms.
Unsurprisingly, according to the report the Bay Area’s intensifying housing and equity problems have a multiplier affect with climate change. As Bay Area housing spreads further north, south, and inland the result is higher transportation and energy needs for those with the fewest resources available to afford them; and acute disparity in climate vulnerability across Bay Area communities and populations.
“All Californians will likely endure more illness and be at greater risk of early death because of climate change,” bluntly states the statewide summary brochure for California’s climate assessment. “[However] vulnerable populations that already experience the greatest adverse health impacts will be disproportionately affected.”
“We’re much better at being reactive to a disaster than planning ahead,” said UC Berkeley professor and contributing author David Ackerly at a California Adaptation Forum panel in Sacramento on August 27th. “And it is vulnerable communities that suffer from those disasters. How much human suffering has to happen before it triggers the next round of activity?”
The assessment’s data is publicly available online at “Cal-adapt,” where Californians can explore projected impacts for their neighborhoods, towns, and regions.
The results are alarming for our state’s future: an estimated four to five feet of sea level rise and loss of one to two-thirds of Southern California beaches by 2100, a 50 percent increase in wildfires over 25,000 acres, stronger and longer heat waves, and infrastructure like airports, wastewater treatment plants, rail and roadways increasingly likely to suffer flooding.