By Glenn Rogers
This historic picture of Lake Merced shows a stream along the location of the Great Highway today where the highway is planned to be abandoned and replaced with trails, parks and other amenities. This land was filled with soil before the road was built and is beside the the Sewer Facility. Therefore, all the land here is fill soil which is vulnerable to erosion and sea level rise. Therefore, the protection of this part of the coast from sea rise and Climate Change is dubious. In addition, this is the narrowest part of the coast along Ocean Beach. The extraordinary bad placement of the sewer facility here should be abandoned, in my opinion and moved to a place better protected.
Then, the large pipe that is parallel to the beach along the Great Highway is planned to be reinforced with a concrete wall to protect the pipe. This is another example of the failed policy of hardening the land beside the ocean beside the sewer facility which only caused increased erosion of the shore there. Better to move the pipe to a location underneath the Great Highway where the City will never allow the highway and the road to be lost to sea level rise. That would be on the east side of the Great Highway which protects hundreds of residences.
The proposed Ocean Beach Plan: https://sfplanning.org/ocean-beach, includes a video
Wednesday, September 30, 2020 There’s a scoping meeting for the upcoming EIR for this project. You can sign on to that meeting here: https://sfplanning.org/event/public-scoping-meeting-ocean-beach-climate-change-adaptation-project