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The effort to preserve the beloved landmark from sea-level rise epitomizes an existential struggle for historic waterfronts
When San Francisco’s Ferry Plaza Farmers Market is in full Saturday swing, one way to dodge the determined foodies and casual browsers is to retreat to the plaza just 30 steps south of the Ferry Building. It sits atop three tiers of dark-veined granite, accessible by two flights of nine stairs or a ramp that ascends along the water to a trio of ferry gates that, like the plaza, were completed in 2021.
The chosen height hints at what someday might be the norm — the elevation where San Francisco’s constructed shoreline will need to be to serve as a protective buffer between the natural bay and the developed city. Here, more than any place on today’s Embarcadero, you confront the existential predicament facing the Ferry Building, nearby piers, and resurrected waterfronts in other coastal American cities: sea level rise.
According to projections that were modeled by climate scientists in 2018, San Francisco Bay faces a 66% likelihood that average daily tides will rise 40 inches by 2100, with roughly half of the increase during the next 50 years and the pace accelerating after that. The same report includes an extreme but peer-reviewed scenario where the projected increase soars to 93 inches during that same period — making grim numbers profoundly worse.
So-called king tides already arrive monthly during the winter, a natural occurrence related to the moon’s gravitational pull that can send waves washing past Pier 14 into the Embarcadero’s protected bike lane. Behind Pier 5, water swells up and over the edge of the public walkway. For now, that occasional splash of excitement is less fearsome than fun — but if current forecasts are anywhere near accurate, future generations will face a double bind.
The threat isn’t just that tides might creep upward as temperatures increase. It’s that the extreme rainfall patterns we already experience will grow more intense, those destructive storms that in recent years have introduced terms like atmospheric rivers and bomb cyclones into conversations about the weather. For instance, if daily tides are a foot higher in 2050 than they are now — the “likely” projection — a major storm could surge 36 inches beyond where it would register today.
In the case of the Embarcadero, the hypothetical one-foot rise coupled with an “intense storm” — the sort that in the past might occur every five years — would send bay waters rushing toward the roadway in a dozen locations if the storm hit when winds were brisk and the tide was high. Kick the downpour’s fervor to the scale of the bomb cyclone that hit the Bay Area in October 2021 — a day-long deluge that was the equivalent of what scientists call a 25-year storm — and the Embarcadero could be closed for nearly a mile between Folsom Street and Pier 9. Water spilling across the roadway could flow down into the BART and Muni subway beneath Market Street, potentially paralyzing both systems.
The new plaza and the elevated ferry gates might rebuke the surging tides to come, but the landmark next door would be more vulnerable than ever. The Ferry Building has ridden out many perils since opening day in 1898, from earthquakes and the onslaught of automobiles to political tumult, misguided renovations, and the wear and tear of urban life. Now it faces the implacable though seemingly far-off threat of rising waters, as if nature was determined to restore the marshes and tidal flats that long-dead San Franciscans covered and forgot.
The addition of the granite plaza is an indicator of the danger facing the icon to its north. And it’s not as if our hefty landmark with that vaulted concrete foundation can be jacked up out of harm’s way.
Or can it?
An aerial view of San Francisco’s Ferry Building and the Embarcadero.Michael Lee/Getty Images
Steven Reel headed west from Philadelphia in 1992 to earn a structural engineering degree at Stanford University because, he says now, “structural engineering means ‘earthquakes’ at Stanford, and earthquakes make structural engineering a lot more interesting.” The Bay Area was a good place to live, and local governments were investing heavily in seismic upgrades after the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. In 2010, Reel successfully applied for a job at the Port of San Francisco and, to his surprise, grew intrigued by the historic aspects of making an urban shoreline function in the here and now.
“I’d start studying old engineering drawings for projects and then go down the rabbit hole,” recalls Reel, an easygoing bureaucrat with a beard that approached Rasputin-like proportions during the pandemic (he since has trimmed it back). He also began to notice regional planners stressing sea level rise in meetings.
His first project at the port was Brannan Street Wharf, where two ramshackle piers midway between the Bay Bridge and the ballpark were torn out and replaced by a four-hundred-foot-long triangular green. The response to climate concerns involved a slight upward incline from the Embarcadero promenade and a concrete lip along the edge (the same move since used for the plaza near the Ferry Building).
There was another natural threat to consider — the possibility that a tremor on the scale of the Great 1906 San Francisco Earthquake could strike again. Would the Ferry Building and the seawall hold, as before? Or would the three-mile-long agglomeration of boulders and concrete give way after all this time? Reel found himself with a new job title — manager of the seawall program — and responsibilities that included a $450,000 study with consultants being told to diagnose the barrier’s health and prescribe possible remedies.
The findings, released in April 2016, answered some questions and posed a host of others.
The good news is that even with a cataclysmic earthquake, “complete failure of the seawall is unlikely.” The rocks and boulders that form a dike beneath the concrete wouldn’t scatter like marbles. The Financial District wouldn’t be sucked into the bay toward Oakland. But the combination of sandy fill atop soft mud, behind an aged barrier with thousands of potentially moving parts of varying size, is a dangerous combination. The fill was “subject to liquefaction,” the report confirmed, making it likely that the seawall could slump and lurch outward.
“A repeat of the 1906 earthquake is predicted to cause as much as $1b in damage and $1.3b in disruption costs,” the report declared. Better to strengthen the entire three-mile seawall before a disaster struck — though the cost estimates to do this were “on the order of $2 to $3 billion.” The consultants also emphasized that even with an upgraded seawall, the slow-moving threat posed by sea level rise “will necessitate intervention ... over the next 100 years.” Figure that in, and the combined price tag approached $5 billion.
The city approached voters with a $425 million bond in 2018 to fund the first round of projects; smartly, the campaign emphasized seismic concerns, lightening the ominous message with such creative touches as a neighborhood brewpub’s limited-release sour beer dubbed “Seawall’s Sea Puppy.” The bond passed with 83% support. “The earthquake message resonates,” Reel says. “Without it, I don’t think all this would have moved forward as it did.”
It makes sense to tackle the easiest fixes early, given the seismic threats posed to the Bay Area by the San Andreas and other faults. Breaking a daunting future into manageable parts also allows the Port and City Hall to shift attention from the more eye-popping aspects of climate adaptation — such as how potions of the Embarcadero might need to be raised as much as seven feet to prepare for 2100’s more extreme projected water levels.
Which leads us back to the Ferry Building.
As so often has been the case during the landmark’s history, far more is at stake than one particular structure. If the Ferry Building in its heyday represented San Francisco’s prominence within the region and beyond, in the 21st century it embodies how urban waterfronts can be reinvented without sacrificing their past identities. At the same time, the building remains essentially the same as it was in 1898 — a heavy structure of concrete and steel that covers two acres and rises from a foundation atop bundled piles of tree trunks.
The assumption for the past 25 years has been that the landmark’s impressive performance in 1906 and 1989 should ensure similar resilience when the next big earthquake hits. But the most recent geotechnical exam revealed a weak link: the section of the seawall behind the Ferry Building rests in a trench filled with liquefiable sand rather than the rubble that underlies almost everything else. That detail places “the 125-year-old Ferry Building Seawall, building substructure, and surrounding piers at risk of damage in large earthquakes,” according to the most recent Port update.
This isn’t just a concern for architecture buffs. San Francisco’s disaster relief plans treat the outdoor spaces around the landmark as crucial spots for retreat and regrouping. In a worst-case scenario where the Bay Bridge is knocked out of commission, as was the case in 1989, reliable access to a functioning ferry system will be crucial for evacuating people from the downtown scene safely. The new plaza can also serve as a staging area for bringing medical aid and supplies into the city over the water. Regular people who need to connect with family and friends know there won’t be confusion if someone says “let’s find each other at the Ferry Building.”
One solution could be to erect an entirely new seawall around the edge of the Ferry Building’s foundation, in essence creating a basement beneath it. And if you’re doing that, it’s only one more step — albeit sure to be costly and complex — to raise the entire building by several feet and resolve the challenge of sea level rise for another lifetime or two.
“With the Ferry Building, the one thing I know about it is that it has to be saved … it has such a strong identification with the city,” Elaine Forbes, the executive director for the Port, says. “So I talked myself into okaying this big expenditure.”
The Ferry Building, pictured in 1906 after the San Francisco earthquake and fire.Library of Congress
Realistically, adaptation planning in San Francisco and other waterfront cities will involve a variety of responses at a variety of scales. But the situation facing the Ferry Building, as at so many times in its history, is unique unto itself. This time around, the task is to remake a bustling civic icon so that life seemingly goes on as before. If anyone has challenged the need to invest what likely will be hundreds of millions of dollars to save a 125-year-old structure, the argument has gained no traction.
“The price would have to be really, really high before anything would think twice” about whether the Ferry Building’s salvation is more trouble than it’s worth, Reel says. He describes how during the public discussions on what to do about the Embarcadero, attendees would be asked to list priorities. What are you concerned about? What do you love?
In the latter category, Reel recalls, “the Ferry Building kept getting named. People want to see it forever.”
This still leaves an array of unanswered questions. How to decide how big of an engineering gamble to take. Whether to raise the structure, as implausible as that sounds, or build a new seawall to the east that would destroy the immediacy of the connection to the water. And what becomes of the tenants inside the building, especially the locally based merchants, if the building once again becomes a construction zone.
In a much different context, one San Franciscan offered a fatalistic take on what the future might hold: Lawrence Ferlinghetti.
Four years before his death in 2021, still living in North Beach, Ferlinghetti sat down in a neighborhood café to talk with a Washington Post writer about the beat era, the 97-year-old poet’s life, and his enduring love for the city that he embraced long ago. At one point, the writer asked Ferlinghetti about what might happen after he was gone.
“It’s all going to be underwater in 100 years or maybe even 50,” Ferlinghetti said with a half-smiled shrug. “The Embarcadero is one of the greatest esplanades in the world. On the weekends, thousands of people strut up and down like it’s the Ramblas in Barcelona. But it’ll all be underwater.”
This article was excerpted and condensed from John King’s book Portal: San Francisco’s Ferry Building and the Reinvention of American Cities, available on Nov. 7 from W. W. Norton & Company ©2023.
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On environmental justice grants, melting glaciers, and Amazon’s carbon credits
Current conditions: Severe thunderstorms are expected across the Mississippi Valley this weekend • Storm Martinho pushed Portugal’s wind power generation to “historic maximums” • It’s 62 degrees Fahrenheit, cloudy, and very quiet at Heathrow Airport outside London, where a large fire at an electricity substation forced the international travel hub to close.
President Trump invoked emergency powers Thursday to expand production of critical minerals and reduce the nation’s reliance on other countries. The executive order relies on the Defense Production Act, which “grants the president powers to ensure the nation’s defense by expanding and expediting the supply of materials and services from the domestic industrial base.”
Former President Biden invoked the act several times during his term, once to accelerate domestic clean energy production, and another time to boost mining and critical minerals for the nation’s large-capacity battery supply chain. Trump’s order calls for identifying “priority projects” for which permits can be expedited, and directs the Department of the Interior to prioritize mineral production and mining as the “primary land uses” of federal lands that are known to contain minerals.
Critical minerals are used in all kinds of clean tech, including solar panels, EV batteries, and wind turbines. Trump’s executive order doesn’t mention these technologies, but says “transportation, infrastructure, defense capabilities, and the next generation of technology rely upon a secure, predictable, and affordable supply of minerals.”
Anonymous current and former staffers at the Environmental Protection Agency have penned an open letter to the American people, slamming the Trump administration’s attacks on climate grants awarded to nonprofits under the Inflation Reduction Act’s Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund. The letter, published in Environmental Health News, focuses mostly on the grants that were supposed to go toward environmental justice programs, but have since been frozen under the current administration. For example, Climate United was awarded nearly $7 billion to finance clean energy projects in rural, Tribal, and low-income communities.
“It is a waste of taxpayer dollars for the U.S. government to cancel its agreements with grantees and contractors,” the letter states. “It is fraud for the U.S. government to delay payments for services already received. And it is an abuse of power for the Trump administration to block the IRA laws that were mandated by Congress.”
The lives of 2 billion people, or about a quarter of the human population, are threatened by melting glaciers due to climate change. That’s according to UNESCO’s new World Water Development Report, released to correspond with the UN’s first World Day for Glaciers. “As the world warms, glaciers are melting faster than ever, making the water cycle more unpredictable and extreme,” the report says. “And because of glacial retreat, floods, droughts, landslides, and sea-level rise are intensifying, with devastating consequences for people and nature.” Some key stats about the state of the world’s glaciers:
In case you missed it: Amazon has started selling “high-integrity science-based carbon credits” to its suppliers and business customers, as well as companies that have committed to being net-zero by 2040 in line with Amazon’s Climate Pledge, to help them offset their greenhouse gas emissions.
“The voluntary carbon market has been challenged with issues of transparency, credibility, and the availability of high-quality carbon credits, which has led to skepticism about nature and technological carbon removal as an effective tool to combat climate change,” said Kara Hurst, chief sustainability officer at Amazon. “However, the science is clear: We must halt and reverse deforestation and restore millions of miles of forests to slow the worst effects of climate change. We’re using our size and high vetting standards to help promote additional investments in nature, and we are excited to share this new opportunity with companies who are also committed to the difficult work of decarbonizing their operations.”
The Bureau of Land Management is close to approving the environmental review for a transmission line that would connect to BluEarth Renewables’ Lucky Star wind project, Heatmap’s Jael Holzman reports in The Fight. “This is a huge deal,” she says. “For the last two months it has seemed like nothing wind-related could be approved by the Trump administration. But that may be about to change.”
BLM sent local officials an email March 6 with a draft environmental assessment for the transmission line, which is required for the federal government to approve its right-of-way under the National Environmental Policy Act. According to the draft, the entirety of the wind project is sited on private property and “no longer will require access to BLM-administered land.”
The email suggests this draft environmental assessment may soon be available for public comment. BLM’s web page for the transmission line now states an approval granting right-of-way may come as soon as May. BLM last week did something similar with a transmission line that would go to a solar project proposed entirely on private lands. Holzman wonders: “Could private lands become the workaround du jour under Trump?”
Saudi Aramco, the world’s largest oil producer, this week launched a pilot direct air capture unit capable of removing 12 tons of carbon dioxide per year. In 2023 alone, the company’s Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions totalled 72.6 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent.
If you live in Illinois or Massachusetts, you may yet get your robust electric vehicle infrastructure.
Robust incentive programs to build out electric vehicle charging stations are alive and well — in Illinois, at least. ComEd, a utility provider for the Chicago area, is pushing forward with $100 million worth of rebates to spur the installation of EV chargers in homes, businesses, and public locations around the Windy City. The program follows up a similar $87 million investment a year ago.
Federal dollars, once the most visible source of financial incentives for EVs and EV infrastructure, are critically endangered. Automakers and EV shoppers fear the Trump administration will attack tax credits for purchasing or leasing EVs. Executive orders have already suspended the $5 billion National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Formula Program, a.k.a. NEVI, which was set up to funnel money to states to build chargers along heavily trafficked corridors. With federal support frozen, it’s increasingly up to the automakers, utilities, and the states — the ones with EV-friendly regimes, at least — to pick up the slack.
Illinois’ investment has been four years in the making. In 2021, the state established an initiative to have a million EVs on its roads by 2030, and ComEd’s new program is a direct outgrowth. The new $100 million investment includes $53 million in rebates for business and public sector EV fleet purchases, $38 million for upgrades necessary to install public and private Level 2 and Level 3 chargers, stations for non-residential customers, and $9 million to residential customers who buy and install home chargers, with rebates of up to $3,750 per charger.
Massachusetts passed similar, sweeping legislation last November. Its bill was aimed to “accelerate clean energy development, improve energy affordability, create an equitable infrastructure siting process, allow for multistate clean energy procurements, promote non-gas heating, expand access to electric vehicles and create jobs and support workers throughout the energy transition.” Amid that list of hifalutin ambition, the state included something interesting and forward-looking: a pilot program of 100 bidirectional chargers meant to demonstrate the power of vehicle-to-grid, vehicle-to-home, and other two-way charging integrations that could help make the grid of the future more resilient.
Many states, blue ones especially, have had EV charging rebates in places for years. Now, with evaporating federal funding for EVs, they have to take over as the primary benefactor for businesses and residents looking to electrify, as well as a financial level to help states reach their public targets for electrification.
Illinois, for example, saw nearly 29,000 more EVs added to its roads in 2024 than 2023, but that growth rate was actually slower than the previous year, which mirrors the national narrative of EV sales continuing to grow, but more slowly than before. In the time of hostile federal government, the state’s goal of jumping from about 130,000 EVs now to a million in 2030 may be out of reach. But making it more affordable for residents and small businesses to take the leap should send the numbers in the right direction, as will a state-backed attempt to create more public EV chargers.
The private sector is trying to juice charger expansion, too. Federal funding or not, the car companies need a robust nationwide charging network to boost public confidence as they roll out more electric offerings. Ionna — the charging station partnership funded by the likes of Hyundai, BMW, General Motors, Honda, Kia, Mercedes-Benz, Stellantis, and Toyota — is opening new chargers at Sheetz gas stations. It promises to open 1,000 new charging bays this year and 30,000 by 2030.
Hyundai, being the number two EV company in America behind much-maligned Tesla, has plenty at stake with this and similar ventures. No surprise, then, that its spokesperson told Automotive Dive that Ionna doesn’t rely on federal dollars and will press on regardless of what happens in Washington. Regardless of the prevailing winds in D.C., Hyundai/Kia is motivated to support a growing national network to boost the sales of models on the market like the Hyundai Ioniq5 and Kia EV6, as well as the company’s many new EVs in the pipeline. They’re not alone. Mercedes-Benz, for example, is building a small supply of branded high-power charging stations so its EV drivers can refill their batteries in Mercedes luxury.
The fate of the federal NEVI dollars is still up in the air. The clearinghouse on this funding shows a state-by-state patchwork. More than a dozen states have some NEVI-funded chargers operational, but a few have gotten no further than having their plans for fiscal year 2024 approved. Only Rhode Island has fully built out its planned network. It’s possible that monies already allocated will go out, despite the administration’s attempt to kill the program.
In the meantime, Tesla’s Supercharger network is still king of the hill, and with a growing number of its stations now open to EVs from other brands (and a growing number of brands building their new EVs with the Tesla NACS charging port), Superchargers will be the most convenient option for lots of electric drivers on road trips. Unless the alternatives can become far more widespread and reliable, that is.
The increasing state and private focus on building chargers is good for all EV drivers, starting with those who haven’t gone in on an electric car yet and are still worried about range or charger wait times on the road to their destination. It is also, by the way, good news for the growing number of EV folks looking to avoid Elon Musk at all cost.
From Kansas to Brooklyn, the fire is turning battery skeptics into outright opponents.
The symbol of the American battery backlash can be found in the tiny town of Halstead, Kansas.
Angry residents protesting a large storage project proposed by Boston developer Concurrent LLC have begun brandishing flashy yard signs picturing the Moss Landing battery plant blaze, all while freaking out local officials with their intensity. The modern storage project bears little if any resemblance to the Moss Landing facility, which uses older technology,, but that hasn’t calmed down anxious locals or stopped news stations from replaying footage of the blaze in their coverage of the conflict.
The city of Halstead, under pressure from these locals, is now developing a battery storage zoning ordinance – and explicitly saying this will not mean a project “has been formally approved or can be built in the city.” The backlash is now so intense that Halstead’s mayor Dennis Travis has taken to fighting back against criticism on Facebook, writing in a series of posts about individuals in his community “trying to rule by MOB mentality, pushing out false information and intimidating” volunteers working for the city. “I’m exercising MY First Amendment Right and well, if you don’t like it you can kiss my grits,” he wrote. Other posts shared information on the financial benefits of building battery storage and facts to dispel worries about battery fires. “You might want to close your eyes and wish this technology away but that is not going to happen,” another post declared. “Isn’t it better to be able to regulate it in our community?”
What’s happening in Halstead is a sign of a slow-spreading public relations wildfire that’s nudging communities that were already skeptical of battery storage over the edge into outright opposition. We’re not seeing any evidence that communities are transforming from supportive to hostile – but we are seeing new areas that were predisposed to dislike battery storage grow more aggressive and aghast at the idea of new projects.
Heatmap Pro data actually tells the story quite neatly: Halstead is located in Harvey County, a high risk area for developers that already has a restrictive ordinance banning all large-scale solar and wind development. There’s nothing about battery storage on the books yet, but our own opinion poll modeling shows that individuals in this county are more likely to oppose battery storage than renewable energy.
We’re seeing this phenomenon play out elsewhere as well. Take Fannin County, Texas, where residents have begun brandishing the example of Moss Landing to rail against an Engie battery storage project, and our modeling similarly shows an intense hostility to battery projects. The same can be said about Brooklyn, New York, where anti-battery concerns are far higher in our polling forecasts – and opposition to battery storage on the ground is gaining steam.