Report Says Building Sea Walls Would Cost San Diego County $1B | Deborah Brennan

Defending San Diego County against rising seas would cost about $1 billion, according to a new study that estimated that the cost of coastal armoring would be at least $22 billion for California, and more than $400 billion for the United States as a whole. And that’s just a “minimum down payment for short-term defense against rising seas in California,” says the study released today by the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Climate Integrity and the environmental engineering firm Resilient Analytics. Titled “High Tide Tax; The Price to Protect Coastal Communities from Rising Seas,” the study illustrates the expense of coastal protection by calculating the cost of seawall construction in areas threatened by inundation. For San Diego County, that could total $984 million. The city of San Diego, the report estimates, faces a $357 million price tag for those defenses, the highest for any city in California. Imperial Beach would need $212 million to armor its coastline, leaving the city of 27,000 people with the eighth-largest potential bill in the state. https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/environment/story/2019-06-19/paying-the-toll-of-sea-level-rise-tax-seawall-coastal-armoring-climate-change