The RISE Project

"We are headed right now on a path to an ice-free planet. And once we are there this planet will look nothing like it does today, and the human infrastructure that we all depend upon will not be able to adapt to those kinds of changes." --Dr. Healy Hamilton Sea level rise is an effect of global climate change. As oceans absorb heat from carbon pollution, the waters expand. And glacial melt pours ever more water into our oceans. Rising waters + high tides + storm surges of increasing frequency make for powerful impacts on shoreline cities and communities like the San Francisco Bay Area.

Conservation and green technologies can no longer keep climate change from impacting people. Wildlife. The lands and waters our lives and economies depend upon. Adapting to climate change is necessary. This story is about creative solutions to address sea level rise for cities at the waters’ edge.

"ALL LEVEES FAIL. Okay? Flood control maybe the ultimate oxymoron. The moron's oxymoron." --Dr. Jeff Mount Steve Mello farms an island in the Delta, where waters of the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers merge before flowing through San Francisco Bay. His long-farmed land lies below sea level. Levees protect it from the surrounding waters. But levees fail and need frequent repair. And as sea levels rise, this task gets harder and more expensive. Yet Mello says he is not leaving - come hell or high water.

"Areas like Foster City, which are low-lying, will be extraordinarily expensive to protect. It will be extraordinarily difficult to abandon it. It will be extraordinarily difficult to do most anything else about it." --Will Travis T. Jack Foster Jr and his father created Foster City, a community of 30,000 people, by diking, draining and filling San Francisco Bay wetlands. The fill used to turn wetlands into real estate brought the land just up to the current sea level, and now climate change threatens its levees. Urban planners say Foster City needs to be redesigned, T. Jack says the levees can simply be built higher and higher.

Chuey Cazares has lived all of his 21 years in Alviso, a tiny hamlet poking into the salt ponds at the southern tip of San Francisco Bay. Alviso sits below sea level. Flooding from the creeks above and the Bay below threaten to fill up the bowl. There are plans to save Alviso, but adapting to climate change has some serious downsides for Chuey’s clan.

"You've got saltwater coming from the sea, fresh water coming from the land, and all mixing in the Bay. It's like a giant cocktail shaker with a nice salty drink and God is the mixologist." --Paul McHugh San Francisco Bay is actually an estuary—the largest estuary on the Pacific coast of the Americas—and it is a place of great biological diversity. Journey with us underneath its surface to swim with the harbor seals; look overhead at a million migratory birds; and explore marshlands along its shores.