Santa Barbara City Council Approves Sea-Level Rise Adaptation Plan

SANTA BARBARA—The Santa Barbara City Council has approved the final version of the city’s Sea-Level Rise Adaptation Plan, which identifies vulnerable areas – such as the harbor – and recommends actions for the city to take to prevent flooding and damage. The City Council approved the plan at its Feb. 2 meeting and the Harbor Commission was given an update at its Feb. 18 meeting. The draft version of the Sea-Level Rise Adaptation Plan was released in August 2020 for public comments and then further refined. The Adaptation Plan evaluated the city’s vulnerabilities to sea-level rise and analyzed the feasibility, economic impacts, and environmental consequences of various adaptation strategies to address impacts. “The adaptation plan really focuses more comprehensively on not just regulations but also capital improvement projects that the city could take to prepare for sea-level rise,” said Santa Barbara Project Planner Melissa Hetrick at the Feb. 18 Harbor Commission meeting. Hetrick told the commission the latest round of edits took the long list of near-term actions that were recommended and further prioritized them and assigned eight of them as the highest priority to initiate in the next few years. “Moving forward into the next 10 years, 10 to 20 years, when we’re...