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Join the Coastal Conservancy March 17 from 12:00-1:00 for a webinar about funding opportunities from the 2024 Climate Bond (Prop 4). Conservancy staff will provide an overview of our Climate Bond funding, our priorities, and how to apply for Conservancy grants. There will also be time for Q & A. A recording of the webinar will be posted on our website subsequently.
The webinar will be held via Microsoft Teams. Join the meeting at 12:00 on 3/17 Meeting ID: 246 363 206 375 Passcode: KM3VW2zo
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For the first time, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers will study impacts of sea level rise on the entire region with focus on economically disadvantaged communities, vulnerable infrastructure, and nature-based strategies. The State Coastal Conservancy, Save The Bay, the Bay Conservation and Development Commission, the Bay Area Council, the San Francisco Bay Joint Venture, the Bay Planning Coalition, the Bay Area Regional Collaborative (BARC), San Mateo County Flood and Sea Level Rise Resiliency District (also known as OneShoreline), and the California Natural Resources Agency announce that the Thomas R. Carper Water Resources Development Act of 2024 (WRDA), signed today by President Biden, now includes a section instructing the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) to conduct a study of measures to adapt to rising sea levels in the San Francisco Bay Area. The study, which is anticipated to begin in 2026, assuming funding, builds on and expands USACE’s existing authority to address the impacts and adaptation to sea level rise and climate change in the 9-county Bay Area’s ocean and bay shorelines. In addition to investigating measures to adapt to rising sea levels, the USACE study will consider the needs of economically disadvantaged communities and the existing vulnerable infrastructure of these areas, and the use of natural features and beneficial use of dredged sediment in the solutions. WRDA also directs USACE to look at the effects of proposed flood or shoreline protection, coastal storm risk reduction, environmental infrastructure and other measures on the local economy, recreation, aquatic ecosystem restoration, public infrastructure protection, and stormwater runoff capacity, as well as the erosion of beaches and coasts. “The San Francisco Bay Area is no stranger to the harmful effects of climate change, including extreme heat, prolonged droughts, and rising sea levels. Thanks to the Thomas R. Carper Water Resources Development Act of 2024 (WRDA), which I supported and voted in favor of, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers will be able to partner with local agencies to study how to mitigate sea level rise and curb its effects on nearby communities. I remain committed to advancing efforts that improve resiliency, expand our water supply, and protect our environment,” said Rep. Zoe Lofgren (CA-18). “Bay Area leaders have worked hard to understand the impacts of sea level rise to this region,” said California Natural Resources Secretary Wade Crowfoot. “We know that climate change has worsened flooding and storm surge risks, with real threats to local communities. Now, thanks to this federal action, experts at the Army Corps of Engineering will help us better understand these risks and how we can best prepare and protect local residents. This is a big step forward that will help the Bay Area continue to thrive into the future.” Regional funding through Measure AA, State of California funding through the 2024 Climate Bond, and stakeholder contributions will leverage federal funding through USACE for the regional study and future projects. The San Francisco Bay Area stands to be one of the hardest hit regions in the nation from rising sea level, with over 8 million residents, 9 counties, 101 cities, and vital infrastructure, communities, ecosystems, and businesses—all clustered around a single bay. The impacts to communities along San Francisco’s 400-mile shoreline are expected to land disproportionately on socially vulnerable populations, which are the most at risk and least able to recover from flooding. With the projected sea level rise under state guidance of +0.8 feet by 2050, the Bay Area must prepare now to effectively manage the risks to human health and safety and the estimated hundreds of billions of dollars in losses to property and infrastructure. Specific assets at near-term risk include airports, ports, wastewater treatment plants, major highways and roadways, public transit and thousands of homes in low and moderate-income communities. “The inclusion of this language in WRDA really lets the Army Corps think on the landscape scale about sea level rise resilience for the region and opens the doors for flood and conservation agencies working in the Bay to partner with USACE across a number of projects.” said Amy Hutzel, Executive Officer of the State Coastal Conservancy. “The Corps brings the expertise and resources needed to tackle some of the region’s largest and most challenging restoration and flood protection projects. We see them as an essential long-term partner to meeting our resilience goals and I’m excited to see the project opportunities this study will lead to.” “The Water Resources Development Act recently signed into law by President Biden allows the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to conduct a comprehensive sea level rise analysis for the entire Bay Area shoreline, a critical step to defending the region’s residents and innovation economy for the next century and beyond.” said Jim Wunderman, President & CEO of the Bay Area Council. “Special thanks to Congressman Khanna, Congressman Garamendi, Congressman Huffman, Congresswoman Lofgren, and Congressman Mullin for delivering this win for the entire region.” “San Francisco Bay is home to some of the most vibrant and vital wildlife habitat on the West Coast, all within a dense urban population. This study will help us better understand how habitat restoration and nature-based solutions can increase resilience to sea level rise for people and nature.” said Rebecca Schwartz Lesberg, Chair of the San Francisco Bay Joint Venture’s Management Board. “Sea level rise flooding is a regional challenge because floodwaters don’t stop at city borders,” said David Lewis, Executive Director of Save The Bay. “The Army Corps’ new study will identify regional opportunities to invest in impactful nature-based resilience projects like additional tidal marsh restoration. Building these projects now is critical to ensuring a healthy Bay shoreline that protects our communities from rising tides.” “I am ecstatic that the Congress and President Biden are supporting a federal study on the impacts of rising sea levels on the San Francisco Bay,” said Larry Goldzband, Executive Director of the San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission. “Protecting our vulnerable communities and natural habitat in the Bay from rising sea levels is going to cost an estimated $110 billion by 2050. We cannot achieve that without federal partnership.” “This study will build upon existing science, prioritizing the Bay’s economically disadvantaged and climate-vulnerable communities to identify where the impacts of sea level rise will hit the hardest. We are excited to collaborate with the Army Corps to protect these areas while maximizing the use of nature based solutions to support the bay’s wildlife habitats.” said Allison Brooks, Executive Director, Bay Area Regional Collaborative (BARC). “The task of planning and building long-term climate resilience along the Bay shoreline will largely fall to local governments, and having the federal government as a partner through that process will be extremely helpful. We look forward to working with USACE and the other eight counties along the Bay to align protection to the inter-related threats of sea level rise and extreme storms.” said Len Materman, Chief Executive Officer, San Mateo County Flood and Sea Level Rise Resiliency District.
California drivers can now take a piece of surf history on the road while championing coastal preservation. After nearly a decade in the making, the iconic Endless Summer license plates are finally here, blending a celebration of California’s surfing culture with a mission to protect our cherished coastline. The last step is to complete the required 7,500 presale, which has launched today. CLICK HERE TO ORDER NOW. In collaboration with the Coastal Conservancy, Bruce Brown Films, LLC has unveiled these stunning, specially designed plates inspired by the legendary 1964 Endless Summer poster. Featuring surfers silhouetted against a radiant sunset, this vibrant design is more than just a tribute to Bruce Brown's groundbreaking film—it’s a pledge to preserve California’s coastal beauty for generations to come.  Former State Representative Mike Gatto, who was responsible for creating the top selling legacy black and yellow license plate, states: "The best thing about these exclusive, gorgeous plates, is that proceeds go to a great cause. By getting one of these plates, we who love California's weather, coast, and scenery will be helping keep our region special." Help get the Endless Summer plate on California roads, pre-order your Endless Summer plate today at surfPlate.com and help make waves for a better tomorrow.
Since 2013, the Conservancy has awarded over $18.2 million in 296 separate Explore the Coast grants and brought over 185,000 people on field trips to the coast (updated October 2022). ETC grants fund a wide range of programs that bring people to the coast or to the shores of San Francisco Bay. At least 70% of participants served by the ETC grant must be from an ETC Priority Community. In addition to meeting this requirement, projects must also meet the following program priorities:
Examples of ETC Grantees: The Amah Mutsun Land Trust’s Summer Camp provides Native American youth meaningful and fun experiences to enjoy their coastal ancestral territory on the San Mateo and Santa Cruz coast while learning about coastal conservation and traditional ecological knowledge. Participants experience hands-on cultural learning and coastal, recreational activities that promote appreciation and connection their cultural identities. Brown Girl Surf’s Surf Sister Program offers surfing lessons, history, and ocean education for women and girls who identify as Black, Indigenous, or people of color primarily from Alameda and other Bay Area Counties. The program builds a welcoming community of “surf sisters” who support each other to surf and safely enjoy the ocean. In San Diego, Outdoor Outreach’s Coastal Adventure Club Program creates coastal outings for disadvantaged youth to go kayaking, paddle boarding, surfing, biking, hiking, and tide-pooling. This program also offers a pathway to job and leadership opportunities where participants can go on to become instructors and peer mentors for other youth in the program. Environmental Traveling Companions offers life-changing sea kayaking, whitewater rafting, and cross-country skiing, and youth leadership adventures to more than 100,000 people with special needs, including people with visual or mobility impairments, developmental disabilities, cancer and other life-threatening illness, and youth from economically disadvantaged backgrounds. Environmental Traveling Companions has received Explore the Coast grants to facilitate sea kayaking adventures in Richardson and Tomales Bay in the San Francisco Bay Area.
For any questions about the Explore the Coast grant program, please email [email protected]. Programs that teach Californian’s to value the state’s coastal resources or programs that combine education with beach maintenance and habitat restoration projects should also consider applying for a Coastal Commission Whale Tail Grants. For almost a century, the automobile has been much more than a mere mode of transportation, but rather an extension of its owner's personality with its style and panache. The auto makers sought to capitalize on America's thirst for style and power in providing sleek and faster cars which pandered to the public's desire to have their car reflect their own self image. Ever changing designs, brighter colors and engine size contributed to the symbolic nature of the automobile for its owner.  As an extension of the goal of making your car an extension of your personality or self-image is the specialty license plate. Usually connected to a charity or state agency, the specialty license plate provides the quintessential "win win" dynamic in that the vehicle owner can both help a legitimately good cause and own a license plate make a social statement to those who see it, or maybe just look cool with its colors and design. In California, a new specialty plate has been approved which boldly touches all of those bases. It is the Endless Summer specialty license plate, which incorporates the theme from Bruce Brown's iconic Endless Summer movie from the 1960's. The exquisite design of the plate, with its bright yellow background and setting sun, evokes imagery of California's pristine beaches, beautiful sunny days and sport of surfing and embraces the California state of mind. Because funds from the sale of this specialty license plate help fund California's Coastal Conservancy, which promotes and protects the public's access to California's beaches, anyone who purchases the plate not only gets to display the beautiful and radiant plate on their car, but also promotes the many goals of that wonderful state agency. The legacy of Endless Summer is that it is more than a movie of youth, oceans and the pursuit of the perfect wave. It is symbolic of an optimistic state of mind reflecting sunny days, summer breezes and beautiful vistas. You can help preserve California's coast and project a sunny and optimistic statement for your car or motorcycle. For more information as to how you can register for the presale, click here. The proposed Endless Summer license plate has been awaiting final visibility testing by CHP for over 3 months.
California Code of Regulations, 13 CACode of Regs, 160.04, requires: (4) The design must meet the following standards after testing by the Department of California Highway Patrol (CHP): (A) The registration number must be clear and legible to a person with 20/20 vision in daylight from a distance of 75 feet, and in darkness with low-beam headlamps from 75 feet; and (B) The registration number must be able to be accurately perceived by Automated License Plate Reader technology in use in California from a distance of 35 feet at daytime, dusk and nighttime. The California State Coastal Conservancy announced more than $39 million in funding for projects to improve public access, climate resilience, habitat values, and inclusion at the coast.
“The Coastal Conservancy’s vision is of a beautiful, restored, and accessible coast for current and future Californians. To achieve this, we fund projects that support the coast’s natural resources, projects that prepare the coast for the challenges of a changing climate, and projects that help more people enjoy the coast.” said Amy Hutzel, Executive Officer of the Coastal Conservancy. Among the awards were several projects that will expand the Californians’ ability to access and enjoy the coast: $1,104,736 was awarded to eight non-profit organizations for Coastal Stories projects that will create storytelling installations, murals, or interpretive materials that represent diverse communities’ perspectives that historically have been excluded from narratives of California’s coast and publicly accessible lands. This is the second round of funding through the Conservancy’s Coastal Stories grant program. The Big Sur Land Trust was awarded $2,750,000 to acquire the 84-acre Hiss Parcelin the City of Monterey for natural resource conservation, California Native American tribal cultural resource conservation, habitat connectivity, California Native American tribal access, and public access. Orange County Coastkeeper was awarded $250,000 for the Beach and Coast Accessibility Program to provide grants to nonprofits, public entities, and tribes for beach wheelchairs and other equipment to increase accessibility to California’s beaches and coast in coastal counties statewide. Sustainable Conservation was awarded $270,300 to augment the Conservancy’s existing grant of $620,000 to advance adoption of, and conduct outreach to facilitate the use of, programmatic permits for aquatic habitat restoration and water quality improvement projects. Defenders of Wildlife and Sea Otter Savvy were awarded $174,400 to implement two separate projects to aid in the recovery of the southern sea otter. FOR MORE INFORMATION on the awarded projects CLICK HERE. Coastal Conservancy has announced the availability of grants to public agencies, federally recognized tribes and California Native American communities, and nonprofit organizations for programs that facilitate and enhance the public’s opportunities to explore California’s spectacular coast and San Francisco Bay shoreline through Coastal Conservancy's Explore the Coast Grant Program.
Applicants may request a grant amount of up to $100,000. Approximately $800,000 is available for this grant round. Approximately $134,000 of the $800,000 is available for participants to go to the San Francisco Bay shoreline. The remaining $666,000 must be used to bring participants to the outer coast. The application deadline is January 31, 2024 by 11.59pm. Applicants should apply for projects that aim to start in late 2024 or early 2025 and aim to be completed by December 2027. The Conservancy will base the size of the award on each project’s needs, its overall benefits, and the extent of competing demands for funds. More information on the RFP and how to apply can be found here. The purpose of the Strategic Plan is to provide an overall vision for our agency and quantified objectives to measure the effectiveness of our work. The Strategic Plan articulates our view of the future of the California coast and its watersheds over the next five years—including the opportunities to improve resilience to climate change and to promote environmental equity and justice. The Coastal Conservancy has been guided by a five year Strategic Plan for the past twenty years. The current plan was adopted in November 2017 and set goals and objectives for 2018- 2022. It is now time for the Conservancy to adopt a new Strategic Plan for the five year period of 2023-2027. The Strategic Plan update creates an opportunity for the Conservancy to hear from our partners – nonprofit organizations, tribes, local governments, community groups, state and federal agencies, private landowners, conservation organizations, other conservation funders, and the public – about their vision and priorities for our work. The plan can be found here. SCC welcomes your comments on this draft between now (August 15, 2022) and October 1, 2022. Please use the form here to submit comments. Comments can also be emailed to [email protected]. The Conservancy hosted a webinar on March 28, 2022 to kick off the strategic planning process. The webinar discussed the process of developing the plan for 2023-2027, the Conservancy’s role, and the resources that may be available to us in the next five years.
The recording of the webinar can be found here. The Conservancy held several listening sessions and Focus Groups in April, May, and June to get input from partners on specific topics or focal areas. Over 1,000 individuals participated in these sessions. A report on this process and the key themes that emerged can be found here. California beaches had excellent water quality in summer 2021, according to the thirty-second annual Beach Report Card that environmental nonprofit Heal the Bay released today. Heal the Bay assigned “A-to-F” letter grades for 500 California beaches in the 2021-2022 report, based on levels of fecal-indicator bacterial pollution in the ocean measured by County health agencies. In addition, the group ranked water quality at 35 freshwater recreation areas in Los Angeles County for summer 2021 and shared findings from the third annual River Report Card. The good news is 94% of the California beaches assessed by Heal the Bay received an A or B grade during summer 2021, which is on par with the five-year average. Even so, Heal the Bay scientists remain deeply concerned about ocean water quality. Polluted waters pose a significant health risk to millions of people in California. People who come in contact with water with a C grade or lower are at a greater risk of contracting illnesses such as stomach flu, ear infections, upper respiratory infections, and rashes. Beaches and rivers usually have high-risk water quality following a rain event. Less rain typically means that reduced amounts of pollutants, including bacteria, are flushed through storm drains and rivers into the ocean. Last year, rainfall across coastal counties in California was 24 percent lower than the historical average. Only 66% of California beaches had good or excellent grades during wet weather, which was a little above average, but still very concerning. “A day at the beach and the river shouldn’t make anyone sick,” said Tracy Quinn, President and CEO of Heal the Bay. “It is wonderful news that most beaches in California have good water quality for swimming. But there are areas with poor water quality that need improvement and infrastructure upgrades. We can’t forget that our marine ecosystems are still threatened by the climate crisis and other pollution sources, and we need solutions to address these pressing issues as well. We expect people to increasingly seek out ocean shorelines and freshwater swimming holes to cool off as temperatures rise, so safe, clean, and healthy water is needed now more than ever.” Heal the Bay’s Beach Report Card and River Report Card provide access to the latest water quality information and are a critical part of our science-based advocacy work in support of strong environmental policies that protect public health. The full report can be downloaded here.
You did your part for Earth Day by picking up trash at a beach cleanup and now you’re done, right? Not so fast. Cash Daniels wants you to do a bit more. The 12-year-old from Chattanooga, Tenn., has personally organized cleanups and removed thousands of pounds of garbage over the last five years from a stretch of the Tennessee River near his home. The Tennessee is one of the most microplastics-polluted rivers in the world. “I’m making a difference on the environment,” he said in a recent phone call. “I don’t like seeing plastic lying around anywhere.” His efforts have led to partnerships with nonprofit organizations such as Tennessee Beautiful and Keep America Beautiful. Daniels, a finalist for Time magazine’s Kid of the Year 2022, also co-founded a group called the Cleanup Kids to motivate others to follow his example. Now he’s challenging young people around the world (or anyone, really) to collectively pick up 1 million pounds of litter in 2022. How will he measure their progress? Through trash-tracking apps like Litterati, which encourages people to pick up trash and share photos online to create a global cleanup community. How much trash is there in the U.S.? Keep America Beautiful’s 2020 National Litter Study estimates there are 50 billion pieces of litter or “152 pieces of litter for every U.S. resident.” That means if each person picked up their share, the country could be litter-free. Start by joining the 24th Great American Cleanup, which is underway now through June 22. It’s hosted by Keep America Beautiful, which started in 1953 when litter was mostly found alongside America’s highways. The organization offers free cleanup kits to help you get started. Other things to do: In Southern California, join year-round cleanup groups and turn out for these events: Other things to do: In Southern California, join year-round cleanup groups and turn out for these events:
Story by BY MARY FORGIONE CLICK HERE FOR MORE
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