Land use studies to address climate change along the Mendocino Coast open up opportunities for policy changes

MENDOCINO Co., 7/19/24 — Peter McNamee, of the GrassRoots Institute’s Mendocino Vision Working Group, describes what one may better term a nightmare than a vision. “Look at the trailer parks along the coast,” he says. “They’re at near sea level. We could have a king tide at the same time as a Pineapple Express storm that dumps 10 inches of rain during the night. There could be half a dozen breaches of State Route 1, the highway that people rely upon for emergency response. Some of those trailers could be washed out to sea. A local emergency response can’t manage a 129-mile coastline.”

This and other issues, such as climate refugees flooding the Mendocino Coast, the Blue Economy, water regulations and zoning changes, are what the county, cities, and the California Coastal Commission (CCC) are examining in a series of studies meant to update what the commission terms Local Coastal Programs (LCPs). These land use regulatory and management mechanisms were created after the California Coastal Act of 1976 was implemented in  1977. Some have been updated piecemeal, but the latest iteration is the first time the LCPs have been looked at as a whole in Mendocino County.

In an interview following the bimonthly meeting, McNamee describes the GrassRoots Institute’s role in the studies. “The idea behind the institute was that people in the community at the grassroots level should come together around concerns and questions. If there was a community consensus around solutions for common good, we would advocate for those. We had been working with the institute’s Climate Crisis Workgroup beginning in spring 2020. We considered how the county could address climate change issues and also how land use planning and development was conducted on the Mendocino Coast.”

At the same time, the state legislature allocated $30 million to the coastal commission for developing local coastal land use programs to address climate change. “Around September 2021, we contacted CCC staff as well as county supervisors and cities to talk about how to take advantage of tapping into these funds,” McNamee says. “The county and the cities all agreed to submit proposals to the Coastal Commission. The City of Point Arena received $100,000, Fort Bragg $800,000. Fort Bragg wanted to focus on developing a Blue Economy initiative at Noyo Harbor, which is not in Fort Bragg but is within the city’s sphere of influence. [Noyo Harbor is a district governed by a commission, while the marina itself is headed by Harbormaster Anna Neumann.] Because it’s not within the city, the county will utilize the results of that study. The county received around 2.5 million in two grants to do the balance of the local coastal program updating. This update is the first time since the original adoption of the local programs.”

A shared feeling at the GrassRoots-hosted Zoom meeting on July 18 was that land use planning must look not just at the issue of the moment but plan for the future. As McNamee puts it, “Sea level rise has changed the face of the coast. The coastal boundary is shrinking, moving inland. What we were aware of was that climate change was going to change everything.”

Researchers that study the relationship between climate change and housing predict that some 50 million Americans may move to more temperate zones, called climate havens. “When we looked at where the climatologists [place] these climate refugee havens, we’re in one,” McNamee says. “It starts in San Francisco and hooks up the coast and into Canada, moves across the Great Lakes and into New England. Our Mendocino County with 90,000 people but a landmass larger than two states will have to absorb a large number of people who are migrating out of these areas.”

Such issues were not high on the list when the coastal commission formulated its first land use plans for California’s coastal zone in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s. Then in its sights were heading off rampant development, prioritizing public access, restricting zoning to control housing density, and conserving native species, among others. These are still issues but they have been modified and added to by a host of other concerns. And public input now is mandated in each of the studies the commission is undertaking. Said McNamee, “This is the first time that the public could take an aggressive role in looking at coastal management from a public standpoint rather than from a development standpoint.”

At Thursday’s meeting, the county’s Director of Planning and Building Services’ Julia Krog, Mendocino Council of Government’s Loretta Ellard, and the Coastal Commission’s Amber Leavitt gave updates on studies currently underway. The studies include coastal transportation, water resources, biological concerns, archaeological and visual issues, climate change impacts on the county’s coastal zone, including sea level rise, and the Blue Economy, which the City of Fort Bragg describes as initiatives to promote job and economic growth while also nurturing healthy marine ecosystems. Consultants have been awarded contracts, and public input will be sought. Each study is on a slightly different timeline, so public opportunities to influence policy will vary in number and timing.

Explained McNamee: “The feeling was in the past when public agencies have done large-scale planning studies and redesign efforts, too often these are done internally and with consultants with very little public input, and then they’re presented as final draft products at the end of the process. The public doesn’t have a strong sense of how those studies were developed, what went into developing them and what questions were addressed. Often they don’t address what people in the community want to address.”

At the meeting several residents wanted to know when and how housing would be considered. Caspar’s Michael St. John asked why housing was not specifically studied. “Housing is in a crisis now, and as climate changes, more people are likely to come to the coast,” he said. “Zoning and Coastal Commission rules make it very hard for housing to be developed.”

Krog agreed that there is not a housing component at this point. She explained that these are baseline studies. For example, she said, the traffic study will determine how much traffic State Route 1 can accommodate, which then informs development. She also discussed the possibility of second residential units that may not have capped square footage and moveable tiny homes. “There are tweaks that we may talk about with the coastal commission,” she said. “Those conversations are coming.”

The commission’s Leavitt said that there are now sea level policy guidelines on the commission’s website, and that the commission just created a housing-related webpage. “Housing is not just more and more important in Mendocino County but is more important statewide,” she said. “We are prioritizing more staff time and bringing this topic to the commission.”

The big surprise came during a discussion of the Noyo Harbor study and how it might impact Fort Bragg. Leavitt mentioned that the coastal commission has funding for more studies that could be used in Fort Bragg proper. She explained that funding had been frozen for a time but now has opened up again. This gladdened Fort Bragg participants who hope the city will advocate for a study specific to the city.

Krog returned to the role of the public, using the groundwater study as an example. “We had a great amount of participation from individuals volunteering to monitor their well levels over the next year,” she said. “There will be similar opportunities for each of these studies. Each one has a stakeholder segment built into it. For instance, the sea level rise impact study has six public meetings. And there will be further opportunities once we get to policy development. We will likely be doing traveling meetings up and down the coast.” Residents can contact her through her email, krogj@mendocinocounty.gov and watch for notice of meetings in the Mendocino Voice.

This was the eighth meeting of the group, and McNamee believes that the meetings may move to monthly or biweekly as results of the studies begin to come in, towards the end of this year and early next year. All the Zoom meetings can be viewed at https://www.grassroots-institute.org/vision