Views

I may not be able to get home in 20 years – not because I’ve left the area, but because the roads to my house may be underwater. 

I live just a mile from the edge of Humboldt Bay in Northern California, the location of the most rapid sea level rise along the West Coast. 

The accelerated change is due to tectonic activity, which is causing the ground around and under the bay to sink at the same rate the sea level is rising. 

“Furthermore, much of the land surrounding Humboldt Bay is former marshland, which is more susceptible to inundation,” Stephen Kullmann, a commissioner with the Humboldt Bay Harbor, Recreation, and Conservation District, explained. 

That means the area’s ocean levels are rising twice as fast as the rest of the Californian Coast. According to the California Ocean Protection Council, the sea level in the Humboldt Bay region will rise as much as a foot by 2030, two by 2050, and three by 2060. 

To make matters worse, there’s a storage site holding 37 tons of nuclear waste at Humboldt Bay that would be exposed to salt water intrusion and wave erosion, which could leak toxic chemicals into the water. A Humboldt County Civil Grand Jury investigation cited that sea level rise threatens 9.6 miles of water transmission lines, 30 electrical transmission towers, contaminated former pulp mills, 52 Wiyot tribe cultural sites, and the road to the town King Salmon, where the nuclear waste site is located. Additionally, the six-mile stretch of Highway 101 that’s critical for transit between the cities of Arcata and Eureka will regularly flood by 2030.

The issue of rapid sea level rise in Humboldt Bay extends beyond our local community to all of California. We will be some of the first to experiment with adaptive planning for climate change, and could model solutions for other communities.