Already this year, high tides have crashed into oceanfront homes in Long Beach and flooded streets across Orange County. And this year’s El Niño is only getting stronger, with more coastal flooding expected this winter as the record-breaking weather system delivers big storms and high tides.
California used to have a natural buffer to such forces. Coastal wetlands essentially act as natural sponges, sopping up extra water from stormwater runoff or high tides and reducing the impacts of flooding. But these natural sponges had a major drawback: They were located right along prime oceanfront real estate.
As California’s population grew and development grew with it, coastal wetland habitats were among the first to go. And today, the effects of all that change are being felt, and seen, in low-lying coastal communities up and down the state.
Around 1850, Southern California had approximately 33,400 acres of coastal wetland habitats. In the more than a century since then, over 62% of those historic wetlands have been lost. The region’s remaining wetlands “are mostly diminished, altered, and highly vulnerable to the impacts of sea level rise,” according to the Southern California Wetlands Recovery Project. Statewide, 90% of the state’s coastal wetlands have disappeared over the past 150 years due to development patterns of filling in, building on top of or otherwise altering wetlands…