One of the Bay Area’s most expensive enclaves relies on a two-lane road that will be covered by rising seas in the coming decades. A powerful homeowners group says the county must protect the road into the future — or be liable for billions of dollars of inaccessible real estate.
Calle del Arroyo in Stinson Beach runs half a mile from Highway 1 to the gated community of Seadrift. It’s the emergency access and tsunami evacuation route for about 500 homes both in Seadrift and on the town’s narrow beachfront lanes.
A recent Marin County sea level rise report for Stinson Beach recommended the road, which is county-owned, be raised soon, because it’s often impassable during annual king tides now and is expected to flood during major storms by around 2050, when storm surge swells the lagoon, and during monthly high tides by around 2060 to 2075…