The threat of a rise in sea levels is much on the minds of local planners. Few, though, appear to have as much at stake in that anticipated phenomenon as those involved with San Francisco International Airport and its immediate environs.
The airport, though owned and operated by San Francisco authorities, is located within San Mateo County. It’s one of the main drivers of the county’s economy, directly and on down the monetary food chain. SFO is big business. Very big.
Over 52 million passengers flowed through the airport during the past fiscal year, according to information provided by airport authorities. Beyond that, more than 535,000 metric tons of freight were handled by the 55 airlines that use SFO.
It is estimated that at least 186,000 jobs can be attributed to this local economic engine last year. Total revenues were pegged at $51 billion. SFO is essentially a city unto itself. Small wonder that protecting this sprawling property is a priority.
Doug Yakel, SFO’s chief public information officer, pointed out recently that the airport’s perimeter, most of it shoreline, amounts to 8 miles in all. That includes two canals in San Bruno and Millbrae that need to be addressed.
SFO has budgeted $590 million to strengthen its defenses against climate change and feared sea-level rise. SFO documents note that steel pile walls will be raised up to 42 inches to account for a potential sea level rise, in addition to work to address the risk of a 100-year flood. Yakel said rip rap (large rocks and boulders) will also be used to bolster the extensive barrier system.
At least six permits from a variety of governmental agencies will be required to secure permission to begin construction. Only one permit has been obtained so far, he said. Airport revenue bonds will be used to pay for the work which is expected to take seven years to finish, he added.
ANNIVERSARY ADDENDUM: SFO is nearing its 100th anniversary. It began operations in 1927 as Mills Field Municipal Airport. The original 150-acre parcel, a former cow pasture, was leased from the Mills Estate.
The airport grew steadily over time. In 1930, San Francisco purchased what had become airport land and added to it, bringing the total to 1,112 acres at that time.
World War II saw significant changes as military uses took precedence. A Coast Guard air station remains located on the north end of the SFO property. It is one of the airport’s longest-tenured tenants.
In 1946, one year after the war ended, the airport experienced its first international flight. It’s become a West Coast hub for foreign travel ever since.
Long runways were created by using fill material to stretch the airport out into San Francisco Bay. A repeat of that construction is verboten today.
A proposal to add a new runway setup to the east of the existing facilities was killed due to concerns about the Bay ecosystem, among other worries. The aim of that proposal was to ease landing delays caused by inclement weather or other impediments.
REMEMBERING SCOOP: His name came up during last week’s 33rd Peninsula Sports Hall of Fame induction affair at the San Mateo County History Museum. Warren “Scoop” Wynkoop was one of a kind.
More than a half-century ago, he reported on the athletic achievements of the denizens of San Bruno for the weekly San Bruno Herald. Energetic and enthusiastic, he never let an over-the-top word or phrase go to waste when describing the sporting activities of San Bruno’s young people.
His glowing reports were eagerly awaited each week by his loyal readers. He took photos too. For a time, he had a local radio show that focused on the North County as well. He became something of a celebrity within a small but busy suburban world. Then he was gone.
The Herald was sold and Scoop was laid off. A few years later, he became ill. He sadly passed away much too soon. He was just 46 when he died in 1976.
WE WISH WIENER WELL: Our fingers are delicately crossed. State Sen. Scott Wiener of San Francisco, a Democrat who represents a portion of the North County, has filed to run for Congress in 2028. We can only pray he pursues that seat, wins and leaves for Washington where his influence would be mercifully much reduced. Wiener’s work in Sacramento has been marked by persistent, intrusive hostility to the suburbs as he pushes laws to force unwilling towns to build multiunit housing in residential neighborhoods long-dedicated exclusively to single-family homes.
Email: johnhorganmedia@gmail.com.
John Horgan began writing a neighborhood diary at the tender age of 9 in San Mateo. He’s been doing much the same thing as a Peninsula journalist for decades ever since. You can contact him by email at johnhorganmedia@gmail.com.
{{description}}
Email notifications are only sent once a day, and only if there are new matching items.
Please purchase a Premium Subscription to continue reading.
To continue, please log in, or sign up for a new account.
We offer one free story view per month. If you register for an account, you will get two additional story views. After those three total views, we ask that you support us with a subscription.
A subscription to our digital content is so much more than just access to our valuable content. It means you’re helping to support a local community institution that has, from its very start, supported the betterment of our society. Thank you very much!
Only subscribers can view and post comments on articles.
Already a subscriber? Login Here
Sorry, an error occurred.
Already Subscribed!
Cancel anytime
Thank you .
Your account has been registered, and you are now logged in.
Check your email for details.
Submitting this form below will send a message to your email with a link to change your password.
An email message containing instructions on how to reset your password has been sent to the email address listed on your account.
No promotional rates found.
Secure & Encrypted
Thank you.
Your gift purchase was successful! Your purchase was successful, and you are now logged in.
| Rate: | |
| Begins: | |
| Transaction ID: |
A receipt was sent to your email.
(12) comments
John - as Roosevelt once said, there is nothing to fear except fear itself. "its defenses against climate change and feared sea-level rise." As of today there is still scant evidence of an impending sea level rise. Measurements taken at the Golden Gate have not indicated any significant change in rise for decades, unless of course you believe millimeters are fearsome. This is all pushed to keep the labor unions and the bond underwriters in business. It is simply unconscionable to start spending precious capital based on flawed mathematical models.
Sea Level Rise is more prevalent on the Atlantic side of the US and in the Gulf of Mexico - just check with friends in red state Florida for confirmation. There is definitely more flooding in Miami.
On the Pacific side we are a few years behind. But again check with friends in Honolulu and they can confirm. Climate change denial is quite common in California as sea levels are currently still fairly stable due to cooler streams coming from Alaska. That will change in a few years.
https://youtu.be/z2UKvrU5rOk
So now the big question is, with all the knowledge of sea level rise and the cost associated with that, why has SamTrans decided to stay on that little island just North of the Airport instead of moving their North Base yard to a higher location? It's extra expensive to build on landfill and it's going to be extra expensive to protect that island.
https://publicceo.com/2021/09/samtrans-awards-contract-for-electric-bus-infrastructure-at-bases/
Well said, Mr. van Ulden. Sounds like another $590 million make-work project to reward labor unions – even though this $590 million could be used for something more immediate. Perhaps toss some money to stripe a few bike lanes (without a road diet, of course) even though it would be difficult to haul checked-in luggage while riding a bike. But it can be done, right eGerd?
$590M to secure millions of important cargo and business flights or $300M or $500M to eminent-domain properties for useless highway intersections at 101/92 or 101/84 to provide better "joyriding". The Union money is always going to unnecessary car projects.
Tbot - You can take a bike or scooter with you on your plane to New York - even as a carry-on.
Try that one with your car :-)
Sea Level Rise is real. See today's DJ article about King Tide flooding at local marinas: "After roughly six years of discussion, a project to stem flooding impacts by raising Oyster Point Marina dock entrances is underway in South San Francisco.
According to a staff report, the dock entrances are “inundated with seawater” during King Tides, meaning boaters must wade through up to 6 feet of water, and the issue is expected to worsen over time as sea levels rise."
Just because you havn't seen something with your own eyes doesn't mean it doesn't exist. You can disagree with the local solutions, but sea level rise is real, and it is going to be costly to all taxpayers, not just those owning costal land.
KDM - please do some research before you conflate King Tides with sea level rise. The former have much to do with the position of the moon relative to the earth. King Tides have been around and recorded for centuries at most coastal areas including my native The Netherlands. Sea level rise is a scare tactic pushed by bored pseudo-scientists and politicians looking for grist. Let 's pray that Trump's tax bill permanently removes funding for this hoax.
And yet it is the Netherlands where few people are still in denial about global warming and sea level rise. They have been installing bike infrastructure to reduce air pollution and GHG emissions for over 50 years now. They have also been pushing electrified public transportation to reduce private car dependence.
And since Dutch Ben Van Beuren - the former CEO of one of history's largest GHG emitters (Shell) has admitted multiple times that fossil fuels are responsible for man made climate change it seems weird for normal people to still push the 'outdated denial' story.
Unless of course someone is a paid lobbyist and therefore financially rewarded for spreading misinformation.
https://news.mongabay.com/2023/03/sea-level-rise-looms-even-for-the-best-prepared-country-on-earth/
For easygerd - your report and reply regarding the GHG and sea level rise issues in the Netherlands are outdated. There is a new government that is desperately trying to dump all of these mandates which come from Brussels. And Shell has prevailed in court over these Greenie lunatics. Their electrification is turning into a disaster as the transmission and distribution entities cannot accommodate the intermittency of the generation sources. Please stay current as the Green alarmists are losing their audience all over Europe with their chicken-little mentality.
So a new Dutch government fixed Global Warming and Sea Level Rise all by themselves? Outstanding.
How soon will they be able to remove all the levees and green energy windmills the Dutch have been using for centuries to make their country inhabitable?
Unfortunately - and that might be news to you - that new Dutch government just collapsed and we will never find out how they did fix sea level rise.
easygerd- that new government did not collapse, but the largest party, the PVV, pulled out because of the migration issue. The PVV party was also quite leery about the expenditures of the Green lunacy. That party also has stated that while global warming may be occurring, there is little that The Netherlands itself can do to stop it. Since I was a kid growing up in the Netherlands, we progressed from walking to cycling, to mopeds and then to cars, which had nothing to do with climate mitigation but it dealt with comfort and a preferable lifestyle. The Dutch are still avid cyclers although they are slowly moving toward E-bikes. This has more to do with convenience than with preserving the climate. You need to dig a little deeper to understand the Dutch. They are not just windmills and tulips. And as has been said, one can tell a Dutch, but one cannot tell him much. In that vein, I have not lost my heritage, even after being a proud American for 60 years.
eGerd – TBot here. News flash… The US of A is not the Netherlands, in area or population. And even if there were such a thing as man-made global warming, nobody seems to care. China, India, and other undeveloped (and even developed) countries continue to burn fossil fuels to their hearts’ desires. Even those who take 400+ private jets to, of all things, attend a climate conference to lecture us on the ills of fossil fuels, only talk the talk but don’t walk the walk. BTW, do folks in the Netherlands also have issues with lugging home 10 bags of groceries or a case of water on their bikes?
"That party also has stated that while global warming may be occurring, there is little that The Netherlands itself can do to stop it."
That is basically the excuse we hear from every corrupt, selfish, clueless and lazy organization these days: "We only make up X% of GHG emissions, so what can we really do?".
But that is still different from Climate Change denial only flatearthers, anti-vaxxers, DC lobbyists and San Mateo Democrats are doing these days (It's San Mateo that removes bike lanes).
Every single CEO of the major oil companies and their researchers have confessed before congress that fossil fuels created global warming and they even provided the math behind it.
It's Saudi Arabia, Texas, Kansas, Oklahoma, Alaska, the Dakotas that have ramped up their wind turbines and solar installations. All while CA is mostly installing batteries - made in Texas.
Welcome to the discussion.
Log In
Keep the discussion civilized. Absolutely NO personal attacks or insults directed toward writers, nor others who make comments.
Keep it clean. Please avoid obscene, vulgar, lewd, racist or sexually-oriented language.
Don't threaten. Threats of harming another person will not be tolerated.
Be truthful. Don't knowingly lie about anyone or anything.
Be proactive. Use the 'Report' link on each comment to let us know of abusive posts.
PLEASE TURN OFF YOUR CAPS LOCK.
Anyone violating these rules will be issued a warning. After the warning, comment privileges can be revoked.