"Surrendering certain parts of [Alameda] to the incoming tides"

Under the headline of "Four Bay Area locations are sinking at an alarming rate, with implications for sea level rise" the San Francisco Chronicle reports that:

Land is sinking at an alarming rate in some parts of the Bay Area, exposing shorelines to worse threats from sea level rise than was previously projected, a new study has found. 

Several places along the San Francisco Bay — in San Rafael, Corte Madera, Foster City and Bay Farm Island next to the Oakland Airport — are sinking at a rate of more than 0.4 of an inch per year, the study from National Aeronautics and Space Administration found, based on satellite imagery. In those places, the sea level could rise by as much as 17 inches by 2050, more than double the regional average of 7.4 inches, compared to 2000 levels. 

So it's all the more timely that city staff are currently in the final phase of planning the Bay Farm Island Adaptation Project:

What: A near-term sea level rise adaptation project to address two feet of sea level rise over the coming decades. This project planning effort also includes long-term adaptation strategies for the project area (2080 and beyond).

Where: Bay Farm Island's northern shoreline for the near-term project and the entire Bay Farm Island for the long-term strategy, in concert with the Subregional Long-term Adaptation Plan, including Doolittle Drive/State Route 61, and a portion of east Oakland – Columbian Gardens neighborhood.

A "borderline ethical topic"

When Alameda's City Council recently heard an update from staff and consultants on this Bay Farm Island Adaptation Project in January, a strange thing happened — although it's not that strange if you've been following Councilmember Tony Daysog's comments in recent years.

Councilmember Daysog began his comments [as transcribed by an automated service]:

Alameda, like every city across the world but most especially those with shorelines, we're uniquely challenged by global warming and sea level rise, and I think because of that there are some important questions maybe some borderline ethical that we really have to have a public conversation about.

The borderline ethical topic? As he explained:

And I want to focus, for example, on the Veterans Court, but not just Veterans Court, but to the area that's the immediately to the left. Left? To the west of Veterans Court. Because it's like, I like the idea of nature based solutions. But there is no more nature based solution than basically surrendering certain parts of areas to the incoming tides.

He continued:

Granted, you do maybe want to put in some kind of marshes, etc. But I think that discussion really As a community we should be willing to engage in that kind of discussion. Most places, I think, they want to put seawalls everywhere. Go to Foster City, put seawalls, they don't want the water to come in. But I think here in Alameda, we've had robust discussions about giving up certain parts of Alameda Deepave Park on Alameda Point, where we're, purposely inviting the water to come over and take over certain lands. And I think we need to talk about that for the area that's adjacent to Veterans Court.

Because 30 or 40 years down the line, do we really contemplate spending X amount of dollars to save tennis courts? So these are ethical questions that we need to begin to have right now. Because if we have these discussions right now in terms of where we might surrender certain areas, that might then generate savings where we can even devote to, to areas further west of this area, which are very residential. I definitely support staff's recommendation and the work of CASA and all the residents who are involved. But, I think we of any cities in the Bay Area, we should welcome, discussions regarding, not just nature based solutions, but surrendering certain parts where it makes sense to the incoming tides.

Phew! Bay Farm homeowners can be relieved that Councilmember Daysog doesn't want to directly flood your homes. He just wants to have a conversation about "surrendering certain parts of [Alameda] to the incoming tides" regarding other entities' privately owned land.

Seeking the Green Party's endorsement

Daysog spoke to similar goals when he sought the endorsement of the Green Party in his failed run for US Congress last year. Here's his response to one of their questions:

Is this NIMBYism, environmental degrowth, and/or plain old civic cheapness?

What's the potential motivation at the root of Councilmember Daysog's comments about intentionally flooding the lands of private property owners, not just in Alameda but across the Bay Area?

NIMBYism? His talk about the tennis courts at Harbor Bay Club suggests that this is already an open, public, recreational space, so it would be a natural transition to turn tennis courts into tidelands. This continues a yearslong argument that the owners of the Harbor Bay Club parcel are not entitled to private property rights and that this site shouldn't be considered as just one of many places across Alameda subject to a city-wide systematic approach to zoning. In the words of one club member when asked about the owner's plans to potentially build housing on the site in 2022: "over my dead body"! Local blogger Robert Sullwold described three "Battles of Harbor Bay — to use similar language, Councilmember Daysog's comments about flooding the parcel would represent the "insurgents" winning a fourth "Battle of Harbor Bay" to finally prevent any additional housing units from being built on this site.

Degrowth? His writing about "industrial areas along the Bay Area shoreline" almost implies these places don't have much bearing on normal folks' day-to-day lives. But it's in the "industrial area" of Bay Farm that 150 people at Semifreddi's bake morning buns and Peet's roasts coffee, and Exelixis researches cancer treatments (among many other commercial tenants in Harbor Bay Business Park). Daysog's comments are, in this interpretation, a vision of "degrowth" — a vision of a world in which we all still live in our single-family houses, drive to Safeway for our groceries, drive to our doctors' offices — and yet those food products are produced nowhere, the workers at Safeway do not live anywhere, and the drugs prescribed by our doctors are neither researched nor manufactured anywhere. How and where we work to make money is unclear. Naturally, this "we" is likely a very select population.

Cheapness? What, I suspect, is primarily at the root of Councilmember Daysog's comment is just civic cheapness. He knows that facing climate change in a systematic and thorough manner requires public capacity and public spending — but he sees his role on City Council as representing a subset of constituents who believe that public spending is bad. Theirs isn't necessarily the most extreme form of Elon Musk- and Project 2025-style illegal impounding of allocated funds, illegal clawing back of contract payments, and having young men with nicknames such as "Big Balls" run private tax returns through a ChatGPT knockoff. Rather it's just the modern California tradition founded by Howard Jarvis, Paul Gann, and friends of opposing public funding for local public services.

Councilmember Daysog was carrying on this tradition last year when he spiked the city's effort to give local voters our own choice to decide whether to vote for or against a local infrastructure funding measure.

A vision for Alameda in 2026

To be clear: Adapting our shorelines for the future is a genuine opportunity to revisit decisions of the past. Ideally we're not just blindly spending funds to "harden" the existing status quo of land-use patterns. And ideally we're being fiscally prudent in how we pursue federal, state, and regional funds — and even more fiscally prudent in how we potentially ask ourselves and fellow voters to potentially approve taxes to raise revenues for targeted purposes.

And to be honest: I've also wondered occasionally how much I'd want my own household (with no waterfront views and outside of the 100 year floodplain) to have to share some of the costs of the most attractive and potentially costly locations to prepare for climate change.

But musing aloud about flooding someone's lot is not a thoughtful way to lead the local climate-adaptation effort. Nor is it leadership to suggest that property-owners along the bay shoreline should fend for themselves.

Should Councilmember Tony Daysog run for mayor in 2026, will cheap NIMBY degrowth be the vision of Alameda he's pitching us all on?