Problematic Coastal Development
March 16, 2022

A chunk of Rancho Palos Verdes is sliding into the sea. Can the city stop it? – the Los Angeles Times
Excerpt:
A drive along the ocean on the Palos Verdes Peninsula is Southern California at its finest. Sunlight dances on the water. Coves are pristine, unsullied by development. Catalina Island appears so near you can almost spot the bison.
Look a bit closer, though, and you’ll see signs of a disaster waiting to happen.
An above-ground sewage pipe snakes along the road. The pavement on Palos Verdes Drive South is rutted and warped, jutting up and down like an asphalt roller coaster. The hills are strewn with houses on makeshift foundations, perched on haphazard stilts and shipping containers.
The problem: A dormant landslide complex that shaped the south side of the Palos Verdes Peninsula for hundreds of thousands of years was reactivated 67 years ago, and it’s threatening to destroy homes and infrastructure.
Palos Verdes Peninsula has long been prone to landslides, and the most dramatic one is affecting Portuguese Bend, an area named after a Portuguese whaling operation, now known for its natural beauty and native vegetation. The geological phenomenon has hit a 240-acre area hard over the last seven decades, causing fissures to open in the earth and homes to strain, buckle and drift, sometimes outright wandering onto adjacent properties…
SHARE THIS ARTICLE
Photo Above: Landslide prone area of Rancho Palos Verdes © 2022 Deepika Shrestha Ross.
More on Problematic Coastal Development . . .

Shifting Sands: Carolina’s Outer Banks Face a Precarious Future – Yale Environment 360
Cottages have been tumbling into the ocean for as long as humans have been building along the Outer Banks. The difference now is that they appear to be falling in at a faster rate, and scores of homes are now at risk.
Areas of the Outer Banks have retreated over 200 feet in the last two decades and are currently losing about 13 feet a year…

The uninsurables: how storms and rising seas are making coastlines unliveable – the Guardian
With 10% of Canadian homes now uninsurable due to extreme weather, the climate crisis forces people to make hard choices about where they live . . .

We Will All End Up Paying for Someone Else’s Beach House – New York Times
As sea level rises and storm surges grow more intense, beach towns on every coast of the United States will soon be sacrificing more real estate to Poseidon… more than 300,000 coastal homes, currently worth well over $100 billion, are at risk of “chronic inundation” by 2045.

She survived Hurricane Sandy. Then climate gentrification hit
Kimberly White Smalls needed her coastal home rebuilt, but like other Black residents of New York’s Far Rockaway neighborhood, she was moved instead…

Resort plan for SC barrier island advances with county now saying it’s ‘ecotourism’
Plans to build a resort on a remote island off South Carolina’s coast took a step forward this week, now with word from Beaufort County staff that the plans can qualify as “ecotourism.”

Fixed for Failure: How flood insurance keeps dangerous homes standing in SC
Flooding caused by rising tides, hurricane-force winds and rain deluges, has left a glut of damaged properties in South Carolina’s real estate market, specifically in cities along the coast.

Connecting coastal processes with global systems
We live, work, and play at the coast. About 40 percent of the world’s population currently lives near the coast. By 2100, more than twice as many people could live in areas susceptible to flooding, given sea level rise, urban growth, and high carbon dioxide emission scenarios.

Editorial: Oppose barrier island development, South Carolina
A $100 million project for a high-end resort on Bay Point Island didn’t meet Beaufort County’s definition of “ecotourism” in December. But now they do.

Research shows how park-like tsunami defenses can provide a sustainable alternative to towering seawalls
Giant seawalls are the conventional approach to mitigating tsunami risk. But, coastal forests can help put the brakes on tsunami flow speeds in costal communities. These and other nature-based solutions are increasingly important in plans for coastal risk management, researchers demonstrated.