Additional planning, design and feedback is needed for the portion of the plan including La Jolla Shores. Other San Diego projects will move forward.
A city of San Diego plan to mitigate the effects of sea level rise is moving forward without the previously-included location in La Jolla Shores, as more planning for that area is needed.
The city unveiled its Coastal Resilience Master Plan in 2024, a roadmap to combat sea level rise, protect and enhance coastline habitats and support coastal access and recreation.
Six locations with specific plans for each were originally developed, following San Diego’s receipt of two national and state grants to address the rising ocean with nature-based solutions.
Sea level rise is handled in a variety of approaches: protect (stop the impact); accommodate (react to the impacts as they occur); retreat (remove assets from the hazard zones) or a hybrid of all the above.
In La Jolla Shores, the plan was to make use of a seatwall (as opposed to a seawall, which already exists).
The seatwall would have flanked the east side of the boardwalk along the entire length of the parking lot area, creating earthen dikes, or berms, for flood protections during storm events, with attempts to terrace the approximately five-foot berm on the seaward side to provide areas for viewing picnicking.
At early feedback sessions, several La Jolla Shores residents, including advocate Mary Coakley Munk, took issue with the plans.
Building a berm would “create a river,” she told lajolla.ca Aug 22, preventing safe passage through the area.
None of the plans “made any sense for our park,” Coakley Munk said. “It was poorly done.”
“The La Jolla Shores site is still included within the Coastal Resilience Master Plan as a high-level concept design, but is not currently recommended by staff for further design or to move forward as a Capital Improvement Project at this time,” city spokesperson Kelly Terry said.
“Additional community engagement will take place before the design moves forward,” Terry added, “to create a shared vision for the coast.”
Coakley Munk is hoping for a rebuild of the boardwalk and seawall as part of the solution, but acknowledges that it doesn’t fit within the scope of the funding for “natural resolutions.”
Enhancing the seawall, Terry said, “would require additional funding to understand cost and project tradeoffs.”
Rebuilding the boardwalk is included on a circulating, collaborative list of La Jollans’ budget requests for the next fiscal year.
Coming up with a new, effective plan is critical, Coakley Munk said, as sea level rise is expected to create additional problems in the near future.
“There are modifications that can help with the problem in the short term,” she said, adding that “regardless of sea level rise, it’s very clear we need to replace the seawall.”
