Palo Alto Project is Bay Area's First Horizontal Levee
ABAG Executive Board President Susan Adams and San Francisco Estuary Partnership assistant director Heidi Nutters today joined Palo Alto mayor Vicki Veenker, EPA deputy regional administrator Cheree Peterson, State Coastal Conservancy deputy executive officer Evyan Sloane, Palo Alto Public Works director Brad Eggleston, Association of Ramaytush Ohlone cultural director Gregg Castro and other dignitaries for a ribbon-cutting celebration to inaugurate the Palo Alto Horizontal Levee Pilot Project, a nature-based approach designed to help fragile marshlands adapt to rising sea levels.
The Palo Alto project — which involved more than seven years of planning, design, permitting and development — is part of a portfolio of local government initiatives supported by ABAG and the Estuary Partnership through the Adaptation and Resilience Technical Assistance Program. Using treated wastewater to irrigate and restore native habitat along its gentle, 500-foot-wide slope, the Palo Alto Horizontal Levee may provide a model for other bayfront cities' efforts to meet the challenges of rising waters, shrinking marshlands and dwindling habitat for native plants and animals.
"Communities around the Bay are facing the same fundamental question," noted Adams, who also serves as a member of the Rohnert Park City Council. "What are we going to do about sea level rise? I'm grateful the City of Palo Alto worked with ABAG to help answer that question. Restoring our natural habitats and protecting our shoreline is the kind of work that doesn't stop at city lines. It took a lot of smart people to figure out the practical, nature-based solutions. And it took government, private industry and community organizations working outside their usual lanes to build it. Most importantly, it took years of staying with it; of not giving up."