California for the first time will begin tracking whether airports, utilities, water agencies and others are planning for future sea-level rise under legislation now on the desk of Gov. Jerry Brown (D).

The state's Legislature last week passed A.B. 2516, from Assemblyman Richard Gordon (D), which directs the creation of the Sea Level Rise Database. The bill requires a number of state government departments, commissions, local planning agencies and others to file any reports they've generated on risks from higher waters and any planned defenses.

Gordon, who leads the Assembly Select Committee on Sea Level Rise and the California Economy, said a series of hearings that the panel held in 2013 and earlier this year showed there's a paucity of communication about adaptation.

"One of the things that became very clear there's a lot of people thinking, planning, exploring, but nobody knows what anybody else is doing," Gordon said. "People are kind of operating in a vacuum."

The database will "bring together in one place all of the work that's going on," he said, and "give us at the state level a better chance to see where there are gaps, where people are not doing anything about this."

Parts of California are seen to be at high risk for damage due to rising waters. Sea levels at the Golden Gate are projected to rise 4 ½ feet by 2100. San Francisco International Airport sits at the current level of the San Francisco Bay. Multiple neighborhoods in San Mateo County and some well-known technology business in Silicon Valley lie in the path of where waters could flow (ClimateWire, Dec. 20, 2012). There are residential sectors already hit by flooding (ClimateWire, Dec. 21, 2012).

The new state database would gather information from airports, ports, and electric and natural gas utilities within the state's coastal zone or the San Francisco Bay Area. Inputs would also come from the state Energy Commission, Department of Transportation, Lands Commission, Water Resources Control Board, Coastal Commission and Coastal Conservancy; from regional water quality control boards; and from the San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission.

By 2015, they would need to submit any studies, modeling, cost-benefit analyses, vulnerability assessments, adaptation appraisals or other work they've done on sea-level rise. Starting in 2016, they would need to update their filings twice a year.

The measure does not compel them to do any planning, only to report what they have done. The Legislation also was amended in the Senate to add a sunset date of 2018. If it's not renewed by then, the law would no longer be in effect.

"Part of any legislative process is ... I have to deliver a bill on the governor's desk that the governor will sign. Our governor in California is very cautious about expenditures," Gordon said. "By putting a two-year sunset on this activity, we reduced the costs tremendously and I think delivered a bill that will be far easier for this governor to sign."

Spotting risks -- paying for them comes later

Some said that the database is a good starting point.

"It will shine a spotlight on what's happening," said Ethan Elkind, a climate research fellow at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law. The database, he said, will be "putting this on people's radar that sea-level rise is happening and it's going to get worse."

It also will be attaching a cost to climate change, he said, if any of the plans for dealing with sea-level rise have spending estimates.

But one person familiar with the politics of the measure, who asked not to be identified to speak freely, criticized A.B. 2516 as weak.

The person said that Gordon would have preferred a bill with a mandate for sea-level rise planning, but that there was "no appetite" for that, and no state money to fund a requirement.

Gordon said it's accurate that "we certainly did not see a funding source at the moment for the level of planning dollars that you would need to provide to all communities," if there were an adaptation planning requirement.

Gordon said that he sees his work on the issue as incremental.

"Someday, everybody's going to need to be engaged in adaptation and everybody's going to need to be engaged in planning," Gordon said. Down the road, he said, the state likely will need to mandate planning or offer incentives to drive it.

"In California, we cannot ignore that our seas are rising," Gordon said. "We have to get to a place where we are planning across the state to deal with our rising seas. Eventually, if communities have not done planning, we're going to need to find a way to get them engaged in that process."

Elkind noted that California in the past has approved measures that were just informational, but later could be seen as the groundwork for binding legislation. Before the passage of A.B. 32, the state's historic climate law, there was a move to inventory greenhouse gas emissions.

Preventing '100 disconnected projects'

A.B. 2516 is important in light of a Little Hoover Commission report in July that looked at how to make California's state and local governments more effective in the face of climate change, said Will Travis, a consultant on sea-level rise adaptation planning.

The Little Hoover Commission report found that while there is an increased awareness of warming impacts, entities are using different data and projections.

"Cities, counties, regional governing agencies and even the state lack reliable, consistent information to guide decision-making, particularly regarding long-range infrastructure investments and land-use choices," it said.

The report called for a new state entity that would "provide them the best and newest science and risk assessment methodologies as they evolve." Centralizing information "could create conditions for smarter response at all levels of California government," it said.

But A.B. 2516 could be a better first move, Travis said.

"Let's find out what's out there" in terms of information before centralizing it, Travis said.

At least 25 disparate efforts looking at climate change impacts currently are underway in the San Francisco Bay Area, said Bruce Riordan, climate strategist at the Bay Area Joint Policy Committee. It coordinates the planning efforts of the Association of Bay Area Governments, the Bay Area Air Quality Management District, the Bay Conservation and Development Commission and the Metropolitan Transportation Commission.

The largest number of those projects focuses on sea-level rise, Riordan said. Most are still in the information-gathering stage. They could benefit, he said, from talking to each other, and money would be saved by "not reinventing the wheel."

"Because we have limited resources, we have to be strategic and careful," Riordan said. The Sea Level Rise Database, he said, will be beneficial because "we don't want to have just 100 disconnected projects."

New focus on adaptation

A.B. 2516 is one of the first measures in California dealing with climate adaptation, Travis said. The state has focused on how to shrink carbon emissions to limit warming with measures like the A.B. 32 climate law, and with others driving changes aimed at creating more walkable communities.

"There's been a hesitancy to look at adaptation because there's a fear that there's a message that we've given up in dealing with climate change, and it's simply inevitable," Travis said.

But planning should happen at the same time as global warming mitigation, he said.

Mike Kiparsky, associate director of the Wheeler Institute for Water Law & Policy at the UC Berkeley School of Law, said that recently, there's been "an explosion of interest" in adaptation strategies.

"It's an issue the state is going to have to grapple with in the near term" and in the longer term, he said.