Recommendation to receive and file City of Long Beach Climate Resiliency Assessment Report from the Aquarium of the Pacific.
Mr.. Dr. Schaeuble is here and I had initially told him, I think. 530. So. Dr. Schaeuble, if I can have Madame Claude, can you read. Item number six, please. Communication from Mayor Garcia Recommendation to receive and filed City of Long Beach Climate Resiliency Assessment Report from the Aquarium of the Pacific. Thank you. Let me let me just begin by one, welcoming Dr. Schaeuble back to the council. We know Dr. Schaeuble well as not just a great resident of Long Beach, but obviously directs our great aquarium, which is not just one of the most important. We're not one of it's not only one of the most important cultural institutions that we have, but as an educational institution, it's a research institution. And so we want to thank you for your leadership. A year ago, I asked Dr. Schaeuble to prepare a climate change and climate adaptation resiliency report to present to the city and the city council. Dr. Schaeuble, over the course of the last year, brought together some of the top minds across the state in the country, including at the federal government, local universities and a bunch of other folks, to put together a really comprehensive and important report for the city. I think it's important to remind us, remind ourselves that climate change is real. Climate change is happening. It is having an impact on Long Beach and other coastal cities. And it is a serious challenge. We should not ignore it. It is it is already having an impact here and and globally. And it's our job as elected officials to do the responsible thing and to learn to adapt and do what we can to stop and slow really at this point, slow down what is already happening. As a community, we've done we've done two major things in the last year. One is we joined the Compact of Mayors Agreement. We are one of 250 cities in the U.S. that has agreed to a pretty strict standard of emission reduction over the course of the next 20, 30 years. And we've also asked the aquarium to put together this information and report for the council to review. And so I want to thank you, Dr. Shuba, and your team, and I'm to turn it over to him. Thank you. Thank you very much, Mr. Mayor. Honorable members of the city council, members of the city staff. You have the report and it's posted on our website if anybody behind me wants to read it in full tonight. What I want to do is give you a very brief overview of some some of the major findings of this report . That's what the cover looks like. It's in two parts. There's the assessment report, and then there are a series of appendices. What does it mean to be a climate resilient city? A climate resilient city is a city that's able to continue to function in the face of challenging circumstances due to climate change and to recover quickly from disruptions. And those disruptions with climate change would take the form in general of extreme weather related events. And there are four different dimensions of community resilience. There's leadership and strategy, infrastructure and environment, economy and society and health and wellbeing. And to have a resilient city, you have to be able to function in all of these areas, areas during trying circumstances. We have some unfair competitive advantages. I use the word unfair in the sense that Jack Welch of GE used to use it. Companies, cities, organizations should look at what with their unfair competitive advantages are. We're just the right size. We're small enough to be manageable and large enough to have national impact. We have wonderful, strong leadership, starting with the mayor and all of you in the city council and with the city manager's office and with most of the department . We have an outstanding water department. We've got in the in the health department transit and we have the the greenest port in the United States and probably the greenest port in the world. So we're off to a good running start. And as the mayor already mentioned, we're a member of the Compact of Mayors and the we'll become soon, I think, a member of 100 resilient cities. It's important to distinguish between mitigation and adaptation because they are totally different. Mitigation is when you reduce the driving forces of climate change, that is, you reduce the emission of greenhouse gases. You first stabilize the concentrations in the atmosphere, and then you have to reduce those. Adaptation is a recognition that no matter what we do, if we eliminated all greenhouse gases tomorrow, we would still have to adapt to a climate changing climate, to a rising C, to a warmer world. And this report focuses on adaptation. California is a leader in mitigation among all the states. And we as a city now as a member. Of the Compact of Mayors will join becoming a major leader in the city. The steps in this study were to identify the major threats of climate change to Long Beach. Effects of climate change vary with geography. And so we had to look specifically at Long Beach to assess the impacts and the vulnerability of these threats to our city. To review the existing plans and efforts that are already in place. To address these threats. To explore additional approaches. And then to summarize our findings and to suggest some additional approaches. So the major threats of climate change to Long Beach are drought, extreme heat, and the number of hot days increase in the number of hot days, sea level rise and coastal flooding, deteriorating air quality public health and social vulnerability. And I'm going to give you just a few comments about each of these major threats. Drought obviously, drought is a period when a region experiences below average precipitation and it results in decreased water supplies. And we are entering the fifth year of drought. We have to remember we are in a semi-arid region and our area was designated as one of extreme drought starting several years ago and as recently as January of this year, we get 53% of our water from groundwater. 40% of it is imported and 7% is recycled. And some of that groundwater depends upon imported sources of water because we use it to recharge our groundwater. And the two sources of imports from Northern California and from the Colorado, both are at risk because of climate change. This is a map of California on the left and and on the right. You can see the United States and the deep, deeper the the red, the more serious the drought. This was from January the fifth. And you can see that we are in a serious situation and not just here in Long Beach, but in much of California. The impacts of drought, if you have to, you have to look again. I mentioned where our water comes from and how the drought will impact those different supplies. The biggest source of our water comes from snowpack in the north and where last year we had 5% of the long term average snowpack on April one, which is the date when it's inventoried every year. We're ahead of schedule this year and we're all hoping, hoping that we will continue to do that. This is what Lake Oroville looked like in 2011. That's what it looked like in 2014. So you can see many of our reservoirs, including, as I say, our largest, the snowpack, they're disappearing. What's happening now? Long Beach is a leader in water conservation. We have a lot of different programs and incentives. We have the low impact development. We have schedule. Landscaping is restricted to certain days, Tuesdays and Saturdays only. We use some recycled water. And at the bottom we have been a leader in converting lawns to drought tolerant vegetation. But that's still an area where we have a lot of opportunity because fewer than 5% of our lawns of single family dwellings in Long Beach have been converted. So we need to continue to increase the shift to drought tolerant landscaping. We need to continue to increase use of recycled water. We have to figure out ways to promote onsite stormwater capture and retention. Right now, that's a serious problem, not just here, but throughout much of California, because we we are not capable of capturing rainfall and putting it back into the ground. We lose much of it and we need to decrease the reliance on imports for groundwater, recharge extreme heat. 2015 was the hottest year on record. 2014 was the hottest year on record before 2015. We will continue to see an increase in temperature and we will continue to see Greece see an increase in the number of hot days. Heat kills more people than earthquakes, tornadoes, hurricanes combined. And heat really is a serious issue. We're fortunate being here in Long Beach, and I'll come back to that in a second. These are two scenarios. One on the left is for lower emissions of greenhouse gases. So you can see that in California, the temperature would rise by 2100 or three or four degrees Fahrenheit in the higher emission scenario. It would rise by 5 to 7 degrees. Both of those are significant in significant increases. And we probably are going to be closer to the map on the right than to the map on the left. This shows the increase in the number of hot days. And you can see the star down there, Long Beach. We're very fortunate. And Long Beach, Santa monica. And being in the San Gabriel Mountains, we benefit here, as does Santa monica, from being close to the ocean. But we will still see an increase in the number of hot days that is days over 95 degrees by three or four times. The plans that are underway to cope with warming, where we have a network of cooling centers and we're planting trees. Both of these are very important initiatives and they should be continued and expanded. We can expand the number of cooling centers, and one of the challenges is to make people aware of where these cooling centers are and how they can get there, because many of the most vulnerable people do not have transportation. We can add even more trees. We have this plan to add 10,000 trees. We can add more. This is a double edged sword. Trees are thirsty and so they give you some shade. They cool because of the transfer transpiration, but they also use water. And at the bottom you can see we can add shade structures, green roofs, cool roofs, cool pavements. All of these can reduce heat island effects or go along with being cities, sea level rise, coastal flooding and inundation. They're not like mitigation and adaptation. They're quite different things. Coastal flooding is a temporary condition that's caused by storms or very high tides or the two of these together. Inundation is a permanent condition that's caused by sea level rise. Coastal flooding is a problem right now, and it will become a more serious problem as sea level continues to rise. Inundation is something that we probably don't have to worry about for a few decades, but after that, we will have to worry about it. This is from the California Coastal Commission and their guidance on sea level rise for three dates 2030, 2050 and 2100. And this is for the area of the coast where we are, south of Cape Mendocino, 2 to 12 inches by 2035 to 24 inches by 2050, 17 to 66 inches by 2100. There's a lot of uncertainty in these estimates, and partly it's because of the models that are used. And partly it's because we don't know what's going to happen to Greenland and Antarctica. And those are the two areas that could move these rises to the upper end. But the real issue now and in the future will be what gets superimposed on these rises of sea level king tides. We just had a couple on January 20th and 21st, El Nino. We're in an El Nino and coastal storms. We can learn a lot from the present El Nino because sea level rise from this present El Nino is equivalent to about 25 years of average sea level rise. And when we superimposed storms upon it, it's giving a look, giving us a look at what the future of California, Southern California and Long Beach will look like in 25 or 30 years. I'm sure most of you can't see this map, but this is a 100 year storm with present sea level. In about 2020, 23,000 people would be at risk of flooding during a 100 year storm right now without any further rise in sea level. And you can see where the flooding is concentrated along Second Street to Peninsula Alamitos Bay, plans that are underway, beach nourishment and protective sand berms. This is ongoing activity along the peninsula. The we're cleaning out storm drains to reduce urban flooding. We have a boom on the L.A. River that keeps a lot of debris from reaching the ocean. And we have Cosmos, which is a modeling program of the U.S. Geological Survey, and we also have an El Nino preparedness program and the alert Long Beach. So we have a lot of efforts that are underway. These are approaches we think need to be further considered. We should inventory and review all of the existing studies. This was one of the challenges we had. It's very hard to get your arms around these studies. We should delineate historically flooded and damaged areas. We should collect additional data. I think El Nino is a great opportunity for us. It's going to go on for another several months and we should be getting some additional data during that period. We will need you will need to select an appropriate hydrodynamic model for Long Beach. It has to be a detailed, dynamic hydrodynamic model that can take into account the complicated bathymetry we have near shore and the complicated topography that we have. And we will also need to inventory all infrastructure and assets at risk of flooding. And I would recommend that you develop and maintain a coastal hazardous hazards database that you can call upon when when we need to look at things. Deteriorating air quality. Air quality always gets worse with warming because the chemistry of the atmosphere changes. And California currently has the worst air quality in the nation, with more than 90% of the population living in areas that violate state air quality standards for ground level ozone and small airborne particles. Now, this we're very fortunate because there has been great progress in the last few years, particularly by the port. But 73% of Long Beach has diesel particulate emission values that are greater than those of 90% of California. And we have so many cars, it's more than 75% of air pollution in the region is related to mobile sources . So we still have some work to do, but we're moving in the right direction. Air quality monitoring stations are critical, green space initiatives are critical, getting people out of their cars and into public transportation or onto their bicycles, complying with regulations. And if you look at the Port of Long Beach, these efforts, they've reduced diesel emissions by 75% since in the last decade. These are very impressive. Some additional approaches to consider would be to install additional monitoring stations not just near the 17 freeway. One of the problems we have is we often get lumped with all of Los Angeles County and within the city of Los Angeles they do it by zip code. But in Long Beach, we get lumped into one big area. That's not good enough. We should be studying the pollution effects in Long Beach. We should inform and engage the public on air pollution, especially children, the elderly, those who work outdoors. And we should continue to promote alternative transportation. Public health. Climate change is one of our biggest threats to public health. You warm the climate and a lot of things change the spread of infectious diseases. And this is a great concern right now with the with the mosquito borne disease and the poor, the elderly, the very young, the homeless and those with compromised health are the most vulnerable. And we have significant populations in some of those categories. We have a lot of plans and efforts that are underway that are good. California Green Building Code, The Heal Zone, Livable West Long Beach Implementation Plan and Cooling Centers. All of those are important moves in the right direction. We probably should include health issues as part of the Sustainable City Action Plan, and I would encourage you to invite public health and local health organizations to participate in the development and implementation of the Sustainable City Action Plan and engage the public in climate change resilience by identifying the health benefits of adaptation. There are a lot of advantages to being a climate resilient city, and many in the public are not aware of those. So building climate resilient communities by building social capital. It's been shown in Katrina, it was shown during Sandy that it's where you have strong social capital and we have strong neighborhoods. You are more resilient and you rebound much more quickly. So that is a program that the city is already in good shape. And we have a program that we're developing. We're applying to Noah for support. It will it involves already a group of MBA students at Cal State Long Beach. We're involving at Jordan High School and a number of others. And we will keep you engaged in that. It will be important to engage the diverse communities and neighborhoods so that they can develop a shared vision of resilience. What is it that they want to protect? What is it they value most? And then to develop tailored messages for each community? And we already have partnerships with two. And I will have three different cities that have signed on with you, Mr. Mayor, to the Compact of Mayors that will have similar city studies going on in parallel with what we're going to do. So I think the way we would encourage the city to form a climate resilience team and to complete and publish a risk assessment plan to review, adopt and implement that plan and to monitor, review and update the plan. Long Beach has a great opportunity. I think we have a head start. We're well positioned to become a model of a climate resilient city, and it not only will protect the city and its residents, but it will get a fair amount of attention on this city. So we thank you, Mr. Mayor, for inviting us to be part of this study. And we will continue to work with you and members of the city council and the city manager's office. Thank you. Thank you. Dr. Schaeuble, if you can just stay up there for a couple of minutes. It's really important work. I know that the whole council has the full report. And I think at this point now the ball is back on on this body's court. And I think it's the council's responsibility. I know that will be thoughtful over the course of the next few months ahead to consider all these recommendations and and your data. Let me turn this over to Vice Mayor Lowenthal. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. And thank you, Dr. Schaeuble. I wanted to commend the mayor for making this request and for you to conduct the study and the work and present this report to us. Also your team of experts for gathering all the information and the facts that informed this assessment report that you shared highlights from today. And it's already been clearly stated your presentation as well as the mayor's opening remarks. But climate change is real. This is a different day from over ten years ago, I'd like to say almost ten years ago when I worked at a water agency and we conducted a press conference about new technology to address sea level rise at the Alamitos Superior. And at that time, the administration, the federal administration, your U.S., you're smiling because you know the story. U.S. Bureau of Reclamation sent me a message saying that they were disallowed from participating in the press conference because we made it clear statement that climate change is the reason for sea level rise. And at that time, the president did not acknowledge that. And so none of the staff was allowed to attend. But we went ahead and we conducted that press conference, and your team was very supportive in providing us with the information, as well as Dr. Bill Patzert from JPL. But we have come a long way, and I'm very proud to be a part of this community that has an institution, a learning institution and research institution like the aquarium that can provide such key research and documentation and an assessment of our community. How you ended the slide is really important to me personally. It's a shared vision and that is the Long Beach way. We have never addressed our water quality issues, beach water quality issues, storm water quality issues, trash issues coming down the L.A. River, which I know that Councilwoman Gonzalez and the rest of us are very aware of . We've never addressed that as though that they have geopolitical or geographical boundaries. Trash doesn't know boundaries, pollution doesn't know boundaries, stormwater impair doesn't know boundaries. And we've always addressed it by looking upstream and see how we can support our cities upstream. And so your strategy in your recommendations is very much aligned with the Long Beach Way. That is how we achieve successes for our community is acknowledging that upstream cities have to be treated as our partners and that we have to work with them rather than penalizing them or shaming them for what contributions their cities may provide to any impairment to our source water quality or water quality in general, working with them and collaborating with them. So I appreciate that the approach of a shared vision, we have a shared obligation to support one another as cities and and to build capacity or social capital. As you articulated, it's not just collaborative, but it's really the right way. So thank you. I appreciate you taking science, knowledge, research and hard work and making it very able for all of us to understand, be a part of and really be a part of the solution. Because as one of your programs in the aquarium is aptly titled, it all flows to me. So thank you. Thank you very much. And over that last ten years, the aquarium has changed a great deal. And we appreciate your support and leadership. We're in your district. Councilwoman Gonzalez. Dr. Schaeuble, I just want to say congratulations and thank you for a wonderful presentation, similar to what Vice Mayor Lowenthal said. We hold these issues very important to many of our districts, but also our city. We were just in the state legislative committee up in Sacramento and. For the Lower Los Angeles River and making it a larger master plan to ensure that we're getting enough attention as Upper Los Angeles River plans. So thank you for your attention to this and your hard work in all this. Thank you. Thank you, Councilwoman Mongo. Thank you for the great work you've done. I guess I have a question for Steph. I know that this body has referred to commissions. The work that you believe is our next steps. Would that be something that we could make a motion to move to the Sustainability Commission to review and come back to us? So certainly we do have a number of commissions that and committees that deal with this. We have our Environmental Committee of the City Council. We also have a sustainability commission. They do have a sustainability action plan and they review a number of these things and that work is ongoing. We in kind of working with Dr. Schubert, we've done a report to the council as. Well in November talking about a lot of the things that the city is doing. And we're certainly. Going to be taking this report and merging those efforts together. So I don't believe in front of you tonight. And that would be a question for the attorney, whether you can make that motion or whether it's just a receiving file. But we'd certainly be willing to work with commissions and with the council and to come back and talk about some of. The steps that that we're working on that need to happen over the next several years in order to keep the work moving in this area. Thank you. I think it's great when we have someone who comes to the council with a plan and here are the next things that we need from you as elected officials. So I look forward to hearing from the city staff over time on where we're going to go with that. But I think that we need to make those next steps and commitments to those next steps. So thank you for making sure that was in your presentation. Thank you. Thank you, Councilmember Ringo. Thank you, Mayor. I want to also extend my thank you to Dr. Schaeuble. You're doing great work at the aquarium. I was over there earlier last year for a symposium you put forward on sea level rise. And it was a great presentation. And it's great that we had such an institution, such as the Aquarium of the Pacific, looking at at our climate and what changes taking place and how we can fit into that plan to address climate change and make improvements by changing our own habits. One of the things that we always have to look at, we have to see if we see something and we have and we know there's something needs to be changed. It's, first of all, accepting the fact that there is something happening and that we do need to do something about it. And your work at the aquarium is certainly a at the forefront of doing that, of recognizing what's taking place and presenting the facts as we need to see them, to know that we need to have some kind of change taking place. So I want to commend you for that. And it also fits a very well. We just had our retreat this past weekend and we had a report from the Port of Long Beach. And many of the changes that they're doing there to address particulate matter and the increases they have out there, and especially when it looks in regards to my community in the West Palm Beach area, we just recently also adopted a West Side livability plan that addresses changes that we need to do in the West Palm Beach area to lower the the the our carbon footprint, if you will, and have a more sustainable city and increasing mobility out there. So the work that you're doing out there is wonderful and it's great, and I'm glad that you're bringing that forward because that's a first step in recognizing that we need to do something. Thank you for your work. Thank you. Thank you, Councilmember Supernanny. Thank you, Dr. Kubo, for the presentation. And in particular, I'd like to thank you for mentioning and showing a graphic of the Sustainable City Action Plan. As a charter member of that commission I worked on, seven of those are between 2008 and 2014. I worked on those. I wasn't sure anybody saw them, but I'm glad you did. So thank you. But to Councilwoman Mango's point, I think we have the pieces in place, but it's just a protocol we have to deal with. And I actually referred one of the commission members to Tom Modica last week. So this type of idea can be and this is still a receiving file. I get that tonight. But I think we need to find a pathway for your conceptual or your ideas, either to make the staff to get in front of that commission, or I happen to also chair the Environmental Committee too. So what could come in that direction? So I'd really like to see that worked out. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And Councilwoman Pryce. Thank you. Ditto to everything that my colleagues have said. I know that you know this, and I'm sure that my council colleagues won't be surprised to hear that many of the very vulnerable areas in the city of Long Beach in regards to this discussion fall in the third district, in regards to the homes that might be impacted by sea level rise. And so the residents in the peninsula community, in the Naples community have gotten very involved in these discussions. They have attended several forums as of late hosted by the Aquarium and other organizations in this topic. And I know that our office, as a result of the TFF that city staff provided in November, sent out a mass email to our residents, kind of highlighting what the city's plans were going to be. I expect that our office will stay on top of this issue in regards to partnering with staff to move us forward in this discussion and do everything that we can. And I appreciate you making us aware of it. And I asked you to continue your partnership with us as a body and also with us individually, as I think you have a lot of expertize that we we may or may not have. And hearing from you in terms of what we might want to be looking into or maybe what's being talked about in the industry, we obviously want to be doing everything that we can to have a very successful adaptation phase as we go through this process and figure out some long term solutions to mitigate what is coming. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you. With the attorney public comment on this issue, please come forward. Mr.. SHIBLEY Can I, can I just make one absolute? We love the partnership that we have with this city, and we want it to continue. I can't think of a single city better suited to create the kind of an aquarium that we're trying to create right here in Long Beach. We have enough problems to make life interesting, but the problems are soluble and we have most of the pieces are in place. So we thank you very much. Thank you. Public comment on this. You. Larry. Good to hear that. Clark has the address. My first introduction to no Nino type weather was back and it was either 78 or 79. I moved here April 1st, 1978, and it was either that year or the following year that it began to rain on November the first and rained all November, all December and well into January, late and early February. And I remember as December was approaching, we saw on the news what we see here know the past few weeks, houses slipping into the water, beaches being eroded, boats being slashed, smashed up on the rocks. And there was a genuine concern by everybody, particularly the city officials in Pasadena, as to whether or not the Rose Parade might have to be for the first time canceled. And, of course, this is all great fodder for Johnny Carson if you I don't know how you remember Johnny Carson, but about seven days before the Rose Parade , he came up with a great idea what he thought was a great idea, which was that everybody, anybody attending the Rose Bowl parade planning on it, should the day before go out and buy, in addition to the Christian Science Monitor and make a paper hat out of it, and then it wouldn't rain at all. Four days later, he walks out on stage wearing such a hat the publisher erm kind of had. Seen that heart and therapist and I hope that that support. I think, and certainly that wouldn't stop what we're doing now. But that same paper, parenthetically, does a weekly or bi weekly update on the climatic conditions around the world and they turn out they are pretty accurate and so forth. Thanks. Thank you. Any other public comment on the climate change climate resiliency report? Yes, sir. 000. Mr. Romberg Garcia and the City Council Team Deandra. I want to say thank you very much for the. Further further black history celebration. You know, I want to capture that country's means in the new year. And my birthday is coming with that film. I always feel so much. Love from people they care. And now we know the the. The El Nino import. Anything new being. A. Kicker here they kick back kick the with that mosquito. So we had to pray and believe and keep open day. The virus is spread. No wonder. We need more water and rain. It's all things. Being. We had so much good time at. The unit he celebrates. That Martin Luther King and that was it to perform well. I'm all. For you. Remain my birthday, right? Happy birthday. Early birthday to you. So things. Mayor Robert Garza. Thanks to you all. We'll always remember. Long Beach in that California. Mo where mo believe there is. But give the rema. We keep. Moving forward. Thank you, sir. Thank you very much. For coming to my birthday. We will remember it. Thank you. Happy birthday. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Thank you. Any other comments on this report? Okay. See, now there is a motion by Vice Mary Lowenthal on the second by Councilwoman Gonzalez to receive and file it. Please cast your votes. And, Dr. Schaeuble, you and your whole team. Thanks again. We look forward to the next step. So thank you. Vice Mayor Lynn Bell. Motion carries. Thank you, Madam Clerk. And I believe it's time for our public comment. Our first series of public comment, we have ten speakers that have requested to speak during this time. First, I have Gordana Cager.