Climate change could flood your streets with doo-doo and toxic waste

http://grist.org/news/climate-change-could-flood-your-streets-with-doo-doo-and-toxic-waste/

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Oakland and surrounds.

That’s because when seas rise, they don’t just top over shorelines. They can burble up through waterfront infrastructure like sewage systems. New America Media reports from Oakland, a port city built along San Francisco Bay — an estuary that’s vulnerable to the rises in the Pacific Ocean on the other side of the Golden Gate Bridge:


Because the flatlands are the lowest part of the city, they receive the overflow in a storm drainage system that relies on gravity and a sewer system that planners expect will be overwhelmed by sustained high water levels or by a storm surge of three or four feet above high tide. Water, and whatever industrial runoff or sewage is mixed with it, would backflow out of storm sewers onto streets, yards and basements.

“Some of the first flooding likely to occur will be in the low lying areas in Oakland, where the poor people happen to live,” said Lindy Lowe, lead senior planner of the Adapting to Rising Tides project of the San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission. …

“Nobody from the hills to the flatlands will be able to flush their toilets” if a storm surge or rising tides were to top four feet, said Jeremy Lowe, sea level rise program manager at ESA and author of tidal wetland design guidelines for San Francisco Bay and an ecosystem-based climate change adaptation plan. …