SF Planning Department gets ready to get ready for sea-level rise

The long-term threat of a rising bay has prodded nearly a dozen city agencies to come together and respond with an action plan — “action” being a relative term.

Whatever the billing, the San Francisco Sea Level Rise Action Plan is a follow-up to a directive last March from Mayor Ed Lee telling city departments to prepare the city’s waterfront and infrastructure for a future where, according to projections by the National Research Council, daily tides could be as much as 66 inches higher by 2100 than they are at present.

By starting to coordinate now and figuring out exactly what parts of the city are at risk — you don’t want high tides spilling across the Embarcadero into the Market Street subway, for instance — the goal is to have a citywide “adaptation plan” ready by the end of 2018.

“We want to send a message not just to the public, but to all city departments that this is a serious ongoing issue,” Kelley said before Thursday’s presentation of the “action plan” to the Planning Commission.