The waves that roiled the stretch of Southern California coast were a glimpse of the future.

The rising ocean, a seasonal high tide at a strong storm in the winter of 2019, drenched the California beach community near the U.S. Mexico border.

It is what a lot of people expect from sea level rise, coastal flooding.

But here in Imperial Beach, rising seas are also causing flooding inland as much as a mile from the coast.

The evidence is easy to see at high tide, about a half mile away from the shore on a dry, sunny day.

Storm drains are supposed to be mostly empty, ready to rush water out of the town when it rains.

But an imperial beach giant drains like this are full.

If you crouch down here and actually look under the bridge, there is a 56 inch storm drain.

But mostly you just see the water.

You see about six inches of clearance above it.

So where did all this water come from?

As sea levels rise, ocean water is forcing its way inland, underground.

The heavier saltwater pushes up the existing water table.

As the fresh water rises.

It surrounds stormwater pipes and seeps in through the cracks.

In the aging system.

These things are really heavy.

The pipes, the manholes, the junctions.

They over time, they have cracks, holes in it.

Hasan Davani is a water resources engineer working with physical oceanographer Julia Felder to measure the extent of Imperial Beach's flooding problem.

This freshwater water table rises and rises.

It eventually can emerge.

So you in natural areas, you might have wetlands and beautiful ecosystems for habitats, but in urban systems, that's basically flooding of somebody's home or a elementary school basement flooded, you know.

So that's that's disrupting the infrastructure in urban areas.

Well, looking down here, you can actually see the water coming up.

So what's the solution?

Fixing Miles of cracked underground pipes is expensive and disruptive for this community of 26,000 people.

So the most practical solution might be one of the simplest.

Davani says if every house and apartment in the city had rain barrels, that would stop water from flooding local streets.

When it rains, they would have to capture millions of gallons of water because one inch of rainfall on a 1000 square foot roof creates 623 gallons of runoff.

Participation will determine whether this sixth century solution has a chance to help tackle a 21st century problem.

I think people need to be educated as to here's the problem.

And here is part of the solution.

And because I think that is what it's going to end up being, it's part of the solution.

A long term solution will need more than one strategy.

But for now, rain barrels and some pipe repair could buy the city time as it considers how to become more resilient in the face of rising seas.