Name: Imperial Beach Struggles for Solutions to Rising Sea Levels
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San Diego County’s southernmost beach town faces a daunting future as sea levels rise.

San Diego’s Imperial Beach is already experiencing coastal flooding thanks to a warming climate pushing sea levels up. But the problems don’t stop at the coast – the working-class community is already experiencing regular coastal flooding, and the water issues are moving inland. With street flooding happening far away from the beach, the pressure for a solution increases as the sea level rises. This video was produced in collaboration with NOVA and is made possible in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a private corporation funded by the American people.

San Diego County’s southernmost beach town faces a daunting future as sea levels rise.

San Diego’s Imperial Beach is already experiencing coastal flooding thanks to a warming climate pushing sea levels up. But the problems don’t stop at the coast – the working-class community is already experiencing regular coastal flooding, and the water issues are moving inland.

Imperial Beach Struggles for Solutions to Rising Sea Levels

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Narrator: The waves that roiled this stretch of Southern California Coast were a glimpse of the future. The rising ocean, a seasonal high tide, and a strong storm in the winter of 2019 drenched the California beach community near the US-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 in Imperial Beach, giant drains like this are full.Chris Helmer: If you crouch down here and look under the bridge, there’s a 56-inch storm drain, actually, mostly you just see the water you see about six inches of clearance above it.Narrator: 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 freshwater rises, it surrounds stormwater pipes and seeps in through the cracks in the aging system.Chris Helmer: These things are really heavy. There you go.Hassan Davani: The pipes, the manholes, the junctions, over time they have cracks, holes in it.Narrator: Hassan Davani is a water resources engineer working with physical oceanographer, Julia Felder, to measure the extent of Imperial Beach's flooding problem.Hassan Davani: This freshwater table, rises and rises. Eventually it can emerge so in natural areas you might have wetlands or beautiful systems or habitats but in urban systems that’s basically flooding of somebody’s home, elementary school, basement flooded. That’s disrupting the infrastructure in urban areas.Chris Helmer: Well looking down here, you can actually see the water coming up.Narrator: So, what's the solution? Fixing miles of cracked underground pipes is expensive and disruptive for this community of 26-thousand 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 1,000 square-foot roof creates 623 gallons of runoff. Participation will determine whether this 6th century solution has a chance to help tackle a 21st century problem.Jennifer Galey: I think people need to be educated. Here’s the problem and here is part of the solution. Because I think that is what it’s going to end up being. It’s part of the solution.Narrator: 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.

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Imperial Beach Struggles for Solutions to Rising Sea Levels

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Can We Cool the Planet?

Chasing Carbon Zero

Weathering the Future