Report: SF lacks ‘comprehensive funding plan’ to fight climate change

San Francisco is not prepared for the looming effects of climate change.

That’s according to a new report from a government oversight group that found numerous shortcomings with a multiagency program created by Mayor London Breed and designed to spearhead San Francisco’s climate-change preparations .

In a report titled “Come Hell or High Water,” the San Francisco civil grand jury wrote that The City lacks “a comprehensive funding plan for climate change adaptation,” is plagued by a lack of coordination between agencies and provides too little information to the public about the group’s progress.

The civil grand jury, a panel of volunteers tasked with investigating city and county government entities, recently concluded an evaluation of the Climate Resilience Program, also known as ClimateSF. ClimateSF, established in 2021 to coordinate and oversee The City’s climate-resilience projects, is billed as a partnership between the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, the Port of San Francisco and other departments.

The civil grand jury’s report paid special attention to San Francisco’s flood management and raised questions about the ability of an already troubled system to respond to intensifying storms, made more extreme by a warming planet. Specifically, the jury found fault with a lack of formal interdepartment coordination.

“When storms are predicted, the heads of San Francisco Public Works and SFPUC and their staff make contact to manage the potential flooding as a team,” the civil grand jury wrote. “The connections are made ad hoc to the storm conditions of the moment. There is no formal meeting structure for prospective flood planning.”

Responding to the overall report, Angela Yip, spokesperson for the Office of the City Administrator and speaking for The City, cited numerous efforts that have been “moved forward” since ClimateSF was created, including the Heat and Air Quality Resilience Plan , Sea Level Rise Guidance, and Climate Action Plan.

“It’s clear that City departments share the goal of making San Francisco safer and more resilient to the impacts of climate change,” Yip said in a statement. “We recently hired a new program manager for ClimateSF, and we will continue to work on breaking down department silos and facilitating interagency collaboration.”

Damage expected to top $20 billion

To illustrate some of the threats climate change poses to The City, the civil grand jury cited a January 2024 impact study by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the port, which found that “flooding from rising sea levels could result in approximately $23 billion in damages to Port properties and adjoining neighborhoods over the next 100 years.”

Forecasts show that more than 23,000 San Francisco residents could be adversely affected by inland flooding, according to the report. But in an interview with The Examiner on Tuesday, jury member Jonathan Cowperthwait suggested that the number doesn’t tell the whole story.

“Unfortunately, these [flooding issues] are not localized effects that only happen to some neighborhoods and not others,” said Cowperthwait, who works as a marketing executive. “Every ratepayer who buys services from the SFPUC is at risk of a higher bill. Every traveler through SFO may end up paying higher fees because of the need to recoup revenue.”

“This is very much not a neighborhood problem,” he said. “It is a citywide problem.”

The civil grand jury reported that paying to upgrade The City’s infrastructure and improve its ability to fend off the heavier rains and rising seawater brought on by climate change would require the SFPUC, which oversees water, power and sewers, to raise service rates or for city leaders to draw money from San Francisco’s general fund.

leaders don’t attend meetings

The group’s findings also indicated that ClimateSF is poorly managed.

According to the report, the program’s directors rarely attended meetings. The jury wrote that “the directors of the Port and SFPUC, arguably two of the agencies most focused on flood management, only attended one meeting together in all the years reviewed.”

The jury found that departmental leadership’s lack of participation led ClimateSF to be unable to implement “good ideas” generated by lower-level staff. Without the participation of those in authority, the ideas simply went nowhere.

In another curious discovery, the civil grand jury learned that ClimateSF performs an annual review of the success metrics listed in the program charter — but it couldn’t find any publication of those reviews.

The issues with flood control won’t surprise those residing in neighborhoods with long histories of chronic flooding. SFPUC leaders said for decades that low-lying neighborhoods would always struggle during big storms and that fixing the issues was too costly.

That strategy proved to be shortsighted, as it led to multiple lawsuits and a 2021 order from the California Regional Water Quality Control Board to spend $632 million to finally service those troubled areas.

The civil grand jury also provided a list of recommendations that included reforming the decision-making process in the Climate Resilience Program, ensuring more transparency in planning for climate adaptation, and reassessing likely funding shortfalls.