Media Watch
Eyewitness Newsmakers: How to harness stormwater and the concerning 100-year flood assessment
KABC -
In this edition of Eyewitness Newsmakers with Marc Brown, Brett Sanders, professor of civil and environmental engineering at UC Irvine, laid out a worrying scenario. He and his team mapped a 100-year flood scenario for our region. They discovered our network of flood control channels may not be up to the task, which could mean water may spill over the channel banks or banks could collapse, sending water into areas where millions of people live. Read More
Federal railroad official tours at-risk rail line in Del Mar, San Clemente. ‘It’s just a matter of time’
The San Diego Union-Tribune -
Federal Railroad Administration Administrator Amit Bose joined Rep. Mike Levin, D-San Juan Capistrano, and a host of local officials for a train ride over the precarious Del Mar bluffs. Levin, Bose and others, including a University of California, Irvine professor, then held news conferences in Solana Beach and San Clemente to publicize the need to protect the tracks and move them to a safer inland location. … “It’s been estimated that this year’s storms have left more than $5 billion in losses across California, and most of that is concentrated along the coast,” said Brett Sanders, a professor of civil and environmental engineering. “Coastal change can be dramatic, dangerous and costly.” Read More
Orange County’s Coastal Train Service is Back; But for How Long?
Voice of OC -
Brett Sanders, a civil and environmental engineering professor at the University of California, Irvine, said the rail line’s woes tie back to beach sand starvation. … Sanders says, the urbanization of Orange County – and the region’s flood control infrastructure – “is designed to hold sediment in place.” “I mean, we go to great lengths and plan new developments to make sure that sand doesn’t move, that soil doesn’t move,” he added. The result? “We have effectively cut off the supply of sand which made our beaches and made us famous.” Read More
Rep. Levin, Officials Discuss Importance of Funding Rail Solutions
San Clemente Times, -
Brett Sanders, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of California, Irvine …. said he has studied the risks along the Southern California coast in varying capacities for more than a decade, including using satellite imagery to chart the changes that Cotton’s Point in San Clemente has experienced. Nearby residents are correct when they say that what used to be a stable beach facing gradual decline took a drastic turn for the worst around 2015, according to Sanders. ... He endorsed sand nourishment projects as the action that will best serve Californians. Read More
Federal officials get up-close look at coastal erosion threats to key rail line
The Orange County Register -
A $4 million request for federal funding has been made to help the Orange County Transportation Authority with a study on relocating coastal sections of a key rail line further inland …. There is also new task force being created that will bring the scientific community together with lawmakers …. The group will be chaired by Brett Sanders, professor of civil and environmental engineering at UC Irvine, to coordinate local, state and federal efforts to plan for long-term solutions. … While he’s optimistic with longer-term solutions being discussed, Sanders said more steps need to be taken sooner rather than later while studies are conducted to protect the coastal resources. [Subscription required, campus-wide access provided by UCI Libraries. Sign-up here: https://guides.lib.uci.edu/news/ocregister] Read More
Leaders warn of coastal erosion as passenger rail services between OC and San Diego resume
KABC -
A scenic and popular passenger train route between Irvine and Oceanside will fully resume service next week after months of emergency work in San Clemente to stabilize a hillside on one side of the railroad track and coastal erosion on the other side. … Brett Sanders, a civil and environmental engineering professor at UC Irvine, said climate change and human activity are starving beaches from sand supply, which is causing the coastal buffers to disappear and could impact railroad tracks along the coast.
"Taking action to restore natural levels of sand is now crucial for the southern Orange County coast," Sanders said. Read More
Metrolink, Amtrak to reopen tracks in San Clemente after 7-month closure
KCBS -
According to satellite imagery from UC Irvine's Flood Lab, since the 1990s the beach that once stood between the tracks and the ocean has slowly eroded to the point where the water splashes next to the track today. As the beach has practically disappeared, UCI [civil & environmental] engineering professor Brett Sanders is working with local leaders to come up with a solution. "We have the greatest resource in California here, which is our coastline," said Sanders. "And taking care of the coastline needs to be a priority so I'm interested in understanding our sand supplies and making sure our coast has adequate supplies from inland areas. We're starting a nourishment project which will help restore some of the natural levels of sand that had protected the coastline." Read More
Orange County considers moving part of its coastal train track
Spectrum News -
“Human activities are starving the coast of its natural sand,” said University of California, Irvine flood lab director Brett Sanders, [civil & environmental engineering professor]. … Sanders said he and his team have looked at decades of satellite and aerial imagery of the coast to better understand erosion risks due to population, rising sea levels, intense rain, more frequent wildfires and other climate events. While Sanders said it is natural for beaches to widen and narrow, the OC coast reached a tipping point in 2015 that sparked the beginning of a rapid decline he attributed to higher-than-normal sea levels and large swells. Read More
Rise of the Climate Rating Agencies
The American Prospect -
The most prominent is First Street, whose dozens of government clients include the U.S. Treasury, the Federal Housing Finance Agency, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and all 12 Federal Reserve Banks. First Street is cited in the president’s 2023 budget, and its data is used in a new White House “Climate and Economic Justice Screening Tool.” … First Street’s website lists a large bench of scientists and economists as part of its “full research lab team.” But several said they had little affiliation. “I haven’t done any work for them,” said Brett Sanders, a professor of civil engineering at UC Irvine. He believes that he is listed because he is working on a model of flood risk in Southern California, and he wanted to see how his model compared with First Street data. To access the information, he said, First Street asked him to agree to put his face and name on the website. Read More
Opinion: Catastrophic floods and breached levees reveal a problem California too often neglects
Los Angeles Times -
Brett Sanders, UCI professor of civil and environmental engineering, and Jeffrey Mount, senior fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California’s Water Policy Center, write: “As recent work at UC Irvine has shown, flood preparedness efforts tend to focus narrowly on meeting the bare-minimum federal standards — standards few floodplain managers consider adequate. This approach vastly underestimates the magnitude of flood risks. … How do we turn things around? Putting flood management on par with drought management will require addressing several big issues.” [Subscription required, you can request an electronic copy of the article by sending an email to communications@uci.edu.] Read More