by MacKenzie Elmer/ Voice of San Diego / August 27, 2025
One often wonders while strolling atop the bluffs at Sunset Cliffs: Will today be the day the path crumbles into the sea?
Determined to enjoy the view, families and elderly couples navigate a dwindling, dusty trail along Sunset Cliffs Boulevard. Exercisers dart into the road or hurdle barriers where erosion has already consumed any remaining clifftop.
[Here’s the City’s Coastal Resiliency Masterplan]
Knowing the ocean will eventually rise and more of the cliffs will fall, the city of San Diego plans to epically change how people use this peninsula’s crown jewel.
Namely, parking lots have got to move off the cliff’s edge and onto the street, making more space for natural land and hiking trails, the city’s plan says. On Sunset Cliffs at Monaco Street, traffic would switch to one-way heading south leaving one lane for parking and a protected walkway. (A southbound direction is the preference of emergency responders, I’m told.)
That’s a lot of reshuffling. Finding parking on a Sunday before sunset is already a battle royale even with parking available on both sides of the now two-lane street. The city is also leaving open the option of adding meters to shifted street parking, according to a presentation to City Council’s Environment Committee.
“We’ve already had to go in and do emergency repairs to make sure we’re protecting public health and safety,” said Julia Chase, the city’s chief resilience officer, during an interview. “This is allowing us to think through what options are to make sure it’s safe for pedestrian and bicycle users.”
Last August heavy rains finally sent a chunk of cliff and roadway falling to the sea below at Guizot Street. Emergency street crews chain-sawed through deteriorating guard rail and shifted the walking path, road markings and both car travel lanes.
“I surf the cliffs a bunch and it’s like every year … it gets sketchier and sketchier,” said Warren Duthie, a Sunset Cliffs resident since 2020.
Sea level rise is happening now whether it’s noticed or not. Better scientific measurements revealed the rate of global sea level rise doubled over the past 30 years. That’s bad news for San Diego where the surrounding ocean was already rising 32 percent higher than the global average.
Seas are expected to be almost seven inches higher globally over the next 30 years. So, the city wants to move fast on this, at least, fast in terms of how climate planning in California typically goes. The city has over $1.3 million in grant money from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation and the state Coastal Conservancy to kick design work into high gear.
The city’s Environment Committee already OK’d the plan for Sunset Cliffs as part of San Diego’s larger Coastal Resiliency Masterplan at its June 12 meeting. Now the full City Council will vote on it in the near future.
[Here’s the Masterplan for Ocean Beach.]
Eric Law, chair of the Peninsula Community Planning Board which covers Sunset Cliffs neighborhood, says their group is not pleased about the amount of input they’ve had on the plans. Law said residents are worried about the one-way road that would “dump” all that traffic to surrounding neighborhood streets. And, the board is concerned that there seems to be no effort to protect the cliffs from crumbling with sea walls or other hard infrastructure.
“They’ve gone completely nature-based solutions which is another way to say, ‘do nothing,’” Law said.
The Ocean Beach Community Planning Group, on the other hand, voted in favor of the plan, said Andrea Schlageter, who chairs that board. Schlageter said, in her own opinion, the plans for the one-way street add much needed room for recreation where there is no dedicated lane for pedestrians.
“It’ll take the pressure off the cliff,” Schlageter said. “Whether we make it a one-way street now or let it erode into the ocean, it’ll be a one-way street eventually.”
How Sea Level Rise Works
What’s happening to Sunset Cliffs is happening all along California’s coastal bluffs. A massive landslide in Big Sur last February continues to block Highway 1. Del Mar continues to experience cliff erosion that threatens a key rail link between the U.S.-Mexico border and Los Angeles.
We know humans are warming the planet faster than normal by burning fossil fuels for energy. Extra heat trapped close to the Earth’s surface melts key polar ice reserves. All that water has nowhere to go but the ocean, which in turn is absorbing this excess heat and expanding. The result is that the ocean’s highest tides consume more dry land than before.
As oceans rise, the amount of time coastal bluffs are exposed to powerful waves increases. Wave energy eats away at the bottom of the cliff, making them top heavy and vulnerable to collapse especially after rains churn up and weigh-down soil.
“There’s tradeoffs when you think about sea level rise,” Chase said. “It means a shrinking footprint of our coastal spaces and a transition of its use over time.”
The latest news, that there’s massive instability in Antarctic ice sheets, means sea levels could be much higher than previously predicted in the decades to come, according to a study led by Helen Fricker, a glaciologist at the University of California-San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Fricker is also an Ocean Beach resident.
“Ice is going to melt if it gets too warm. Just like if you leave your freezer door open on a hot day, your ice cream is going to melt,” Fricker said. “You can’t keep Antarctica frozen if you raise the temperature of the planet.”
What’s scary is that nobody really knows or understands yet how Antarctica will melt in the future. But every time scientists take measurements, its ice formations are melting at a rate that is alarming.
“What we’re seeing is accelerated sea level coming from Antarctica and because it’s such a large reservoir (of water) any large uncertainty in that number is a large number in and of itself,” Fricker said.
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Here are other posts about the Masterplan:
“Where is the Masterplan Board Hiding?”
‘OB Presentation akin to Keystone Cops’
Great project. There is absolutely no shortage of parking in the area so I don’t understand why everyone “battles” for parking or why it is mentioned outside of people not wanting to walk like one block from their car.
I feel for the people on Cordoba, but this probably makes more sense than not. The cliffs are retreating and I’d hate to see more armoring like the City did with the Sunset Cliffs Shoreline stabilization project.
Probably get a lot of blowback for saying this.
The reporter did not give the whole picture. There are three appendices which are posted on the website, but not visible via the public link, or at least not easily. Did you see them when you wrote your review? They are on the same site as the referenced plan:
Appendix A: Site Profiles
Appendix B: Public Engagement Plan
Appendix C: Community and Stakeholder Feedback
Not everybody sees cement as a solution to resiliency issues.
Why is this publication reporting on the global warming hoax. Sea level rise has been happening for millions of years it’s called high and low tide
OMG
LOL I do find it funny that the project is labeled as climate resiliencey due to sea level rise when natural erosion, that is accelerated by sea level rise, is the primary issue. Climate change or not this project is needed.
Yes, sea level rise and fall have been happening for a long time. There are numerous native american village sites that were established during the last ice age but that are currently under water. The issue is not what has happened in the past but what is happening now, which is pretty dramatic. But it’s probably just the tides. I would add an “lol” but it’s really not funny.
Bill is just providing “Alternative Facts” :)
Mission Beach faces a complex threat from sea level rise, wave surge, and erosion—so a multi-layered strategy is essential. Here are several other approaches that can reduce wave energy and protect coastal infrastructure:
Alternative Strategies to Reduce Wave Action
1. Submerged Breakwaters
• Function: These underwater structures parallel to the shore reduce wave energy before it reaches the beach.
• Benefits: Less visual impact than traditional seawalls; can promote sediment deposition and beach stability.
• Challenges: Expensive to build and maintain; may affect surf conditions and marine habitats.
2. Living Shorelines
• Function: Use natural elements like oyster reefs, kelp beds, or eelgrass to buffer wave energy.
• Benefits: Enhance biodiversity, improve water quality, and adapt over time.
• Challenges: Require ecological compatibility and long-term monitoring.
3. Beach Nourishment
• Function: Periodically adding sand to widen the beach and absorb wave energy.
• Benefits: Maintains recreational space and natural aesthetics.
• Challenges: Temporary fix; costly and dependent on sediment availability A.
4. Offshore Artificial Reefs
• Function: Mimic natural reef structures to break waves offshore.
• Benefits: Can enhance surfing conditions and marine life.
• Challenges: Engineering complexity and ecological considerations.
5. Hybrid Dune Systems
• Function: Combine engineered dunes with vegetation and geotextile cores.
• Benefits: More durable than passive dunes; blend natural and structural resilience.
• Challenges: Require careful design to avoid over-hardening the coast B C.
6. Managed Retreat and Zoning
• Function: Gradually relocate vulnerable infrastructure and restrict new development in high-risk zones.
• Benefits: Long-term sustainability and risk reduction.
• Challenges: Politically and socially sensitive; requires strong community engagement.
Strategic Considerations for Mission Beach
The City of San Diego’s Coastal Resilience Master Plan emphasizes nature-based solutions like engineered dunes, but also invites public input on broader strategies B. Groups like Surfrider advocate for beach preservation over hard infrastructure like seawalls, which can accelerate beach loss C.
If you believe the city, good for you. Not everybody does.
Maybe the best thing to do is to do nothing and just deal with the actual problems as they arise.
/s/ Chris Kennedy
Like other collapses along Route 1, the collapse in Big Sur had nothing to do with sea level rise, rather winter storms, which have existed for centuries. Same for the collapse at Guizot. Sea level rise continues to be a straight line of under an inch per decade. Scares from people like Al Gore have never materialized.
The cliffs will continue to erode at a slow rate as it has for years. It’s premature to take Sunset Cliffs Blvd to a one-way street. Part of a real solution would be to clean debris and sand from the curb, then add an asphalt curb to replace portions that are missing. Without a curb, water can go over the cliff and erode the bluff.
It looks like the city has restriped a portion of the roadway south of Monaco to add plastic pipes to demarcate the walkway. This is a good start, but I think the walkway can be expanded with an 8 foot parking lane, two 10 foot travel lanes (with bike sharrows added), which should look to leave a minimum of 6 feet for pedestrians (marked with no parking signs and possibly tinted paint) by the guardrail. Note that the city is limiting parking lanes to 7 feet in some areas to squeeze in bike lanes while 10 foot travel lanes are known to reduce speed.
Surely, they could provide cutouts at strategic locations so pedestrians don’t have to climb over guardrails. In the future, parking may have to be eliminated if the roadway becomes to narrow.
Years ago, MTS removed bus service from Pt. Loma Ave to Guizot, which include a short stretch on Sunset Cliffs Blvd and some claimed it would reduce vibration on the cliffs. The real reason was lack of ridership and routing efficiency.
The city could spend way less money by restriping and directing water flow to retain Sunset Cliffs Blvd as a 2-way street. The one-way proposal would create havoc and confusion with traffic on Sunset Cliffs Blvd and especially neighboring streets and should not be proposed until absolutely necessary.
I note that the Ocean Beach Planning Board had many concerns and questions on the Coastal Resilience Plan within their planning area boundary, but apparently took the recommendations of the Sunset Cliffs Recreation Board’s recommendations on the area inside the Peninsula Community Planning Board’s boundaries. The PCPB’s long Range Planning subcommittee just approved and forwarded a letter the the entire board opposing the one-way plan and only-natural solutions proposed in the Coastal Resilience Plan.
To continue the discussion about Sunset Cliffs Blvd, we posted Paul’s comment here as a “Reader Rant.”