Bay Area Leaders Celebrate Major Win for Shoreline Resilience
New state law tasks state agencies with proposing ways to coordinate and streamline permitting for shoreline resilience projects. Efficient permitting is essential for saving lives, saving money, and enhancing California’s resilience to rising sea levels.
With a Super El Nino lurking and rising sea levels threatening homes, businesses and critical infrastructure along California’s coastline, the Bay Area Council and Bay Planning Coalition celebrated Governor Gavin Newsom’s signing on Sunday (Sept. 27) of AB 2051 (Wicks), a new state law that marks an important milestone in accelerating shoreline resilience and adaptation projects. Authored by Assemblymember Buffy Wicks (D-Berkeley) and co-sponsored by both organizations, AB 2051 directs state agencies to identify ways to better coordinate permitting and reduce unnecessary costs and delays for these urgently needed projects.
“We must make sure scarce public dollars are going towards real infrastructure, not outdated processes,” said Libby Schaaf, President & CEO of the Bay Area Council. “Coastal resilience projects such as sea walls and restored wetlands often take many years and millions of dollars to permit. Permitting timelines have been adding costs, delays, and leaving Californians at risk. This new law enlists state agencies to be part of the solution, by requiring them to propose ways to reduce permitting costs and timelines. We thank Assemblymember Buffy Wicks for her continued leadership on permit streamlining, and Governor Newsom for signing AB 2051 into law.”
Multiple areas along the Bay shoreline are today prone to flooding during King Tide events, including large stretches of Highways 101 and 37. The California Ocean Protection Council estimates with high probability the Bay will rise about 10 inches above the 2000 baseline by 2050, placing even more infrastructure at risk. Regional Agencies currently estimate defending the Bay Shoreline will cost roughly $100 billion, with less than 5% of that funding identified from all local, regional, state, and federal sources. According to the 2025 California State Assembly’s final report on permitting reform, California’s “approach to permitting facilitates inaction, rather than action.”
Coastal resilience projects must often navigate over a dozen public agencies, each with their own application process, completeness standards, and timelines. A change from one agency oftentimes sets projects back to square one with agencies who had already approved earlier iterations of the project. AB 2051 helps build off the successful Bay Restoration Regulatory Integration Team which the Bay Area Council helped establish following the passage of Measure AA (2016) to streamline coastal resilience projects in San Francisco Bay.
“California knows we have to prepare for rising seas — the question is whether we can actually build the projects that will protect our communities in time,” said Assemblymember Buffy Wicks (D-Oakland). “When a project has to navigate a dozen different agencies, conflicting requirements and years of delay before a shovel ever hits the ground, something isn’t working. AB 2051 gets everyone at the same table to figure out how we move faster and smarter, without sacrificing the environmental protections that make California’s coast so special. I’m grateful to Governor Newsom for signing it into law.”
“California’s permitting agencies play an essential role in protecting our shoreline and communities, but many of the processes they work within were not designed to work together or to support the scale and urgency of resilience investment we need today,” said Laura Tam, CEO of Bay Planning Coalition. “AB 2051 creates a pathway to better coordinate agency reviews, reduce duplicative steps, and make permitting timelines and requirements more predictable—helping communities deliver critical shoreline resilience projects faster and make better use of limited public dollars, while maintaining strong environmental protections. We’re grateful to Assemblymember Wicks for her leadership and look forward to working with state agencies and other stakeholders to turn these recommendations into meaningful reform.”
