Recently a state report offered strategies for responding to sea-level rise and the other consequences of global warming.

The report, "2009 California Climate Adaptation Strategy Discussion Draft," makes recommendations for coastal areas like Alameda Point, which will be home to Alameda's newest mixed-use neighborhood if voters approve Alameda Point Revitalization Initiative.

Planning for sea-level rise is a critical element of the Revitalization Initiative, which was crafted during two-plus years of extensive study and public input. The Revitalization Initiative's sea-level strategies dovetail neatly with the state's recommendations. For example, in areas that can be safely shielded from sea-level rise, like Alameda Point, the report emphasizes the need to protect new developments "that have regionally significant economic, cultural, or social value," which describes perfectly the proposed revitalization plan for Alameda Point.

The Revitalization Initiative will easily accommodate this recommendation by using a comprehensive grading strategy that elevates the project in order to protect the Point from sea level rise.

And, while the City of Alameda has estimated a rise of 18 inches over 50 years, our plan includes a contingency to build a protective levee system should sea levels rise beyond current expectations - making Alameda Point one of the most sheltered neighborhoods in the entire Bay Area.

The value of the revitalization plan is demonstrated in the project description itself - a mixed-use, pedestrian friendly, transit-oriented community with many new features. The plan also renovates historically important buildings, and will, in cooperation with the U.S. Navy, clean up the toxins from years of military and industrial use. The Revitalization Initiative also supports thousands of new jobs and will generate a positive cash-flow for the City of Alameda's general fund.

At no point will taxpayers who live outside of Alameda Point's new neighborhoods be required to pay for any part of this plan, including the strategy for dealing with sea-level rise. Because California law requires all new projects to be "fiscally neutral," the plan for Alameda Point will be built and maintained using private investment dollars and the taxes and fees generated by the new homes and businesses that will call Alameda Point home.

The rest of Alameda was not planned with a view towards global warming as it was developed. Now, the rest of the community has the opportunity to take advantage of the protections that Alameda Point provides. We know that the more people learn about this plan to clean up, revitalize and re-use the old navy base, the more they will support it.

To find out more go to www.alamedapointcommunity.com.

Smart Growth in Dumb Places — Should We Embrace It?

Counter Point

Ani Dimeshuva

Anyone who doubts the authenticity of the phrase "smart growth" these days has a good reason to do so. Lately, developments dubbed "smart" have been flying in the face of common sense more often than they've made sense.

Take Cargill's proposed "smart-growth" housing development in the former salt ponds near Redwood City, below sea level, pushed by none other than Peter "Fill the Bay" Calthorpe, formerly the paragon of green urban planning. Or the relentless attempt by SunCal to sell 5,000 homes on the toxic flats of Alameda Point as cutting-edge green and sustainable (again, with Calthorpe's help).

As of this week, such developments are flying in the face of a new state draft report on climate change as well.

The report, written by a consortium of California State agencies under the lead of the California Natural Resources Agency and titled "2009 California Climate Adaptation Strategies," cautions against "significant new developments that cannot be adequately protected from flooding due to climate change," and states: "State agencies should generally not plan, develop, or build any new significant structure in a place where that structure will require significant protection from sea level rise, storm surges, or coastal erosion during the expected life of the structure."

To deal with the impacts of climate change, the report lists 12 recommendations addressing three main areas: efficient use of natural resources, preparedness and risk reduction.

These new recommendations push the massive build-up at Alameda Point proposed by SunCal way down on the smart scale. In addition to being nowhere near a transit corridor (a main factor in smart growth planning) and heavily polluted, Alameda Point lies just one to five feet above current sea level (much of it below projected sea rise). But levees do not figure in SunCal's plan, nor does Calthorpe specialize in designing them. And now it seems the state is putting cities on notice: Plan badly, and we won't be coming to your rescue either.

Such details don't seem to bother SunCal. SunCal, after all, has a track record of proposing developments in some of the most environmentally taxing locations and getting away with it: Its Inland Empire projects constitute the worst imaginable kind of sprawl-in the desert-the kind supposedly to be offset by "smart growth" strategies elsewhere! In the Bay Area, SunCal's Delta Coves (now bankrupt) was supposed to be a levee-dependent, exclusively priced development right in the San Joaquin delta-a long-known stressed water resource specifically singled out for protection in the Adaptation Strategies report. Looks like SunCal's interest lies in developing whatever and wherever is easiest and most profitable in the short term-environment be damned. That they are managing to paint themselves to us as a responsible developer of smart growth communities is a testimony only to their marketing ingenuity.

This leaves it up to us voters to decide whether letting a company with such record build up Alameda Point and house 10,000 new residents there qualifies as smart or reckless, regardless of what the project is labeled on paper. The fact is that the risks of the location-to human health, environment, and the city's and state's future finances-far outweigh whatever benefits urban infill is supposed to bring.

Projects like SunCal's Alameda Point and Cargill's "city in the bay" have made one thing obvious-"smart growth" has become a tagline for selling product more than a name for actual intelligent planning.

Hopefully, the just-released draft report will cause cities and voters to rethink their approvals of such mislabeled profit schemes and realize that smart growth in dumb places, whether in the desert, the bay marshes, or low-lying toxic mudfills, is dumb growth-driven by greed, dangerous, and ultimately unaffordable — and that such growth needs to be rejected.

[For a link to the California Climate Adaptation Strategy draft report and a map of SunCal projects, go to alamedapointinfo.com.]

Ani Dimeshuva is an Alameda resident and writer.