Using a $65,000 grant awarded under the Coastal Resilience Planning program, the City of Morro Bay engaged with its community to update the City’s Land Use Plan, the first step to updating its Local Coastal Program to include updated adaptation strategies and land use policies that will protect coastal infrastructure and provide resilience to future coastal hazards.
The City of Morro Bay is a small seaside town with approximately 10.5 miles of shoreline that has an active harbor and thriving commercial fishing industry, extensive public access and visitor-serving amenities, and natural resources including the Morro Bay Estuary. Situated along the central coast, the city is exceedingly vulnerable to climate change – up to 5.5 feet of sea level rise by 2100 threatens its transportation infrastructure, housing stock, and visitor-serving commercial and recreational facilities, including parks and beaches.
In August of 2021 the California Coastal Commission voted unanimously to certify the city’s Land Use Plan, the first component of its comprehensive Local Coastal Program update. Significant public engagement, which included over 90 community meetings and workshops, was critical to ensuring that the Land Use Plan addressed issues that were most important to residents. This engagement informed the Land Use Plan’s prioritization of policies to adapt the city’s infrastructure to the effects of climate change, including raising certain public accessways susceptible to flooding, assisting the fishing industry in adapting to sea level rise, and incorporating resilient design strategies and materials in transportation infrastructure upgrades. Relatedly, the Land Use Plan requires the city to consider the equitable distribution of environmental benefits and burdens when acting on future coastal development permits.
“The public expressed a desire to develop policies to protect coastal resources including the bay, beach, and other vulnerable assets such as the Embarcadero, commercial fishing, downtown, and the open agricultural hillsides that surround the City,” explained Cindy Jacinth, a Senior Planner of the City of Morro Bay’s Community Development Department. “These policies improve the community’s ability to thrive, adapt, and provide for increased resiliency to natural hazards while also promoting sustainable and responsible development.”
Moving forward, the City of Morro Bay will complete the second component of its Local Coastal Program update by revising and certifying its Implementation Plan.