An article in the Los Angeles Times reports the findings of a panel studying what to do to protect California in the event of the sea level rising as much as 55" by the end of the century. Taking global warming as a given, though I do not, they expect the ocean's water to expand as it warms and thus rise. If the globe warms, less water will be trapped in ice caps, glaciers and ice fields, also contributing to rising sea levels.
Many places in CA would be threatened by rising seas, but none more so than the river delta region of the state inland from the San Francisco Bay. Large parts of the Bay Area, the San Joaquin-Sacramento delta, and the agricultural lands of the great Central Valley would be at risk.
I propose building an earth-fill dam across the Golden Gate, containing large locks to pass ships into and out of the San Francisco Bay. As the water level rises, pumping stations would be required to move the river flow out of the Bay and into the ocean. The Bay would become first brackish and later a mostly fresh water feature. The Golden Gate flood control construction would be modeled on those in the Netherlands which serve the same purpose.
In this way, large parts of central California could exist as a below-sea-level ecosystem, as the Netherlands does. Care would be required to harden the construction against sabotage, tsunami and earthquake. Fortunately, we do not experience hurricanes in this region.
Just imagine how upset such plans would make the ecology lobby. There are probably any number of beetles, snails, and plankton that would be endangered by a switch from salt to fresh water.
