Credit: Daniel Wade

Today’s challenges will only worsen with tomorrow’s disruptions. We must work now to ensure housing for all San Franciscans before and after a disaster. We will work to address our city’s housing and homeless crises through innovative policies, reimagining and bold action to build a stronger city for today and tomorrow.
 

As our President and his administration continue to roll back longstanding environmental protections, cities like San Francisco are not backing down. In fact, we are doubling down on our efforts. San Francisco has joined global efforts to limited limit the temperature increase to 1.5 degrees celsius by committing to developing a Paris Agreement-compliant Climate Action Strategy by 2020 that charts the City’s course to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050 and adapts to the unavailable impacts of a changing climate (see integrated Climate and Hazards Resilience Plan).

The Hazards and Climate Resilience Plan will help San Francisco meet this Climate Action Strategy commitment. More information on that plan is available here.

San Francisco’s formula for reaching our greenhouse gas emissions reduction goals by 2020 is “0, 80 and 100”: zero waste, 80 percent sustainable trips, 100 percent renewable energy, and increasing urban greening. The San Francisco Department of the Environment, the Mayor’s Office, the Board of Supervisors and City departments are working together to reach these vital goals through policy-making, education, outreach, and infrastructure improvements.

More information on the 0-80-100-Roots initiative is available here.

The Auxiliary Water Supply System (AWSS), an independent high-pressure system dedicated to fire protection, will be improved and expanded. Built seven years after the earthquake and fire of 1906, this one-of-a-kind system has the ability to deliver water at much higher pressures and use unlimited water from the Bay. The AWSS is our last line of defense in a fire after an earthquake. The system is also used by the San Francisco Fire Department to increase service capacity, providing critical firefighting water to areas in need. Since 2010, the Public Utilities Commission (PUC), Fire Department, and Public Works have been implementing projects to improve the AWSS. In 2018, the PUC completed an assessment of options for expanding the AWSS system for the Richmond and Sunset Districts. The SFPUC is now moving forward with design work for a system configuration that will significantly enhance the reliability emergency firefighting water supplies and provide the ancillary benefit of backup potable water if the drinking water distribution system is damaged in an earthquake.  

Status: More information on the ESER bond program, which includes AWSS, is available here.

With the completion of the Sutro Reservoir Retrofit Program in 2015, San Francisco finalized its $4.8 billion Water System Improvement Program (WSIP). WSIP was a multi-year capital program to upgrade the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission’s regional and local water systems. Objectives included reducing the vulnerability of the water system to damage from earthquakes, improving water supply and drought protection, increasing system reliability by providing redundancy, and enhancing sustainability through protection of the natural and human environment. The program consisted of 83 projects—35 local projects within San Francisco and 48 regional projects spread over seven counties.

Status: More information on WSIP is available here.

The San Francisco Public Utilities Commission’s (SFPUC) Sewer System Improvement Project (SSIP) is a 20-year, multibillion-dollar citywide investment in upgrading our aging sewer infrastructure. Costly emergency and routine repairs are not sufficient to keep pace with our 100-year-old, seismically vulnerable system, and the longer upgrades are delayed, the more expensive they become. The system faces a number of current and future challenges, including the increasing intensity and frequency of storms that can overwhelm our system. SSIP includes both upgrades to critical grey infrastructure like treatment facilities and pump stations as well as green construction that uses natural processes to reduce stormwater flows into the system. Sewer system upgrades like this are is essential to the overall vitality of our City’s public health, the environment and our ability to recovery after a disaster.

More information on SSIP is available here.

(note: this text comes directly from the seawall program website)

The Embarcadero Seawall was built more than 100 years ago and was designed before engineers understood how to build infrastructure to survive earthquakes. For more than a century the Seawall has served us well, but it is now in need of significant improvements to withstand the next major earthquake and protect us from an increase in flooding from sea level rise.

In 2015, the Port of San Francisco launched the San Francisco Seawall Earthquake Safety and Disaster Prevention Program, a major City and Port effort to significantly improve earthquake safety and performance of the Embarcadero Seawall, provide near-term flood protection improvements, and plan for additional long-term resilience and adaptation of the northern Bayfront.

Seismic improvements to the Embarcadero Seawall will require local, state, and federal partnerships for project legislation, permitting, and funding. Immediate life safety upgrades may exceed $500 million and full infrastructure improvements are estimated to cost up to $5 billion. To date, the City has invested nearly $10 million for project planning. San Francisco’s FY 2018-2027 Capital Plan includes a proposed $425 million General Obligation bond for the November 2018 ballot to help protect and strengthen the Embarcadero Seawall. The bond will require two-thirds voter approval and will not raise tax rates.

More information on the Seawall Earthquake Safety and Disaster Prevention Program can be found here.

In June 2014, San Francisco voters approved the $400 million Earthquake Safety and Emergency Response (ESER) Bond to continue to pay for repairs and improvements that will allow San Francisco to quickly respond to a major earthquake or disaster. The first phase of the program, ESER 2010, was approved by voters in June 2010. The Public Safety Building, with funding from ESER 2010, opened in April 2015. In addition, the 2016 Public Health and Safety Bond funded the construction of a modern and seismically safe Ambulance Deployment Facility. In the years to come, the City will continue to make improvements to neighborhood firehouses and upgrade our emergency firefighting water system, shortening response times and improving emergency services.

More information on the ESER bond program can be found here.

In the nearly 30 years since the Loma Prieta Earthquake, San Francisco have completed over 200 earthquake-related improvements in its public facilities portfolio. This work will continue in the years ahead as we prepare for the next major earthquake. Seismic upgrades range from small but critical pump stations and transmission mains to large-scale, essential facilities. The Office of Resilience and Capital Planning, in partnership with several other departments, regularly evaluates seismic risk to high-priority General Fund facilities using HAZUS, a FEMA tool used to estimate potential losses from earthquakes. The results identify buildings where further seismic analysis is needed and informs the prioritization of capital improvement projects.

San Francisco’s 10-Year Capital Plan is available in full-text here.

Non-ductile concrete buildings were built before modern building codes, leaving them susceptible to extreme damage or even collapse in the event of an earthquake. Many non-ductile concrete buildings have high occupancies; in a modeled repeat of the 1906 earthquake, a large proportion of the deaths and serious injuries were attributed to the collapse of non-ductile concrete buildings. Initial estimates from the Concrete Coalition at the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute estimates there are 3,200 of these buildings in San Francisco. The San Francisco Office of Resilience and Capital Planning will develop a program for the evaluation and eventual retrofit of all non-ductile concrete buildings.

More information on the Community Action Plan for Seismic Safety (CAPSS), which guides San Francisco’s work in the area of seismic safety, can be found here.