Who Pays When Sea Levels Rise?
Consider This from NPR
NPR
4.2 • 6.2K Ratings
🗓️ 27 July 2021
⏱️ 13 minutes
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Summary
This tension is playing out on the shoreline of San Francisco Bay, where the wealthiest companies in the world have built their headquarters next to low-income communities of color. Both need protection, but as cities there plan massive levee projects, they're struggling to figure out what's fair. Will the cost fall on taxpayers or private landowners who benefit the most?
NPR climate correspondent Lauren Sommer reports from San Francisco.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | There are big plans for a neighborhood in Silicon Valley called Moffitt Park. |
| 0:04.6 | So I'm going to start with just a brief Moffitt Park overview again |
| 0:10.4 | on how to hear us about. |
| 0:11.7 | Moffitt Park is in the city of Sunnyvale in the San Francisco Bay Area. |
| 0:15.7 | Right now it's mostly office buildings. |
| 0:17.8 | At a city council meeting earlier this year, city planners laid out a new vision for the neighborhood. |
| 0:34.4 | Sounds great, right? Especially in a place like the Bay Area where they cannot build new homes fast enough. |
| 0:40.0 | All right, we have time for one last question and this is my line. |
| 0:46.1 | Moffitt Park is in a flood zone to protect it from rising sea levels, local governments want to build a massive levee |
| 0:52.9 | that could cost half a billion dollars and take decades to complete. |
| 0:57.6 | So the question some residents have is why increase development in the low-lying areas along? |
| 1:05.9 | Well, a lot of the landowners want to. One of the biggest ones is Google. |
| 1:10.3 | Silicon Valley tech giants buying up land. |
| 1:13.1 | Today, Google made another big move this time in the South Bay City of Sunnyvale. |
| 1:17.2 | Over the last five years, Google has bought more than 70 properties in Moffitt Park, |
| 1:21.8 | worth almost three billion dollars. |
| 1:24.4 | So what cost should the company bear for building in a flood zone? |
| 1:29.0 | The problem is going to exist whether we do more things in Moffitt Park or not. |
| 1:32.9 | Google's real estate development director and town Jeff Holesman. |
| 1:35.8 | We kind of need projects like Moffitt Park and others to move forward so that it creates the |
| 1:41.3 | economic ability to contribute into these solutions. |
| 1:44.7 | Consider this. Rising seas are threatening coastal communities around the world, |
... |
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