Overview of the San Francisco Seawall Earthquake Safety Program

Starting in 1878 and lasting nearly four decades, San Francisco transformed hundreds of acres of tidal mudflat into a major deep water port by building a three mile long seawall, a continuous bulkhead wharf, and over forty finger piers. A century later, maritime cargo has moved on and this area of the port has transformed to serve a changing city. The Embarcadero Seawall is still there, and now protects over 500 acres of dense city and port land including portions of downtown, a baseball stadium, a waterfront promenade, a multi-modal transit corridor, regional ferry terminals, a cruise terminal, lifeline utility infrastructure, and a national historic district containing over half of the remaining finger piers. Recognizing the importance of the seawall today, the port completed initial studies for sea level rise in 2012 and earthquake vulnerability in 2016. These studies indicated that increased flooding from sea level rise is likely to inundate portions of downtown by 2050 and that the next major earthquake would likely damage most of the seawall beyond repair, impairing emergency response, risking lives, and forever altering the historic fabric. In response, the city has created the Seawall Earthquake Safety and Disaster Prevention Program, a $5B program to strengthen or replace this vital piece of infrastructure over the next 30 years. Program development is underway and the first phase of improvements is budgeted at $500M with completion by 2026. This paper will provide an overview of the program, from initial studies through planning and program development.