Home Care in Stinson Beach, CA

One of the Bay Area’s most expensive enclaves relies on a two-lane road that will be covered by rising seas in the coming decades. A powerful homeowners group says the county must protect the road into the future — or be liable for billions of dollars of inaccessible real estate.

Calle del Arroyo in Stinson Beach runs half a mile from Highway 1 to the gated community of Seadrift. It’s the emergency access and tsunami evacuation route for about 500 homes both in Seadrift and on the town’s narrow beachfront lanes.

A recent Marin County sea level rise report for Stinson Beach recommended the road, which is county-owned, be raised soon, because it’s often impassable during annual king tides now and is expected to flood during major storms by around 2050, when storm surge swells the lagoon, and during monthly high tides by around 2060 to 2075.

Just who is responsible for fortifying Calle del Arroyo in the long term has become a contentious topic in the unincorporated vacation town. The issue is harder to ignore after record high tides and flooding hit Marin in early January, probably exacerbated by sea level rise. It’s part of a broader debate across the Bay Area over who will pay to shore up public infrastructure, and which communities should benefit from government funding, as aging roads as well as utilities, airports and levees are pushed past the breaking point with climate change.

In recent years, Marin County has sent mixed messages about the extent of its responsibility for Calle del Arroyo as the climate changes, at one point suggesting that it would no longer be required to maintain it if coastal hazards made it no longer feasible. The county withdrew that proposal. But months later, the Seadrift Association, representing the community’s roughly 300 homeowners, threatened the county in a letter to the Board of Supervisors with “billions in liability” if it abandoned the road.

“I look at this and think, ‘Wow, the value of the real estate in Stinson Beach that is accessed by Calle del Arroyo is enough to bankrupt Marin County,’” said Michael Wara, a legal expert who directs the Climate and Energy Policy Program at Stanford University.

Calle del Arroyo has flooded for decades, both near its intersection with Highway 1, where Easkoot Creek overflows during heavy rainfall, and at its western end at Seadrift, which is located between the Pacific Ocean and Bolinas Lagoon, said Fire Chief Jesse Peri. During king tides, Peri assigns personnel to park on its western end in case a medical emergency occurs when the area is cut off, and has a boat ready to ferry patients across the flood zone.

The preliminary estimate to raise the road is $22.8 million over two decades-long phases. That’s not a huge sum compared with other infrastructure projects, but it would be a complex undertaking because the road is connected to utilities as well as to private roads and driveways that will probably need to be raised along with it, said Robin Bartlett, principal civil engineer with Marin County’s Department of Public Works.

Other Stinson roads also need protection against sea level rise, and the total — including Calle del Arroyo — comes to $53 million, or “over $100,000 per coastal property if distributed evenly,” the Stinson Beach sea level rise report stated.

Loading...

The legal issues around Calle del Arroyo apply to many other seaside roads in the Bay Area and California, said Wara, who is also a land-use attorney as well as a Marin County resident whose parents own a home in Seadrift.

Typically, state law prohibits municipalities from abandoning public roads. If a county or other local government “abandons” or allows a public road to become impassable, homeowners can sue for the value of homes that are no longer accessible or diminished in value, known in legal circles as inverse condemnation.

But things may be changing, Wara said. In 2020, California’s Third District Court of Appeal held up an earlier dismissal of an inverse condemnation claim made by Lake Tahoe homeowners against Placer County over their access to a public road. The main reason was that their lots were on private roads and did not abut the public road.

“The decision may have changed the legal framework,” Wara said.

Stinson Beach’s situation is different in many ways, but it does involve homeowners on private roads that lead to the public Calle del Arroyo. The homeowners would have to overcome that legal precedent if they tried to sue Marin County, he said.

Wara also pointed to new Marin County planning codes requiring those seeking a new building permit in vulnerable parts of the bay shoreline to sign a waiver of liability if the county one day can’t maintain roads because of sea level rise.

Also, budgets only stretch so far, and the county needs at least $17 billion to protect itself from the 2 feet of sea level rise expected toward the end of the century, according to the San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission. That’s about $65,000 per county resident.

In an email to the Chronicle, Bartlett of the Department of Public Works said Marin County would be responsible for pursuing and managing funding for any roadway improvements on Calle del Arroyo, as well as for maintaining and improving it as needed, “based on available resources.” Those resources could include the county general fund and grants — which are competitive, so funding is not guaranteed, she said.

“Any work — such as elevating the roadway — would be considered in the context of overall maintenance needs and funding availability across the county’s entire road network,” she said.

The county sent a starker message in 2024, when it released a draft public planning document for development in the coastal zone under certain hazardous situations. It said “permittees” — or those seeking building permits, including for substantial remodels — would have to remove their houses and restore the area if roads and utilities could no longer “feasibly be maintained due to coastal hazards” and named Calle del Arroyo as an example.

It also said the county “shall not be required to maintain access” for such development under those conditions.

The document caused an uproar when it was presented at a Stinson Beach public meeting, said Jeff Loomans, a Seadrift resident who is now director at the Stinson Beach Village Association, where he serves on the long-range planning committee.

Sarah Jones, director of Marin County Community Development Agency, said in an email that the measures that were included in the draft document “reflect strategies that are being considered, and in some cases have been applied, throughout the county.”

However, they don’t signal any intent about long-term maintenance or improvement, because decisions on infrastructure and protection or restoration of developed areas haven’t been made, she said.

“We’re managing expectations about the county’s role with new development that we’re permitting in these areas,” she said. “Our planning for the future has to account for what we know could happen down the road.”

The county put the draft planning document on hold the next year due to other concerns raised by the Coastal Commission. But that summer, the county issued its Stinson Beach sea level rise report that made clear that the community would have to take the lead on planning and securing funding to protect its shoreline, to the tune of $1.2 billion.

Two months later, the Seadrift homeowners association wrote its letter to the Marin County Board of Supervisors.

“The burden of implementing solutions to the collective problem of sea-level rise must be borne collectively, and not placed disproportionately on individual property owners and coastal communities like Seadrift,” wrote Dyer Grote, the president of the association. Grote also said that the county is responsible for repairing and preventing damage to public streets and infrastructure, such as Calle del Arroyo.

“Abandoning Calle del Arroyo to the rising seas, for example, would expose the county to billions in liability from Seadrift homeowners who would lose access to their homes,” she said.

Jones said in an email that the Stinson Beach study did not draw any conclusions on which projects will be pursued and who will bear the costs.

“There is a lot more to consider, about all of the communities in Marin subject to sea level rise impacts, before we decide what types of projects to pursue and where,” she said.

Last year, Stinson Beach was among the nation’s top 10 most expensive ZIP codes for homebuyers, a status it also reached in 2023, according to the real estate data website Property Shark. Another area of Marin, San Rafael’s Canal District, is considered the most vulnerable community to sea level rise in the Bay Area and is also one of the county’s most diverse and low-income areas.

“I can’t argue that there’s not a potential equity issue. If you look at something like the Canal District it has a more urgent need,” Loomans said. “But ultimately it’s the county’s responsibility.”

Grote said that she stands by her original statement. She said the road is also used for access and parking by visitors and that not all of the town’s residents are wealthy.

Stinson Beach and Seadrift home owners “reasonably expect that their property taxes will go to maintenance of public access roads like Calle de Arroyo,” she said in a text message. “The county cannot legally turn a blind eye to a matter of fundamental safety.”

Stinson Beach could create a special assessment or parcel tax to help cover upgrades to Calle del Arroyo and other roads. Such special districts already exist in the community. Stinson’s fire station — which is just as busy in winter with flooding events as it is in summer with fires — is moving from being volunteer-run to a mostly professional staff with the help of property tax revenue from parcels in Stinson Beach, Peri said.

The town is building a new firehouse, with the majority of funding coming from the community, he said.

It was designed, Peri said, “to combat obstacles, with climate change bringing fire to places that it normally hasn’t been in and water into areas it normally hasn’t been in.”