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Making San Francisco Bay Better
State of California SAN FRANCISCO BAY CONSERVATION AND DEVELOPMENT COMMISSIONArnold Schwarzenegger, Governor 50 California Street, Suite 2600 San Francisco, California 94111 (415) 352-3600 Fax: (415) 352-3606 (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) http://www.bcdc.ca.gov

Contact:
David Meckel, (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

Call for Entries
California State Agency Launches International
Ideas Competition to Address Sea Level Rise

The San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission (BCDC)––the California state agency responsible for protecting San Francisco Bay––today launched an initiative called Rising Tides, a first-of-its-kind international design idea competition aimed at generating innovative solutions that deal with adapting shoreline areas to sea level rise. The competition is a response to scientific estimates that global warming may raise water levels in the Bay over four feet by the end of the century.

The competition was authorized by the 27-member commission in late 2008 and is made possible by a grant from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Office of Ocean and Coastal Resource Management. The competition offers monetary awards and international recognition for outstanding ideas in a variety of categories. The first prize in the competition is $10,000. Registration begins on April 6, 2009, and submissions are due June 29, 2009. To register, visit http://www.risingtidescompetition.com.

Entries will be juried by a panel of renowned leaders in the fields of architecture, landscape architecture, engineering, life science and environmental policy. All entries will be exhibited in San Francisco the week of July 13-19, 2009. The competition is open to everyone, including individuals, organizations and design firms as well as academics, researchers, students and innovators of all types.

“The prospect of climate change is real,” stated BCDC Executive Director Will Travis. “Through this competition, our goal is to motivate people to think in new ways about how to adapt coastal development to sea level rise.”

Over half the world’s population lives in coastal areas that are vulnerable to the worst effects of global warming, including rising seas and intense storms that can result in flooded communities, inundated transportation and aviation facilities and submerged wetlands. The goal of the competition is to generate and share design responses to these challenges that can be applicable in the San Francisco Bay region and elsewhere.

About BCDC
The San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission (BCDC) was created by the state Legislature in 1965 with the charge of minimizing the unnecessary filling of San Francisco Bay. Through BCDC’s efforts, the Bay is now over 24 square miles larger than it was forty years ago. Unfortunately, the greatest threat to the San Francisco Bay Area over the next century is not that the Bay will get smaller, but that climate change will make the Bay larger and threaten existing communities, public infrastructure and wetlands. One of the most publicized impacts of global warming is a predicted acceleration of sea level rise, 1.4 meters (about 55 inches) over the next 100 years, perhaps even higher depending upon the rate at which glaciers and other ice sheets on land melt.