Marin Voice: It’s time for countywide climate resilience district

So far this winter, we’ve seen two “atmospheric river” storms hit Marin County, along with the highest king tides in this generation. Roads and homes were flooded, levees were breached and our communication lines were broken.

Whether we like it or not, this is a precursor of future events that begs immediate further discussion of how we can better prepare for severe future climate incidents that are bound to occur.

Rough cost estimates of the public works projects needed to address climate change and sea-level rise in Marin are in the billions. Roads need to be raised. Levees and sea walls must be built. Pipelines and pumps have to be repaired and replaced, and our electrical and communications infrastructure has to be hardened. The challenge is immense. None of Marin’s more than 125 local governments will be able to handle this on their own.

Our local governments are now adopting independent strategies for addressing climate change. In our opinion, they have yet to capitalize on an opportunity to develop a coordinated and more effective response to this threat.

To proactively deal with catastrophic natural disasters, including sea-level rise or flooding, California has created legislation that allows local jurisdictions to create climate resilience districts (aka CRDs). A new Marin Climate Resilience District could pull our communities together to collaborate, plan, prioritize and execute climate-related projects. Under state law, a climate district would have the authority to levy taxes, sell bonds and, most importantly, apply for federal and state grants to help fund our climate  projects.  A large consolidated district is more likely than a small single entity to win needed grants.

Sonoma County’s local governments have already formed the Sonoma County Regional Climate Protection Authority, which is now developing plans for climate projects and wrestling with the challenge of how to fund them.

Thanks to the 2018-19 Marin County Civil Grand Jury, as well as great execution by county and municipal leaders, Marin already has an excellent functioning model  of a joint-powers agreement that is successfully addressing a countywide problem.  That grand jury’s report on wildfire preparation appeared to be instrumental in the formation and taxpayer-approved funding of the Marin County Wildfire Prevention Authority, which includes the county and nine of Marin’s 11 municipalities.

Only Belvedere and Tiburon, who were already collaborating on their own fire prevention program, elected to stay out of the MWPA, but it’s a good bet that these two bayside towns would jump at the chance to join a countywide climate resilience district.

The MWPA has successfully implemented several cross-jurisdictional projects to address wildfire risk. We all know that fires, storms and rising tides ignore government borders and this is what makes collaboration essential.

Using the MWPA as a model and the Sonoma CRD for advice, the elected leaders and chief administrators of Marin’s local governments should jointly investigate the possibility of creating a countywide climate resilience district.

Past Marin civil grand juries examined the need for climate collaboration in several reports. The 2024-25 jury released a report stating that county officials should “take a more focused and vigorous approach and change the governance structure of the current informal, multi-entity partnership to a more structured and better-resourced single entity or department charged with making and tracking progress.”

The 2023-24 jury recommended that “the county create an overarching, countywide agency with the ability to require all cities and towns to participate in sea level rise adaptation efforts.” The 2019-20 jury recommended that the county, all municipalities and relevant special districts should create a “multi-jurisdictional task force … charged with developing a single comprehensive, multi-jurisdictional adaption strategy for all of Marin.”

The good news is that county government officials have responded favorably to the jury recommendations with a commitment to form a collaborative climate action department by this spring. Furthermore, several municipalities have impressive climate action plans underway. But all of these initiatives lack an effective mechanism for incentivizing cross-jurisdictional collaboration and funding the climate work that must be done. The establishment of a Marin Climate Resilience District could be the answer to this problem, and we need to get moving on it now.

Ron Arlas is a former Larkspur mayor and City Council member who served on the 2018-19 Marin County Civil Grand Jury. Spencer Sias is president of the Marin Chapter of the Civil Grand Jurors Association and he served on the 2019-20 and the 2021-22 Marin civil grand juries.