White House checks out S.F.'s plan to save Ocean Beach

White House aide Mike Boots holds on to EPA's Nancy Woo to remove sand from his shoe at Ocean Beach. White House aide Mike Boots holds on to EPA's Nancy Woo to remove sand from his shoe at Ocean Beach. Photo: Paul Chinn, The Chronicle Buy photo Photo: Paul Chinn, The Chronicle Image 1 of / 18 Caption Close White House checks out S.F.'s plan to save Ocean Beach 1 / 18 Back to Gallery

San Francisco's Ocean Beach may be one long stretch of sand, but no fewer than six government bureaucracies are tasked with keeping it and the neighboring Great Highway from washing away as winter storms and rising seas batter them.

After years of disagreements, however, those agencies have united behind a plan to save the 3.5-mile oceanside stretch from the ravages of a warming planet - drawing attention from the White House as it plans to confront that challenge on coastlines throughout the nation.

On Thursday, President Obama's environmental policy adviser, Mike Boots, came to San Francisco to see what the city can teach the country.

"The president is really well aware that we have ideas in D.C. about the ways we can address this issue, but we also know that the best ideas do not come from inside the Beltway," Boots told 21 city, state and federal officials involved in the plan to save Ocean Beach and the Great Highway. "We need to get out where people are thinking long term, and the level of pragmatism around this table is refreshing."

The plan envisions closing the Great Highway south of Sloat Boulevard and creating "a key missing piece of the California coastal trail," while protecting an underground sewage tunnel critical to the city's water system, said Ben Grant of the urban-policy nonprofit SPUR, which led the project. The overhaul is expected to cost around $340 million and is still in the planning stages.

Ocean Beach is more than a beach, Grant said: It's a "jurisdictional morass" whose minders include the city's Public Utilities Commission, the Department of Public Works and the Recreation and Park Department, along with the state Coastal Commission and the federal Golden Gate National Recreation Area and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

They haven't always worked in concert, Grant said. But winter storms in 2010 that shut down much of the Great Highway for 10 months amounted to a crisis that prompted everyone to adopt "a much more positive framework," he said.

"We are very keen not to let this sit on the shelf as an abstract idea - and nature is making sure that won't happen," he said.

Boots is co-chairing a group of 26 governors, mayors and tribal leaders - including California Gov. Jerry Brown - that will offer recommendations to Obama this fall on how to respond to climate change. He asked planners of the Ocean Beach project how they had settled on sea-level rise predictions when the science around climate change is inexact.

Kelly and AnMarie Rogers, a senior policy adviser at the city's Planning Department, said the city tried to strike a balance between the consensus for rising sea levels and the most extreme possible outcome.

Boots, who also spent time this week looking at solar installations on homes in San Jose, said he was impressed with the coalition and its success.

"Getting people from the private and public sector - including state, federal and local (agencies) - to come together around a common vision is rare," he said.