On Balboa Island, the largest of six islands in the harbor, homes are valued significantly higher than in most of the rest of California. There are roughly 1,410 houses on the island, plus a few dozen businesses, with an average estimated market value of $2.8 million per house, which means conservatively that there’s north of $4 billion worth of real estate crowded onto the 130-acre walled-in sandbar. That’s a lot of money at risk. The homes are privately owned; the seawall is owned by the city, which spent $1.8 million on the recent capping project. How much more the city will be on the hook for, and when, is anybody’s guess and could be influenced by whether the world manages to come up with a strong enough plan to reduce carbon emissions and rein in the climb in global temperatures — and thereby hold down the rise in sea levels. But with the Trump administration denying there’s even a problem and giving cover to other industrialized nations to do less, there isn’t a lot of reason to feel optimistic that mankind, which created this problem and has the ability to fix it, will actually do so.
Source: latimes.com – Los Angeles Times