Valley Water, the State Coastal Conservancy and the U.S. Army
Corps of Engineers (USACE) have begun Phase 1 construction of
the South San Francisco Bay Shoreline Project between the Alviso
Slough/Guadalupe River and Coyote Creek. Once completed,
the project will protect north San José, including the community
of Alviso and the San José-Santa Clara Regional Wastewater
Facility, from a 100-year coastal storm and rising seas.
The project will provide coastal flood protection from a rising sea level, and will restore and enhance tidal marsh by using a combination of flood protection levees, wetlands and transitional zone habitats also known as ecotones. Ecotones will provide an additional protective buffer for the levee and allow marsh habitat to migrate upslope as the sea level rises. This approach of using natural infrastructure will help develop a resilient and adaptable flood protection system that can evolve in the future.