Planning for a Resilient &
Thriving Imperial Beach
Source: Scripps Institute of Oceangraphy 2023
Phase 1
Phase 1 of the Imperial Beach Community Resilience Plan (CRP) led to the creation of strategies intended to reduce or eliminate flooding of the community from storms, King Tide events, and projected sea level rise originating from the Pacific Ocean or the Estuary. The draft CRP included strategies to address flooding impacts through nature-based solutions that adequately address the needs of residents that currently experience flooding or are projected to be substantially impacted by future coastal flooding. The CRP is born out of lessons learned from planning and design of the City's Bayshore Bikeway Resiliency Project. Specifically, the outreach and engagement, funding requirements, and agency coordination.
Phase 2
An additional grant funding opportunity from the Ocean Protection Council allowed the City to continue the planning and design of the flood protection strategies in the CRP. In the summer of 2025 with grant funding secured, the City of Imperial Beach initiated Phase 2 of the Community Resilience Plan. The intent of this second phase is three-fold: 1) Identify, refine, and prioritize the draft CRP flood protection strategies along the Pacific Ocean and Estuary for further design engineering and construction. 2) Perform the baseline technical studies (e.g., biological, cultural, and hydraulics and hydrology) as requested by Federal and State agencies to fund design engineering, permitting, and implementation of the individual strategies. 3) Better understand the risk to the City from strategy implementation and explore options for long-term funding of flood protection strategies.
All of the proposed strategies being considered for further review are along Segments 2 - 4 as described in the CRP. (Segment 1 is the Bayshore Bikeway Resiliency Project.) The City has been engaging with the community during this second phase starting in Spring 2026. Please see the "Workshops" page for upcoming workshops and opportunities to provide your input.