To the CARB Board:<br /><br />I write to express my
support for the California Air Resources Board (CARB) 2022 Climate
Change Scoping Plan and offer suggestions to strengthen the natural
working lands targets to better reflect the importance of
California's coastal habitats. Our state has felt firsthand the
effects of intensifying wildfires, record heat waves, and severe
droughts, making nature-based solutions that harness coastal
wetlands' carbon-absorbing properties a crucial element to advance
emission reduction goals. <br /><br />Specifically, I
ask CARB to:<br /><br />• Endorse the draft plan's
recommendation to restore at least 60,000 acres of the
Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta to reduce emissions, restart carbon
burial, and provide flood mitigation, water quality, and
biodiversity benefits to the region and state.<br /><br
/>• Include an acreage target and related management
strategies for ALL of the state's coastal wetlands, including San
Francisco Bay, Eel River Estuary, and Humboldt Bay, and the sloughs
and pocket estuaries found along the central and south
coasts.<br /><br />• Improve accounting for
coastal wetlands, including tidal marsh, scrub-shrub, swamps, and
seagrass, in the state's Natural and Working Lands greenhouse gas
inventory, drawing upon established U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change methodologies for these habitats. And collaborate
with state agencies and research institutions to incorporate newly
released and existing localized data sets into the inventory.<br
/>California has lost an estimated 90% of its wetlands after
decades of diking, draining, dredging, damming, development, and
other impacts. And eelgrass has faced extensive loss in the state
because of excess sedimentation resulting from land use practices,
pollution, and direct impacts from coastal infrastructure. Morro
Bay, site of a National Estuary Program, has experienced a massive
die-off in eelgrass habitat, with declines of more than 90% since
2007. Sea level rise will accelerate this loss if eelgrass beds,
tidal marsh, and other coastal habitats are unable to migrate
shoreward.<br /><br />These losses harm wildlife and
people alike. Coastal wetlands sustain resource- and
recreation-dependent coastal people and economies, protect cultural
resources, improve water quality, and reduce flooding. And the
climate benefit of coastal wetlands can have a flipside: Their
destruction releases this stored carbon back into the atmosphere.
<br /><br />I applaud CARB for developing the draft
2022 Climate Change Scoping Plan and formally recognizing the role
of natural and working lands in this plan. I urge you not to miss
the opportunity to protect and expand the state's blue carbon sinks
by including strong measures for ALL of the state's coastal
wetlands. <br /><br />Thank you for your time and
consideration of this important issue.<br /><br
/>Sincerely,
<br />Melissa Williams
<br
/>La Quinta, California 92253<br /><img
src="/email/open/leg/634428/143092775" width="1" height="1"
/>
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