Next fall, San Francisco International Airport plans to begin environmental studies for its next big construction project. The $587 million project, targeted for completion in 2035, won’t produce another terminal, runway, or amenity for the airport’s 55 million annual passengers. It will be a seawall, an 8-mile-long bastion of steel and concrete. It will also be the centerpiece of SFO’s plan to protect itself from the steady rise of San Francisco Bay.
Since the 1980s, SFO has installed a variety of features to protect itself from the risk of flood associated with rising waters, including berms, concrete walls, and the kind of sheet piling construction projects use to keep water out of building sites.
