"...The study can look into many factors surrounding the shoreline, including land use, flood control, conservation, climate change and rising sea levels, according to Cortese's office..."

Yes the shoreline here really needs to be addressed concerning how to shore up the area due to climate change and rising sea levels. We don't need massive flooding destroying our properties in the future.

Also perhaps this will be a good time as any to consider ferry service...and not just for tours from Milpitas to Palo Alto. Ferry service up the peninsula.

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Alviso Marina as a regional emergency access port if a natural disaster shuts down roads?! Alviso is the lowest point in the Bay Area - sections dip to 13 feet below sea level - and boaters going to launch at the marina actually drive up an incline to get to the ramp. It's going to take a lot of work (i.e. money) to make that happen.

Rick makes a very good point about the Alviso Marina.

The kind of natural disaster that could shut down roads and airports is most likely a flood. Parts of 17, 237, and 101, and SFO and OAK are at or near sea level and therefore subject to flooding--one of the concerns the study would look into. SJC by contrast is at 62 ft and is therefore much less likely to flood than Alviso Marina (minus 13 ft), OAK (9 ft) or SFO (13 ft)--or even Moffett Federal Airfield (37 ft), which has an access point that could be developed into a ferry port.

Mitigating flood damage is not going to be cheap and I for one think building a giant levee around the south Bay would be more expensive than abandoning flooded buildings and turning major bayshore areas into tidelands.

The shoreline is for making salt. If it ain't broke...

I believe Alviso is a non starter. The amount of dredging the slough requires to become available on every day of the year will never pass an EIR. Currently, Alviso only reachable a few days of the month, and only then during high tide.

And the red tape involved to transport and dump the material is another insurmountable hurdle.

The furthest south bay port currently feasible is Redwood City. There is a chance the old fuel depot dock at Moffett Field could be revived, but that too will require a lot of dredging.

Best of luck. It would be great to have a functioning port south of Dumbarton again.

Re Doug Pearson, I would guess the emergency might be more like an earthquake, something like when emergency supplies to Santa Cruz/Watsonville area were needed after roads were blocked during Loma Prieta.

That said, with or without flooding, access to the port of Alviso is all little two-lane residential roads, and all the ways out of Alviso go under overpasses on 237 that might be damaged in an earthquake, so it's not clear how much freight you could rely on even with massive dredging.