‘Everything’s Getting Pinched’: UCSB and Isla Vista Grapple with Constricting Coastline

“Do you feel squeezed?”

That’s what the sign asks.

More specifically — the ocean is warming and expanding, driving stronger storms and higher sea levels, now eating into the Santa Barbara coastline. Is that process tightening the space between land and water — making you feel compressed?

At the University of California, Santa Barbara campus, that question is posted directly onto a fence now set back from the bluff in front of Anacapa Residence Hall — a fence that, until recently, sat closer to the edge. The relocation is part of the university’s Sea Level Rise Adaptation Strategy and its public outreach effort — a way of making visible what is otherwise incremental and easy to ignore: the coastline is moving.

The plan itself was adopted in June 2024 and later certified by the California Coastal Commission, which regulates development along the state’s 1,100-mile coastline. The strategy lays out a long-term approach to erosion, flooding, and sea-level rise through the end of the century, using projections of up to 6.6 feet of rise. It divides the campus into shoreline segments, assesses vulnerabilities, and outlines phased responses — from monitoring and temporary protections to the eventual relocation or removal of infrastructure.

As the plan states, there is an “immediate need to address erosion threats to the road at a ‘pinch point’ near the Anacapa residence hall.”

“If you look at how much space is available along that stretch [of Lagoon Road], it’s variable,” said Charles Lester, director of UCSB’s Ocean and Coastal Policy Center. “But if you come toward Anacapa, it starts to get narrow … everything’s getting pinched.”

The issue is not just the bluff. It is everything on top of it — the road, utilities, bike paths, pedestrian access, and nearby buildings — all competing for space that is, over time, disappearing. “The erosion trend is not expected to change,” Lester said. “That’s going to continue for decades.”

The recently moved fence was not a formal step laid out in the strategy, but a near-term response to accelerated erosion after recent storms. “There was significant enough erosion … that the bluff was getting to within a couple of feet from the past-rail fence,” wrote UCSB media relations manager Kiki Reyes in an email. The university “relocate[d] the fence and detour[ed] pedestrians” as a precaution.

The plan is meant to get ahead of those moments — to avoid emergency responses where possible. But those responses are already happening. This winter, sections of the campus lagoon berm — the horizontal sand terrace at the nose of campus point which separates the lagoon from the Pacific Ocean — began to erode from underneath during storms. 

“You’ll see some sandbags down there,” said Charles Lester. “There was a lot of undercutting … the university had to put in emergency measures in order to prevent it from collapsing.” 

The intervention is temporary — a failure of that berm, Lester noted, could have cascading effects on the lagoon itself. “The point of our project is to figure out what’s the best, longer-term strategy for that area,” he said — one that preserves beach access, protects habitat, and maintains circulation along the coast.

Same Ocean, Different Jurisdiction

To understand UCSB’s coastline, you also have to look at Isla Vista — which the university surrounds on all sides but the ocean.

More than half of Isla Vista is made up of UCSB students. But the unincorporated community falls under the jurisdiction of Santa Barbara County. And unlike the university or the City of Santa Barbara, the county does not currently have a certified sea-level-rise adaptation plan in place.

But it did try.

In 2018, the County Board of Supervisors adopted a Coastal Resiliency Project — a grant-funded effort to evaluate sea level rise and coastal hazards along its 110-mile coastline. The project produced a vulnerability assessment, mapping tools, and proposed amendments to the county’s Local Coastal Program.

But the policy never made it into effect.

According to the county’s own status update, after years of negotiation with the Coastal Commission, “the County ultimately withdrew the LCPA on September 3, 2021,” and “the LCPA is not currently certified for use within the County’s Coastal Zone; therefore, the existing policies and development standards apply.”

The breakdown came down to a handful of core issues. “It became a game of high-stakes poker,” said Daniel Klemann, an environmental planner who worked on the plan from the county side. 

Among the most contentious: a proposed requirement that property owners waive their right to future shoreline protections, such as seawalls, even if those protections became necessary. “If we were to place that requirement on a developer … they could sue us for violating the Coastal Act,” Klemann said. The California Coastal Act mandates approval for armoring when necessary to protect existing structures from coastal erosion, but its application has become increasingly contested. The Coastal Commission has pushed to limit new seawalls, citing growing evidence that coastal armoring accelerates beach erosion and can eventually eliminate public shoreline access.

Another sticking point was how to define “existing development.” Coastal Commission staff pushed to limit that definition to structures built before the Coastal Act took effect in 1977 — excluding decades of permitted construction that followed.

The county rejected both. “Those were non-starters,” Klemann said.

The result is where things stand now: no updated sea-level-rise framework for the county’s coast. Instead, decisions are made using older policies, supplemented by vulnerability data, on a case-by-case basis.

That means that in Isla Vista, the response to coastal erosion is not a coordinated plan like UCSB’s. It is a series of individual responses.

Along Del Playa Drive, that reality is very much visible. Decks have collapsed into the ocean. Sections of bluffside access have eroded away. Homes sit close to edges that shift each winter under wave action and storm surge. Since the 1990s, more than a dozen students have fallen from these bluffs — many fatally — the risk shaped by both behavior and the narrowing space between infrastructure and a 30-foot coastal cliff.

The infrastructure itself is monitored through geotechnical reports that assess both bluff stability and structural integrity. Property owners are often required to reinforce or cut back structures as erosion advances, unless they qualify for exceptions such as “site-specific deepened foundations,” as stated by the Building and Safety Division which allow them to remain occupied within 10 feet of the cliff. Others sit within 20 feet, their structural status unclear. When properties are eventually vacated, rebuilding is allowed — but only if new construction is set back 30 feet from the bluff. 

The result is a rolling set of site-by-site decisions — reinforce, retreat, rebuild. UCSB is working to ease the pinch. In Isla Vista, it has already drawn blood.