California’s radical plan to defend homes from sea level rise: move them

The hamlet of Gleason Beach sits on a wild and picturesque stretch of the Sonoma coast between Bodega Bay and Jenner. Built in the 1930s, it doesn’t have a store, gas station or coffee shop, just coastal prairie rolling gently toward a handful of cottages perched at the bluff’s edge above the Pacific Ocean.But where 21 oceanfront homes once stood shoulder-to-shoulder west of Highway 1, only four remain, clinging precariously to the cliffs. For decades, this land has been eroding about a foot a year, causing stretches of the highway to buckle and threatening the remaining homes.