Destruction of beaches

Stinson underwater, Ocean Beach halved: California's beach reckoning is here

California’s most iconic feature is disappearing

By Tessa McLean

Ask anyone what image comes to mind when they picture California, and it won’t be long before they mention the beach. Wide, sandy shores with crashing waves that slide up and down the coastline. Kids and dogs splashing in the surf while bathing suit-clad adults luxuriate on brightly striped towels under colorful, oversized umbrellas. Beaches are the epitome of the California that’s sold in movies and TV, where the sun shines on perfect, cloudless days. 

But the California of the future may not be so idyllic. Without action, the state’s beaches could soon disappear. Shoreline modeling photos from the U.S. Geological Survey show that in 100 years, the beachfront homes along a large section of Stinson Beach would likely be underwater. At Ocean Beach in San Francisco, the beach shrank to half its size. In one model, Santa Monica’s beach parking lot almost touches the waves.

By 2100, the water could creep up 1 meter, decreasing beaches by up to 75% without intervention. Almost everyone agrees that something needs to be done — it’s the “what” that’s causing problems. Beach nourishment, the act of adding sand to a beach, has become the current Band-Aid, but it’s an approach that no one seems to love. 

The very nature of remediation is controversial, with private and public property and the environment in conflict. Big ideas from one camp seem to come at a high cost for the others, causing stalemate as the state’s shoreline slowly slips beneath the waves. As climate change accelerates every year and sea levels rise, the Golden State must grapple with whether to give up this iconic, fundamental part of its land. 

California’s fraught early relationship with beaches

Most California beaches look drastically different today from how they appeared a century ago. Depending on the area, dunes covered in vegetation dotted the coastline or the ocean bumped up against a rocky, muddy shoreline. But early Californians wanted to adapt the coastline to serve their will. A vast network of harbors welcomed goods from across the globe, and residents sought refuge from inland heat by relaxing near the cool water. The beach has always been a valuable resource and so, from the beginning, it made sense to try not only to make more of it, but also to fiercely protect it. 

One of the first documented beach nourishment projects (also known as beach replenishment or replacement) occurred at Newport Beach in 1934. Long before the California Environmental Quality Act or the Coastal Act, stabilizing the harbor was seen as a boon for economic development, so projects underwent little formal ecological review or organized opposition as about 7.64 million cubic meters of sand widened the area’s beaches. Federal and local funding paid the bills. Beach replenishment projects also began on the East Coast around this time, and it seemed like the path forward to safeguard and expand the country’s vast coastline.

On the West Coast, another of California’s earliest beach replenishment projects crafted what would arguably become the state’s most famous beaches. Santa Monica and Venice have the wide, flat, expansive beaches we know today because of a massive project that began in 1947. Dumping 20 million to 30 million cubic yards of sand along the shoreline protected infrastructure and created even more tourism opportunities at the edge of the rapidly growing city of Los Angeles. Residents gave little thought to flattening the dunes and their varied vegetation, as trucks leveled the area and snuffed out much of the local wildlife that depended on these habitats. In the 1960s, the cities piled on more sand, solidifying the space that birthed the surf-loving, beach-obsessed culture that engendered “Gidget” and the Beach Boys. 

Soon, more and more projects emerged, with no end in sight. The San Gabriel to Newport Bay Beach Renourishment Project, now known as the Surfside-Sunset program, began in 1964. Designed to replenish 1.75 million cubic yards of sand every five years along that stretch of coast indefinitely, that project is now on its 13th phase. Sixty-one years later, the Army Corps of Engineers, which executes most of these operations, has laid 26 million cubic yards of sand. When Congress initially authorized the project in 1962, it acknowledged that replenishment was, in essence, a problem of its own making. Natural erosion had greatly accelerated from the reduction in river sand caused by flood‑control dams upriver and other federal coastal structures that altered waves and currents. To save the beaches and preserve what had been built, beach replenishment was the answer, forever.

Funding would typically come from a 67/33 split, with 67% federal funding and 33% local funding. For example, federal funds — about $15.5 million — supported Stage 13 of the Surfside-Sunset program, while California, Orange County, the cities of Seal Beach, Huntington Beach and Newport Beach and the Surfside Colony Storm Water Protection District shared the remaining one‑third for a total cost of $23.13 million. Local organizations are already trying to establish local sources of funding that will make up Stage 14 funding. 

The thinking around sand reached a flash point in 1983, a particularly bad winter storm year for California, due to a strong El Niño system. It produced historic flooding, significantly damaging several piers and pummeling public and private property along the coast. State and local governments had to think about short- and long-term solutions in advance of future extreme weather events, in addition to the naturally eroding sand. But they also had to go up against more obstacles, like the California Coastal Act and CEQA, which made confirming these projects a lengthier and more costly endeavor. 

Nonetheless, numerous projects trudged through the approval process, many with functionally indefinite timelines or durations of up to 50 years of repeated replenishment. Average replenishment projects per year have increased 18% since 1983, with more than a 40% increase in inflation-adjusted cost.

Beaches are like roads

There are other ways to “fix” an eroding beach. Local agencies could “armor” the beach, by constructing protections like sea walls, or return the beach to nature, with actions like managed retreat or creating a “living shoreline” by restoring original features like dunes and vegetation. Beach replenishment, meanwhile, has become an in-between option that treats the beach like other public infrastructure in the state. That is to say, we simply keep paving over the problem with more of the same. 

That’s the way Keith Greer, environmental compliance manager at the San Diego Association of Governments, or SANDAG, said his organization thinks about beaches. Just like we fill in potholes and widen a highway when necessary, we should treat beaches the same way. “It’s a very important topic for the San Diego region,” he said. “It’s the economic base for San Diego County, having tourism coming to our beaches.”

SANDAG has helped coordinate two beach replenishment projects, one in 2001 that placed about 2.1 million cubic yards of sand on 12 beaches from Oceanside to Imperial Beach, and another in 2012 that placed about 1.5 million cubic yards in a similar area. Now it’s in the early stages of a larger third phase, placing sand at 15 San Diego County sites, plus three in Orange County. The organization also manages the ongoing monitoring for these projects, which analyzes outcomes and environmental impacts. 

From the agency’s previous monitoring, which happened over nearly three decades, it decided to replenish sand every five to 10 years. Greer said there’s desire for even more projects like this in the region, if funding were more reliable. “Everybody wants to do this more often … but the money is just not there. At least at the local level,” Greer said. 

All that sand has to come from somewhere. Mostly, it’s dredged from a nearby site and brought to beaches via pipeline, or cleaned and collected from river clean-outs. The size, color and composition of the sand has to match what’s already on the beach, ensuring ecological health and keeping it from eroding too quickly. For Stage 13 of the Surfside-Sunset program, the Army Corps of Engineers pumped the sand ashore from a Santa Ana River mouth accretion area and a nearby offshore site. 

Sand for the ongoing beach replenishment at SF’s Ocean Beach is dredged from the San Francisco Main Ship Channel at the entrance to the Golden Gate. Most projects of this scale seek sand locally, and most find it. But others, like the Broad Beach Restoration Project in Malibu, plan to truck in hundreds of thousands of yards of sand from miles away. In Malibu’s case, it would come from inland quarries in Ventura County — up to 56 miles away by road — a decision that has effectively stalled the project, since the truck trips add traffic, noise, air quality and greenhouse gas concerns and require further permitting, among other issues.

Not to mention that beach replenishment needs to take into account impacts to surrounding wildlife and habitats, including annual events like grunion spawning and snowy plover nesting season. 

The cost of a day at the beach

While California’s appetite for beach nourishment feels voracious, it’s nothing compared to the other side of the country. The East Coast has a much longer history with sand replenishment, as frequent nor’easters and hurricanes pummel long-established coastal communities, year after year. With more communities and recreation to protect, in the past 100 years, the East Coast has had more than five times the number of beach replenishment episodes as California.

That long tradition of beach replenishment also proves it’s a perpetual problem. One Mid-Atlantic stretch named Carolina Beach, for example, has had its sand replenished 44 times since 1955.

Under the California Coastal Act, a day at the beach is free and open to all. And up to the mean high tide line, at least, no one can charge you to step on the sand — nor can they claim it as private property, though plenty of luxury hotels and beachfront mansions have tried to blur the boundaries. A day at the beach has all kinds of economic value for an area, from the revenue visits generate at local restaurants and shops to the ecological benefits of protecting property along the shore.

Phil King, a semi-retired associate professor at San Francisco State University, has spent years researching the economics of beach replenishment and consulting at the state and federal level, a job that he says doesn’t always make him popular. King, along with plenty of other economists, has attempted to put a dollar value on beach recreation, a largely impossible task. He admitted the models are imperfect. “I think there are limits to what you can do in terms of putting dollar signs on ecosystem services,” King said. 

He said the value varies greatly by beach, but the average in California is about $67 per person per day. Estimates project that beaches garner more than $3 billion per year in revenue for the state. 

Economists value beaches in Southern California higher than in Northern California, simply because fewer people tend to visit Northern California beaches. There’s also less valuable property right on the coast. A 2001 survey in San Clemente found that beach recreation at the Southern California beach alone generated $132 million per year for California, about $116 per person per day. 

That kind of fiscal impact justifies beach replenishment for SANDAG.

“By nourishing the beaches in San Diego County alone it will generate about $10 billion over the next 10 years,” Courtney Becker, a SANDAG associate regional planner, told SFGATE. “So, very, very important for our tourism and our economy here in San Diego.”

Paying for beach replenishment

If beach replenishment is the viable long-term solution, financing will be a problem, King said. Right now, a mix of federal, state and local funds support most projects, but money from Washington, D.C, will likely shrink, meaning local taxpayers could shoulder more of the burden in the future. “Cities don’t want to pay for it,” King said, “but getting money from the state or federally is going to only get harder.”

Affordability concerns have risen as projects became more complicated. “We have so many different layers of bureaucracy that everything becomes very expensive,” King said, suggesting that streamlining permitting and other parts of the process could be a partial solution. 

In wealthy enclaves like Stinson Beach and San Clemente, the local community can likely afford the upkeep. But it will become increasingly impossible for state and federal funding to subsidize costly improvements that largely benefit local homeowners by keeping their property values high. 

Gary Griggs, an author and professor of earth and planetary sciences at UC Santa Cruz, acknowledged the benefits in protecting coastal property and supporting recreation, but emphasized the solution is typically short lived. So much so, there is a “strong rationale for terminating federal expenditures and dependence on short-term beach nourishment and planning for the inevitable long-term necessity of moving back from the shoreline,” he wrote in a recent paper. 

In other words, managed retreat — the act of forcing the relocation of public and private property — is inevitable. 

Across the country, federal, state and local governments spent nearly $16 billion to replenish the sand on 475 beaches in the past 100 years, largely funded federally through the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. East Coast communities in New Jersey, New York, North Carolina and Florida received the majority of that, Griggs noted. All in all, that’s 1.58 billion cubic yards of sand — enough to build a beach that stretches from Maine all the way down the East Coast, around the tip of Florida, west past Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas, and then up the West Coast to Washington state. America has essentially relaid an entire sandy coast upon its existing one over the past century, and it’s still not enough.

“It simply buys a little more time at great public expense,” Griggs wrote.

Beach replenishment doesn’t always work

Beach replenishment is a stopgap, an expensive one that Californians pledge to fund indefinitely in some places. As climate change accelerates — Griggs pointed to the past three years of particularly bad winter storms along the Central Coast — sand that could have lasted five years only lasts one or two. One such project on Torrey Pines State Beach added 160,000 cubic meters of sand in April 2001. After a strong storm that November, with wave heights reaching as much as 10 feet for several hours, the entire fill eroded within days.

“If the sand doesn’t stay there naturally … why should it stay there because it came out of a dredge or a dump truck?” Griggs told SFGATE via phone.

But because seemingly vital managed retreat projects, like moving a section of rail line off the beach in San Clemente, are even more challenging and expensive than adding sand, it’s politically easier to choose a pathway that benefits residents now.

“Instead of doing the long-term planning and instead of making the hard decisions now that are going to pay off for the future, we keep relying on these short-sighted solutions that don’t actually solve the problem,” said Jennifer Savage, California policy associate director for the Surfrider Foundation. 

The nonprofit organization, dedicated to protecting the world’s beaches, doesn’t oppose all beach replenishment projects, Savage said. It can be “a middle ground” when relocating public and private property farther back off the shoreline is “politically difficult.” The Surfrider Foundation may support replenishment in the short term when it’s in service of a long-term goal, like relocating infrastructure and adapting a shoreline.

“The idea of just infinitely dumping more sand on beaches is so unrealistic,” Savage said. 

And despite the way it may seem, usable sand is a finite resource. “There may be also coming a day when the amount of sand offshore isn’t going to be there anymore, so there’s a lifespan,” Griggs told SFGATE. “We’re kind of running out of sand in some places.”

Savage pointed to two coastal projects that, in Surfrider’s view, do right by the state’s beaches. A living shoreline project underway at a small section of Santa Monica beach allowed vegetation and wildlife to recover and dunes to reaccumulate just north of the pier. Project partners relocated a bike path and parking lot at Surfers Point in Ventura for another living shoreline and restored dunes and native vegetation. But Savage acknowledged that the first project is small in scale and that Surfers Point had much less private property at stake, oftentimes a sticking point in wealthy coastal communities where homeowners want to preserve both their homes and their property values. 

Most coastal homeowners can’t fathom giving up property in service of a changing shoreline. But experts say they might have to, eventually. “We can’t expect our kids and our grandchildren to have the same house down there on the sand and enjoy it the way we did. That’s just the way climate is changing,” Griggs said.

“No matter what we do, there’s no way we can stop the Pacific Ocean,” Griggs said.