CalCoast News - Wetlands Restoration

On one hand, the plan sensibly calls for almost 1.3 million cubic yards of sand to be dumped on beaches that are vanishing. But the Army Corps also wants to install concrete plugs to fill the caves undercutting the base of some sandstone cliffs. This would actually take away some public beach.

Disappearing beaches in Encinitas and Solana Beach could use some help. The sand that once replenished them is trapped by concrete ---- behind dams or beneath the roads, sidewalks and inland communities we live in. Some is stuck behind jetties that keep Oceanside Harbor open to boat traffic.

Particularly onerous are the ugly, concrete sea walls that line many of our bluffs.

Luck, time and the tide have turned on those who have enjoyed the sunset-stained Pacific horizon from their living rooms. Their land is slipping from beneath their foundations ---- an eventuality everyone could see coming, including the blufftop homeowners and their builders. The rate of erosion may have sped up in recent decades, but the dynamic is unchanged over eons: The waves crash into the base of the bluffs, the bluffs collapse, and the resulting sand provides a brief buffer until the waves attack again.

Unwilling to give up their homes without a fight, a wealthy few have armored the cliffs with an assortment of ugly concrete structures, some camouflaged to mimic the sandstone. The latest models are so-called erodible concrete plugs to fill sea caves undercutting the bluffs above.

Each successive concrete solution has the same effect. Try to walk these cities' western edges at high tide and you had better bring your bathing suit.

Homes temporarily may be spared, but the beach below is lost to the rest of North County and its visitors.

Blufftop homeowners have been aided in this gradual transfer of public land by a California Coastal Act in conflict with itself. The state's pioneering shoreline protection laws require the Coastal Commission to both maximize public access and protect property rights.

But with each sea wall that is approved, erosion is made worse on the unprotected bluffs at both sides. This vicious cycle all but forces neighbors to use concrete for protection, sacrificing yet more future beach.

For vital areas that must be protected, we prefer piles of rocks to the sheer sea walls; at least rocks look natural.

With the Coastal Commission's backing, Encinitas and Solana Beach must start condemning untenable homes perched on eroding cliffs, just as they would any other dangerous home in their jurisdictions. Of course, the cities also must work to keep people from laying their towels below the doomed homes, just as they warn people to stay away from the bluffs themselves. Unstable cliffs are unsafe by their nature, as is the sea itself.

Still, we can't let our beaches be lost to fears for public safety, a high moral ground bluff-top homeowners and their backers like to claim.

Eventually, as the ocean is allowed to seize the bluffs and the homes above it, the Coast Highway will be exposed, as is already the case along Cardiff's Restaurant Row. In any discussion of coastal retreat, that vital artery is the state's fallback position. Though it may seem unimaginable now, local and state planners would be wise to start planning to move Highway 101 farther inland.

We can't hold back the Pacific's approach without sacrificing the beaches that many of us consider vital to North County's appeal. We can either allow the ocean to claim a few rich folks' homes or we can get used to wading in front of their towering concrete castle walls.