By Adam Kaye
North County Times
July 16, 20061
ENCINITAS
---- A report presented to a regional shoreline panel earlier
this month has concluded that area beaches are shrinking and
nearly as narrow as they were before a $17.5 million project
widened them in 2001.
In interviews last week, officials said it is time to begin
planning and searching for money for another regional project.
Without an infusion of sand, winter waves could strip beaches
to cobble and carry the sand beyond the reach of the summer
waves and currents that shuttle it back.
"Over time, we'll see a continuing retreat of the
shoreline," said Craig Leidersdorf of Coastal Frontiers
Corp., a consulting firm in Chatsworth.
Coastal Frontiers has monitored beach widths every year since
the San Diego Association of Governments' 2001 Regional Beach
Sand Project.
"If we have a bank account that has natural attrition, we
need a source of income to offset that deficit or else we go
into the red," Leidersdorf said. "You're drawing
down your bank account, which ultimately will mean more cliff
and bluff erosion in places like Encinitas and Solana
Beach."
Economic studies in Encinitas and Carlsbad have shown beaches
pump life-blood into those cities' economies.
Encinitas officials estimate that local spending tied to beach
visits totals $44 million per year.
In neighboring Carlsbad, a report brought to the City Council
earlier this month estimated the typical beachgoer spends $44
daily at Carlsbad businesses, resulting in more than $26
million in total spending during June through August. That
spending has generated more than $94,000 in sales taxes and
$1.2 million in hotel taxes for city coffers, according to the
study's author, Philip King, chairman of the economics
department at San Francisco State University.
For economic and environmental reasons, Carlsbad and Encinitas
officials say they hope to schedule another beach-building
project within the next five years.
Much sooner ---- in August ---- coastal cities are expected to
begin adopting resolutions in support of a sand project.
With these documents as formal evidence of their interest,
local cities can approach state and federal agencies to help
pay beach replenishment, said Kathy Weldon, an Encinitas
staffer who manages the city's coastal program.
The San Diego Association of Governments is drafting a
boiler-plate resolution for coastal cities to consider.
Some officials said last week that the political will exists
to advance a sand project, but finding money to pay for it
could be difficult.
"It's not going to be easy, but we can do it," said
Carlsbad Councilwoman Ann Kulchin. "Nobody wants to sit
on cobbles on the beach."
Kulchin, who represents Carlsbad on the association of
governments' Shoreline Preservation Working Group, says some
of the panel's conversations have included purchasing a dredge
so authorities could have more control over where and when to
replenish beaches.
"We've got to plan for the future," she said.
James Bond, an Encinitas councilman and colleague of Kulchin's
on the shoreline panel, says he has advocated for years to
introduce a maintenance program that would place sand on
beaches regularly.
"Everyone wants sand on the beach, but nobody wants to
pay for it," Bond said. "The problem is when we ask
people to reach for their billfold."
Encinitas, and more recently Solana Beach, have created their
own sources of local money to pay for sand replenishment.
Since 1998, Encinitas has set aside 2 percent of its transient
occupancy tax receipts to pay for sand replenishment.
Just south of Encinitas, in Solana Beach, voters last month
approved a 3 percent increase to transient occupancy taxes to
pay for sand replenishment and other coastal projects.
On a larger scale, regional authorities have debated tax
increases or reapportionments to pay for beach-building,
although a formal proposal has never come forward. The debates
have examined property, sales, hotel and real estate transfer
taxes as possible funding vehicles for sand.
The states of New Jersey and Florida routinely replenish their
beaches with real estate transfer tax receipts, said Kim
Sterrett of the California Department of Boating and
Waterways, an agency that gathers money for beach-building.
In 2001, authorities cobbled together $17.5 million to pay for
bigger beaches.
Much of it was left over from an ill-fated dredging project in
San Diego Bay. To make room for three nuclear-powered aircraft
carriers, the Navy dredged 7 million cubic yards of sand from
the harbor. Authorities soon found the sand was unsuitable to
place on the beach: it contained bullets and mortar shells.
Money left over from the Navy project, grants from the state
Department of Boating and Waterways and about $1 million in
local money completed the financing package for the county's
largest beach restoration project, which began in April 2001.
For four months, a 281-foot hopper-dredge ship, the Sugar
Island, bobbed off of the county's shores, vacuuming a sandy
slurry from the ocean floor into its hold, then pumping the
mix through a half-mile pipe onto 12 beaches, from Oceanside
to Imperial Beach.
Bulldozers on the beaches spread the sand in piles up to 12
feet deep, 150 feet wide, and in places, nearly a mile long.
The project transferred 2 million cubic yards of sand from the
ocean floor to the shoreline.
Officials say people must mechanically build beaches because
people have disrupted natural sand supplies.
Rivers that once carried sand to beaches have been dammed,
mined or encased in concrete. So have sections of ocean
bluffs, which also provide a source of sand.
As officials plan for another beach-building program, they
reflected positively on the outcome of the last one. The
beaches held up well for the most part, officials say, adding
that no one thought the man-made beaches would last forever.
"We have the numbers to back us up," said Kulchin of
Carlsbad. "The success of the project is proved out with
all the monitoring."
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