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By Paul Sisson
North County Times
March 18, 2008
OCEANSIDE -- In an
effort to prevent last year's August dredging do-over, crews
are already preparing to start annual harbor dredging this
spring.
Yellow earth-moving equipment is working this week on the
beach just south of the North Coast Village condominium
complex to lay the groundwork for dredge pipes that will soon
carry about 180,000 cubic yards of sand south past the
Oceanside Municipal Pier and deposit it on the beach just west
to Tyson Street Park.
Ray Duncan, lifeguard manager of the city's Harbor and Beaches
Department, said Monday that he worked with the Army Corps of
Engineers to make sure that the dredging would finish before
Memorial Day, after a remedial dredging effort in 2007
disrupted beach traffic in August, when thousands of tourists
flock to the coast.
"Last summer, it was just ruthless with the complaints we
were getting about the pipes on the beach," Duncan said.
"We wanted to make sure that never happens again."
Annual dredging is necessary because waves gradually wash sand
inside the harbor, causing it to grow ever more shallow.
Shallow conditions can become dangerous for small craft if
waves begin breaking inside the harbor channel.
In December 2002, a 42-year-old Apple Valley man drowned when
his 12-foot aluminum skiff was hit by a winter wave in the
harbor entrance during shallow conditions.
During the next few weeks, a crew will install large steel and
plastic pipes along the shoreline, Duncan said. A suction
dredge, the same one that has slurped sand from the harbor
bottom in previous years, will begin work in early April.
Project manager Keith Ayer, of the Army Corps of Engineers,
said Monday that the project would cost about $2 million. The
bill will be split evenly between the Corps and the U.S. Navy,
which uses the harbor for boat access to neighboring Camp
Pendleton.
Last year a mechanical dredge scooped sand from the harbor
bottom, dumping it in a split-bottom scow, or flat-bottomed
boat, that released its payload just off shore. Ayer said that
method worked well inside the harbor, but ran into trouble in
the harbor's entrance and just outside the harbor mouth.
"This is one of our more high-wave climate harbors,"
Ayer said. "When you get out into the entrance, you're
pretty vulnerable; there's no breakwater protecting you."
The project manager said that, last year, waves kept smashing
the scow against the side of the dredging barge, forcing
workers to give up before the entire harbor mouth was clear. A
suction dredge, by comparison, does not have those problems
because the sand it removes is pumped to shore.
-- Contact staff writer Paul Sisson at (760) 901-4087 or psisson@nctimes.com
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