Blowing In The Wind? Spending Millions On Disappearing San Diego Beach Sand

This is KPBS Midday Edition. I Maureen Cavanaugh. This year's El Niño driven storms and high tides have had a significant impact on San Diego beaches. Some beaches in the North County have eroded down to pebbles. Experts say it may be a glimpse of things to come as you levels rise due to climate change. The effort to keep San Diego's Beaches Sandy has been expensive. Now evaluations are underway to see if that expense is worth it. Joining me is Alison St John KPBS North County Bureau chief. Welcome to the program. Had to be here mooring. Give us an idea of what the storms have done to the beaches. It's amazing how dynamic our beaches are. They change with the seasons. This season has been a very bad one compared to the early 80s and late 90s -- there were strong winter storms that came off the beaches. These have lost between five and 8 feet of sand in some cases. I beach lifeguard told me they take photographs that so that show their jeep sitting on the beach on top of a rock and later they show that rock has completely disappeared. There is an enormous differences anyway, but this year a lot of sand has been washed away. Speaking of rocks, crumbling Chris are part of the natural cycle of replenishing beach sand. Development has interrupted that cycle. Yes. Because there has been a lot of blockages and some of the rivers and estuaries that would be gradually washing sand to the beaches. But as those get block, that's one source of sand that is reduced. The other Wayne one is these walls that are being erected along many of the beaches and Encinitas and Solana to protect the properties by the cliffs. That means the clips do not erode. Unfortunate for the beaches at the bottom that could use that sand. San Diego has retake has taken on a sand replenishment program. San Diego has spent millions of dollars most recently in 2012 they spent $28.5 million on sand replenishment that put 1.5 million cubic words from Oceanside to Imperial beach. They did another one in 2001. That's two lots of sand replacement. Here we are three years later talking about how much of that sand is left. Various people are doing studies in kit -- including people on Scripps. There's evidence that very little about sand is left. Some people say it has washed South so southerly beaches have picked up sand. The general consensus is there is not much of that sand that was put there in 2012 left. I want to bring another guest into our conversation. Gary Griggs is director of the Institute of Marine sciences at UC Santa Cruz. He did a study on lessons learned on sand replacement. Welcome to the program. Thank you. The kind of wide beaches that tourists enjoy are not really a natural part of San Diego's coastline. Can you tell us about that? It depends on where we are. There are places where there are in payments or places where the shoreline is low and we collect sand. When you look at the steep cliffs along much of northern San Diego County. The fact these cliffs are steep indicate they have it in eroded by waves over the years. Which means there hasn't been wide beaches in front of them or the ways wouldn't be attacking them. We have looked at old photographs and it shows the beaches, despite what many people have said that were never wide in front of those cliffs. In general, lots of those beaches never worldwide to begin with historically. A lot of people have been looking at what has happened to the beaches this year when we have an El Niño and we've been having these King tides and saying is just a glimpse of what will be happening with the rise. Is it likely see a rise will increase the erosion to this extent? Sea level rise is definitely taking place in accelerating. Is still a very slow process and if these short-term events, El Niño sea level is elevated a foot or so combined with these very high tides, takes the waves closer to the bluffs. We've had good storms already this winter. Those combined are making it much more difficult for the beaches to maintain themselves. Is a typical winter, summer process -- larger more energetic ways take the sand out. The spring summer low long waves bring it back in. This winter has been a little more extreme, but it's also been a pretty vigorous El Niño year. This is not unexpected. In the long run, your study and the California coastal commission are suggesting a policy of managed retreat from the coast. What does that mean like [ laughter ] there is managed retreat and unmanaged retreat. Yes. In any place, San Diego County is as good as any place, there are a limited number of options where people have built on the brass, cliffs or beach -- one of those is to deny it and that's what Florida and North Carolina seem to be doing that -- collect coastal flooding. Another one is to build some sort of armor. Right now about 33% of all of the coastline of Southern California has already been armored. That us have impacts as you had mentioned earlier. The third is to look off into the future a bit and say in the long run, we cannot stop the Pacific Ocean. Is 10,000 miles wide and it doesn't care about a few feet on either side. We cannot hold back the Pacific Ocean. At some point we have to say, there are few structures we may want to try to say that are very important. Maybe it's a sewage treatment plant or powerplant for the intermediate term. But we cannot save every parking lot, road, house and managed to treat says we look into the future and say the clips are retreating at this rate, by 2030 or 20, by 2030 or 2020 or 2040 we can preserve it and we have to start moving back. Is not popular with anyone, but I think we have to be realistic this is the way the claimant is pushing us. Denial is not the name of a river in Egypt. I want to thank you for joining us Gary. The director of the Institute of Marine sciences at UC Santa Cruz. Back with Alison St John. Managed retreat [ laughter ] Yes. It sounds like a rather scary policy. Well I think that that Marine. We can't be holding back the ocean so what we do? Every jurisdiction is supposed to have its own local coastal plan which will really look at whether in fact, use should be building that close to the ocean. The ocean has been very heavily developed because of such a beautiful coastline. Some communities are still granting permits for buildings that are very close to the edge of the ocean where these recent high tides -- we should point out, not all high tides are the same -- if you combine a 7 foot tied with a big wave action and a lot of wind in storms, you get what looks like what would be an average high tide perhaps under El Niño or sea level rise which could go up 12 which could go up 122 feet in 2015. -- 2050. There's not a lot of consideration for sea level rise. But I think that something people will be thinking about more. There's a question of whether the Coastal Commission , should beat determining how development should happen under managed retreat or whether local jurisdictions should take control and start taking into account as we plan. In the meantime, are there plans for a new sand replenishment program? SANDAG is in the process of evaluating those two programs and they do not have any programs right now. However and slide send slimmest beach have gone through a long process with the Army Corps of Engineers and had a 50 your program of sand replenishment approved by the -- Army Corps of Engineers. However no money has been AIR and that could be more than $135 million of public money. This is something we have to look at. There are many benefits to each other is him and the economy, but when you do the research, like our death -- our guest has just described, there's not a lot of evidence that sand replenishment last. There are some jurisdictions that are taking this problem into their own hands trying to replenish their beaches with something called opportunistic sand. What is that? That might be more realistic Encinitas and Oceanside have just gotten permits to put opportunistic sand on the beaches. That means, if you have a project was to the coast that is digging down and can find sand to put on the beaches, you can truck in was about sand and build up your beach without sand. In many cases they dig down in these construction projects they discover it's not really what they want to see on the beach to have your visitors sitting on and it's a 50/50 chance if you can find quality sand to do the job. You've done reporting on this and people can see a full story that you've done on the beach erosion on our website KPBS.org, wondering -- the people you've spoken with, are they saying this year's beach erosion actually is the worst they've ever seen? For example in Encinitas, there's a coastal manager who said she feels this year is worse than a long time. But there were some very bad years in the late 90s -- there is a cycle. I think she feels this El Niño year might be a game changer -- was the terms used. The Scripps researchers I've talked to are saying they're watching carefully to see what happens this year. We could still see some storms in February and March -- to see if this is something that is eroding faster than ever before. I've been speaking with Alison St John. Allison thank you. Thank you Maureen.