OCEANSIDE CONTINUES SEARCH FOR SAND, DOWNPLAYS GROINS IDEA

Oceanside has approved the next phase of its sand restoration and retention project at a cost of $2.6 million, though city officials downplayed the possibility of an earlier proposal to build rock groins on the beach.

“We are very sensitive to the issue of groins,” City Manager Jonathan Borrego said at Wednesday’s Oceanside City Council meeting. “It is a little disheartening to hear members of the public keep portraying this as a groin project. The idea is to step back and look at more innovative solutions.”

Plans to build four 600foot-long groins, 1,000 feet apart, extending into the ocean near the end of Wisconsin Avenue were presented to the Oceanside City Council in August 2021, and the council agreed to spend $1 million on plans and permits. However, the idea generated outrage among coastal communities to the south that feared the structures would starve their beaches of sand.

Also part of the 2021 proposal was a bypass system to carry sand around or under the Oceanside harbor. The city built a bypass system in the 1980s that operated briefly before it failed.

“Our current approach is very different in this new and approved Phase 2 project,” said Jayme Timberlake, the city’s coastal zone administrator, in an email Thursday.

“For starters, we will be surveying local waters off our coast to find an improved sand source for nourishment of our beaches,” she said. “This is beneficial to us as a city funding our own nourishment program, since we may be able to use a smaller dredge to deliver small, but effective quantities of sand to the beach. Getting sand from local coastal areas has the added benefit of reintroducing sand into the Oceanside littoral cell, which provides benefits to Oceanside as well as downcoast cities.”

The Oceanside littoral cell extends from Dana Point to La Jolla, according to Scripps Institution of Oceanography. The entire cell shares sand carried by ocean currents, tides and wave patterns. Sand within the system predominantly moves from north to south.

Most of the sand now on Oceanside beaches is dredged from the city’s harbor. Studies show sediment from the harbor is fine grained and is swept away quickly by waves and tides. Larger-grained sand found in the ocean just outside the surf zone has been used before and lasts longer on the beach.

Phase 2 of the proposed pilot project also involves the design of a sand retention structure. The city will investigate a hybrid approach, something that retains placed sand, but also offers ecological and community benefits, Timberlake said.

The city has not ruled out groins, although other possible sand retention ideas include building an artificial reef or an engineered dune system such as the Living Shoreline Project completed in Encinitas in 2019. That project took about 30,000 cubic yards of sand dredged from the San Elijo Lagoon and placed it atop a rock revetment installed at Cardiff State Beach. The manufactured dunes were topped with native vegetation.

The city councils of Del Mar and Solana Beach both sent Oceanside letters this month expressing support for Oceanside’s Phase 2 revisions and renewing their concerns about groins.

“The city supports your efforts to pursue a beach renourishment and sand retention project, provided there are no adverse impacts to sand supply for downcoast cities,” states a Jan. 25 letter from Solana Beach Mayor Lesa Heebner.

Solana Beach “is still concerned with, and would oppose, any project that proposes stand-alone rock groins as the ultimate design solution,” Heebner said. “We strongly encourage Oceanside to continue to explore nature-based projects and/or innovative hybrid projects that include both initial and periodic beach sand renourishment.”

The council voted 5-0 Wednesday to approve the $2.6 million contract for Phase 2 with the Long Beach consulting firm GHD Inc., which also did the first phase. The second phase will include outreach with the public, downcoast cities and groups such as the Surfrider Foundation, along with engineering, analysis, environmental design and permitting.

GHD also will lead a design competition to be completed by the end of 2023 that would engage up to three outside design firms to submit ideas for the project. A final design will be approved by the City Council.

Speakers at Wednesday’s meeting included members of the group Save Oceanside Sand, who continued to advocate for groins. They cited the example of Newport Beach, where a field of eight groins was built between 1969 and 1973 and filled with 1.5 million cubic yards of sediment taken from the Santa Ana River.

“They are still there, and they are still doing what they are supposed to do,” SOS cofounder Nick Ricci told the Oceanside council.

Other residents, such as Carolyn Krammer and Shari Mackin, said any money spent to study groins is wasted.

“That will never pass muster with the (regulatory) agencies or our neighbors,” Mackin said.

“We cannot support the proposal as long as it contains hard structures,” Krammer said. “Trapping sand will impact the sand supply to beaches from South Oceanside to Del Mar.”

Council members expressed mixed feelings about the use of groins.

Mayor Esther Sanchez said she would never support any proposal that includes hardened structures on the beach.

“It is very clear to me that groins are a part of this,”

Sanchez said. “They have not been eliminated, and because of that it continues to be a controversial project.”

Councilmember Peter Weiss said he was “not necessarily” saying no to groins, and that he’s interested in any ideas the staff and consultants propose.

Councilmember Ryan Keim said he will never approve a project that causes issues for “our downcoast neighbors,” but, “We have to do something now, it’s been way too long.”

Oceanside has a long history of beach erosion accelerated by the construction of the Camp Pendleton boat basin in 1942 followed by the Oceanside harbor in the early 1960s. In that time, nearly 20 million cubic yards of sand, mostly dredged from the harbor and its entrance, has been deposited on Oceanside beaches.

Now nearly all of that sand is gone, especially south of the pier, where waves crash on rocks and there is no beach at all during high tides.

philip.diehl@sduniontribune.com

EDUARDO CONTRERAS U-T FILE Oceanside is working on the second phase of its sand restoration project, which is expected to cost $2.6 million.