{"id":203,"date":"2026-05-18T04:08:52","date_gmt":"2026-05-18T04:08:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sanfranciscomovingguide.com\/?p=203"},"modified":"2026-05-18T04:08:52","modified_gmt":"2026-05-18T04:08:52","slug":"california-coastal-town-desperate-to-save-its-citys-beaches","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sanfranciscomovingguide.com\/?p=203","title":{"rendered":"California coastal town desperate to save its city’s beaches"},"content":{"rendered":"
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In a small suburb north of San Diego,\u00a0the beaches are a warning. At low tide, the squishy, soaked sand leaves nowhere to lay out a towel. When the tide is high, the water reaches all the way to the stairs up to the street above, leaving no sand at all. The waves are sparse because the beach is dissolving into the sea.<\/p>

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Coastal erosion is a statewide problem, but in Oceanside, it\u2019s much more visible \u2014 and occurring more rapidly.\u00a0<\/p><\/div>

\u201cThe only reason we have sand is because we dredge the harbor every year and place the sand,\u201d Oceanside\u2019s coastal zone administrator, Jayme Timberlake, told SFGATE earlier this week. \u201cEvery single year we place sand, and it still goes away.\u201d<\/p><\/div>

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With\u00a0$2.8 billion annually wrapped up in the city\u2019s tourism economy from beachgoers and sun seekers, the city is now banking on an artificial reef to save its coastline.\u00a0<\/p><\/div>

A problem decades in the making<\/h2><\/div>

A 2023 study by the U.S. Department of the Interior found that California could lose as much as 75% of its beaches by 2100 due to projected sea-level rise related to climate change. Oceanside may provide one of the clearest views of what could happen to California\u2019s coastline when beaches run out of sand.\u00a0<\/p><\/div>

Oceanside\u2019s beaches were already at a disadvantage. The city of Oceanside\u00a0conducted a feasibility study in 2021 that found that because the beach has such fine-grained sand, big waves carry it out to sea and don\u2019t bring it back.<\/p><\/div>

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The beach has a much shorter coastal bluff than other beaches in San Diego County, explained Mitch Silverstein, the California policy senior coordinator at the Surfrider Foundation, an organization dedicated to protecting the world\u2019s beaches and oceans. A 2025 study by UC San Diego found that erosion from the bluff\u00a0contributes nearly half of the beach\u2019s sand. But the city also allowed development too far onto the beach, cutting into this crucial sand supply.<\/p><\/div>

\u201cThey kind of shot themselves in the foot,\u201d Silverstein told SFGATE. \u201cIt\u2019s not anyone\u2019s fault because it happened before our time, but that\u2019s a big factor.\u201d<\/p><\/div>

In 1942, the Army Corps of Engineers built Camp\u00a0Pendleton\u2019s harbor, which\u00a0also contributed to beach erosion. The harbor\u2019s sea wall causes sand to build up on the north side and blocks it from washing back down south to replenish the beaches. Gary Griggs, a professor of earth and marine sciences at UC Santa Cruz, told SFGATE this is one of the biggest contributors to the city\u2019s coastal erosion woes.<\/p><\/div>

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The army has recognized its role in the beach\u2019s coastal erosion since 1953. In 2000, the Water Resource Development Act, a federal piece of legislation, ordered the Army Corps of Engineers to conduct a study on how to mitigate the erosion and complete it in under three years, later amended to under four years.\u00a0That study is yet to be completed.<\/p><\/div>

\u201cThe federal government said, \u2018Oceanside, we understand we\u2019re the cause of erosion on your shoreline,\u2019\u201d Timberlake explained. \u201cThe corps has still not completed their study 23 years later. This is just a study that says here\u2019s what the federal government is gonna offer to us to fix the problem that we have. That\u2019s why we\u2019re doing city-led projects.\u201d<\/p><\/div>

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The breaking point<\/h2><\/div>

For years, governmental bodies have attempted traditional fixes to solve the problem. In 2012, the San Diego Association of Governments\u00a0launched the\u00a0, returning sand to some of the county\u2019s most affected shores. But while other beaches in the region have seen sand retention, Oceanside has not.\u00a0<\/p><\/div>

\u201cIn other places, it stuck around. Like in Carlsbad, you can still see that same sand. In Oceanside, no \u2014 in like two years it was gone,\u201d Timberlake said.<\/p><\/div>

The city continues its annual harbor dredging, but it now also attempts to incorporate sand from more unconventional sources, such as leftover sand from basement construction projects.<\/p><\/div>

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\u201cThis is where we are,\u201d Timberlake said. \u201cThis is what we\u2019re having to do in order to keep any sand on the beach.\u201d<\/p><\/div>

The city proposed a groin structure in 2019 \u2014 a rock structure built perpendicular to the shore that aggressively traps sand. The Surfrider Foundation opposed the solution due to concerns of losing sand at other beaches in the area. When the plan was approved by the city council in 2021, three cities to the south passed resolutions opposing the measures, the Foundation reported.<\/p><\/div>

\u201cWe wanna support saving beaches for the whole county and for every beach, not just one place over the other, and when you build a manmade sand retention device like that, you will certainly retain sand in one place, but you will disrupt and cut off that sand to neighboring beaches,\u201d said Silverstein, the Surfrider policy coordinator. \u201c\u2026 Since it doesn\u2019t help every beach, there\u2019s a winner and a loser.\u201d<\/p><\/div>

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For decades, Oceanside has pulled plenty of tricks from the coastal playbook: Dump sand, armor the shore, wait for federal help. None of it stopped the beach from disappearing. After years of growing concern, the group Save Oceanside Sand, aka SOS Oceanside, formed in 2019 to save the city\u2019s beaches.<\/p><\/div>

\u201cOceanside is a hub for surfing, you\u2019ve got one of the greatest concentrations of surf industry in the country here, and it is also a hub for fishing, and recreation, and the beach is important to Oceanside,\u201d Charlie Bowen, spokesperson for Save Oceanside Sand, told SFGATE. \u201cI think the community starts to feel the pain when two-thirds of its beaches are unusable.\u201d<\/p><\/div>

An experimental approach<\/h2><\/div>

Now, Oceanside is trying something different. In June 2023, Timberlake spearheaded an\u00a0international competition for engineering firms to come up with a project to save the sand. Among the proposals was an idea for \u201cLiving Speed Bumps\u201d from an Australia-based firm, International Coastal Management. Its design envisioned two artificial headlands that would slow down the sand\u2019s movement back to the ocean, and a butterfly-shaped artificial reef that would reduce the wave energy that pulls the sand into the ocean. In January 2024, a jury and advisory panel of \u201clocal, state and national experts\u201d selected International Coastal Management\u2019s proposal as the one to pursue.<\/p>

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\u201c[The reef] still allows wave energy to hit our other surf breaks on the north and the south end,\u201d Bob Ashton, CEO of Save Oceanside Sand, told SFGATE. \u201cSo it\u2019s a system that works together not only to keep the sand in place and protect the beach from being washed away, but still allows the wave energy to see our good surf breaks at the pier and other surf breaks to the south.\u201d<\/p><\/div>

The $55 million project, dubbed Re: Beach by the city, also includes dumping 900,000 cubic yards of sand on the beach taken from offshore \u2014 about four times more than what is dredged from the harbor each year.<\/p><\/div>

\u201cThe idea is you don\u2019t have to keep … bringing in sand and watching it move off the shoreline,\u201d Timberlake said. \u201cIt\u2019s a bigger bang for your buck\u00a0\u2014 a better investment.\u201d<\/p><\/div>

Reinhard Flick, a coastal oceanographer at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, said the project will likely work, but it\u2019s still experimental.\u00a0<\/p><\/div>

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\u201cIt will work in the sense that it will widen the beach behind the offshore structure,\u201d Flick told SFGATE. \u201cHow much, how far it will reach and how long it will last \u2014 I don\u2019t think that\u2019s known.\u201d<\/p><\/div>

More than 1,000 simulations of waves were tested on a 1:35 scale model in a wave pool at Oregon State University between January and March,\u00a0according to the San Diego Union-Tribune. But Griggs, the UC Santa Cruz professor, cautioned that there are still several unknowns.\u00a0<\/p><\/div>

\u201cOne of the problems with scaling things down, you can\u2019t scale sand \u2026 you can\u2019t make sand smaller, so that\u2019s a bit of a problem when you\u2019re trying to model what sand\u2019s gonna do,\u201d Griggs said.<\/p><\/div>

With Oceanside experiencing some of the most severe effects of coastal erosion and the city taking a new approach, it serves as a guinea pig. The artificial reef project could open the floodgates for more manufactured structures along the California coast.\u00a0<\/p><\/div>

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\u201cJust north of Oceanside, San Clemente, they\u2019re starting to propose artificial reefs, so they\u2019ve kind of got their eye on, is the Coastal Commission gonna approve this in Oceanside? If it does get approved, will they find funding, and will it work? And if it does, well, let\u2019s get our project going,\u201d Silverstein said.\u00a0<\/p><\/div>

Silverstein represented Surfrider\u2019s interests on the advisory board, but he was not a voting member, as Surfrider maintains that any human-made structures pose a risk to the safety of all California beaches.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p><\/div>

\u201cI think we also have concerns about opening the can of worms on this type of project for California. And is that really gonna help things, or is that just gonna exacerbate the problematic aspects of using man-made sand retention structures?\u201d he said.<\/p><\/div>

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However, according to the\u00a0Re:Beach website, the city says the design team was required to make sure impacts on\u00a0other beaches in the area are \u201cfully mitigated,\u201d and that \u201cDesigns must propose solutions that result in an equivalent or greater amount of sand flowing to its neighbors to the south.\u201d<\/p><\/div>

Looking ahead<\/h2><\/div>

The artificial reef project is about 65% through the design and testing phase, according to Timberlake. After that\u2019s complete, the city will need permit approval from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, California Coastal Commission and the Regional Water Quality Control Board to start building, which could take up to a year and a half to secure. Then there\u2019s the process of Oceanside securing the $55 million it needs to fund it.<\/p><\/div>

Bowen said Save Oceanside Sand is reaching out to politicians and the California Coastal Commission for financial support. The city has a grant application in with the California State Parks Division of Boating and Waterways and another with the California State Coastal Conservancy.<\/p><\/div>

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\u201cI think the Coastal Commission realizes that we\u2019ve reached a point where we have to do something and that the cost of doing nothing is increasing,\u201d Bowen said.<\/p><\/div>

Timberlake, Oceanside\u2019s coastal zone administrator, said funding could also come from the city\u2019s general fund and Measure X, a temporary increase to the sales tax approved by voters and intended to fund infrastructure repairs and general city services. If all goes to plan, construction could start in 2028, and it could possibly be completed in only a year.<\/p><\/div>

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\u201cIt\u2019ll depend a lot on how Mother Nature works,\u201d Timberlake said. \u201cIf we have this nonstop swell, and if we have an\u00a0El Nino year\u00a0\u2014 if there is any kind of disruption with waves, it\u2019ll take a while just for the reef to get done, but little by little it\u2019ll get done.\u201d<\/p><\/div>

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