Photo: Jeremy Bishop // Unsplash
At the beginning of November, the Los Angeles County Board of supervisors approved a motion to develop a resiliency plan in order to protect L.A. County beaches from coastal erosion. The resiliency plan will build on previous research into the county’s beaches and the best methods to stem the tide of erosion. A part of the proposed plan will also involve adding sediment to beaches, which could have an impact on surfers in the region.
The beaches in Los Angeles County are disappearing, some of them alarmingly quickly. Recent assessments predict sea levels on the U.S. coastline could rise a foot by 2050. On top of that, the processes by which beaches would normally build up after erosion have been hindered by human intervention. Urban development and flood control infrastructure has cut beaches off from the mountain streams, creeks, and other waterways that would normally replenish them with sediment. The county does already have protection measures in place to help control the resulting beach erosion, such as grooming, armoring, and creating seasonal berms. However, as the motion authored by Supervisors Holly Mitchell and Lindsey Horvath states, these measures can “create short term protection from trash and storm surge but may undermine the formation of sustainable natural features that reduce erosion and coastal flooding.”
In 2022, the L.A. County’s Department of Beaches and Harbors (DBH) commissioned a coastal resiliency study. The study analyzed and inventoried the current state of beach erosion in Los Angeles County, as well as propose solutions to the issue. Four beaches were singled out by the DBS as being the county’s most vulnerable: Zuma, Point Dume, Dockweiler and Redondo.
According to L.A. County Second District Supervisor Holly Mitchell, it was seeing those most vulnerable beaches that spurred her and Third District Supervisor Lindsey P. Horvath into action. “They identified 10 of the beaches that were at greatest risk. Two of them are in my district, Redondo and Dockweiler. So myself and [Horvath] stepped up and carried the motion, because we represent the beaches that are the most vulnerable,” Mitchell explained over the phone. “The goal is to implement pilot projects in those beaches as prototypes, in an effort to demonstrate increased resilience that then can be applied across all L.A. county beaches.” She continued to explain that the pilot project would start with Redondo and Dockweiler in the Second District and Malibu Surfrider in the Third District.
One key aspect of the strategy is the incorporation of native plants to anchor beaches and prevent sand from being swept away (called “living shorelines”). This will be created, “In conjunction with beach widening and hybrid hard structures where necessary and appropriate, to build lasting resilience along our coastline,” as the text of the motion states.
The more interesting part of the motion, at least as far as surfing is concerned, is that it suggests potentially taking sediment removed from District facilities and adding it to local beaches. Currently, sediment and debris deposited in the Flood Control District’s debris basins and reservoirs is dredged and sent to Sediment Placement Sites in the Angeles National Forest or regional landfills, but the motion suggests that it could be reused to “nourish our beaches with sand, maintain and restore our coastlines, and provide the expanded area necessary to implement the hybrid living shoreline strategies.” This strategy would be similar to other beach replenishment programs, such as a recent re-nourishment at Doheny State Beach and Capistrano Beach Park in Dana Point, in which officials replenished the beach by taking sand deposited in the Santa Ana River by winter storms and trucking it over.
Previous nourishment projects have had a mixed record when it comes to effects on surfing. In 2012, the San Diego Association of Governments (SANDAG) placed 1.5 million cubic yards of sand on beaches at San Diego County’s Imperial Beach, Oceanside, Encinitas, Cardiff and Carlsbad. According to Surfrider, “The $26 million of sand wreaked havoc on surf breaks in certain locations and washed away after a storm or two in others.”
A 2018 study published in the Journal of Coastal Research modeled effects of a nourishment project in Surf City, Long Beach Island, New Jersey and concluded that construction of the nourishment project would adversely affect the quality of the surf break. Their model calculated a compression of the surf zone, an increase in closeouts, a shift in wave type toward collapsing breakers and an increase in wave reflection. The study also noted that these findings were “in agreement with anecdotal testimony offered by local surfers.” The model also estimated it would require around 21–22 months for the surf-break quality to return to pre-project conditions.
However, it is important to note that these are just a few samples out of many, many coastal replenishment projects that have been undertaken around the world, including other surfing beaches such as Ocean Beach, San Francisco, which didn’t seem to have any negative impact. There is also one notable example of when surf was actually improved by one of these endeavors. The Superbank, one of the best waves in the world, is the result of a replenishment project in which sand is dredged out of the Tweed River and pumped out into the ocean.
When we asked the Department of Beaches and Harbors about whether there was any concern that adding sand to these beaches could affect surf breaks, they responded that, “DBH remains committed to balancing the concerns of avoiding adverse impacts to surf breaks while pursuing the overarching goals of maintaining public access for all, operational efficiencies, and ecological stewardship.” To that end, they also stated that they would engage with coastal stakeholders, such as environmental and surf-specific advocacy groups.
One of the groups that was consulted in the drafting of the motion was the Bay Foundation, a non-profit environmental group founded in 1990 to restore and enhance Santa Monica Bay and local coastal waters. Tom Ford, CEO of the Bay Foundation, reassured us that coastal recreational activities, such as surfing, were kept in mind in writing the motion. “Trying to figure out this motion, I think, is the first big step in a while to understand how we can get material down to the beach so that we can actually benefit those beaches and benefit surfing,” he told us over the phone. “We’re certainly very attuned to the concern that people might have that we would negatively affect a wave or alter the bathymetry in a way that changes a wave.”
Photo: Joel Mott
He continued that both his organization and the L.A. County Board of Supervisors are “going to be very keen in understanding exactly how and where we can place these materials to lessen those impacts and maximize those benefits.”
Though adding sediment to beaches could affect bathymetry, that does not mean that it would necessarily negatively impact surf. “I think that there’s ample opportunity to place this sediment in the near-shore environment where it would not affect local waves,” said Ford. He explained that similar replenishment projects placed sediment at a depth that did not interfere with waves, but rather added material to natural systems that distributed it along beaches. “The way the water and the sediment move along our coastline, they get distributed by natural forces and I think everyone feels more comfortable to let Mother Nature do that work, rather than maybe over engineering or prescribing a specific approach,” he continued. “But I think we’re going to let the science and the engineering really help inform all of that.”
More importantly, the alternative could be far worse. “I think my perspective on this is that if we don’t do anything, we’re certainly going to see changes or generic degradation of our surf breaks over time with coastal erosion, losing beaches, more dynamic beach conditions. You know, ‘The beach was good this year and it’s gone this year,’” said Ford. “These are things that I think we can expect based upon climactic modeling.”
Essentially, even if there were some small, temporary changes to surf breaks, surfers should see a net gain from replenishment programs. Ford elaborated that, “what is commonly accepted is that we’ve seen this state of being sediment starved in coastal Los Angeles County beaches for a long time now, and it’s time to figure out how to get these sediments that have been held up in the watershed down to the coastline in a way that has to take in a whole lot of considerations, none more important nor less important than the conditions of our surf breaks.”
In the end, the specific effects on surfing in these regions remain undecided. The motion is essentially a plan to create a plan. The DBH stated that “Next steps include completing the coastal resiliency study’s final report; collaborative convenings with stakeholders and potential project partners with a focus on equity and inclusion, including Native American tribes, recreational access proponents, as well as surf advocacy groups; advancing an overall implementation plan that includes adaptation strategies tailored to specific beach locations.”
