Posted on June 8, 2017
By Barbara Henry, The San Diego Union-Tribune
A proposal to build a system of sand dunes to protect Coast Highway 101 in south Encinitas from coastal flooding and erosion cleared its first hurdle last week.
On Thursday, the Encinitas Planning Commission approved a permit for the plan, which now heads to the state Coastal Commission. The goal is to have construction begin in January and conclude before Memorial Day 2018.
“It is a unique project for the state — a lot of people have eyes on it,” said consulting engineer Brian Leslie. He said he’ll submit the paperwork to the Coastal Commission this week.
Coast Highway 101 dips as it approaches the city’s Cardiff neighborhood, where the road and nearby restaurant parking lots often get inundated during big storms that cause the tide to swell.
Plans call for a series of what are termed “living” sand dunes — huge hummocks covered with native plants — to be constructed west of the coastal highway, starting just south of the Chart House Restaurant and continuing half-mile down the beach to the entrance of Seaside Reef State Beach.
Those new hills of sand will act as a line of defense, absorbing the full force of winter storm-tossed waves and helping to keep the highway safe, said the city’s shoreline program manager Kathy Weldon. Waves have repeatedly washed over the highway and even undermined the roadbed in the past, she said.
The sand dune proposal has attracted state interest because it’s an environmentally friendly way of coping with beach erosion issues. Instead of constructing impervious concrete walls to hold back the sea, the sand dunes will be erodible and they’ll support life because they’ll be home to native plants.
The list of organizations and agencies involved with the proposal include the state parks system, which owns the land, and the San Elijo Lagoon Conservancy, which will be offering planting assistance for the sand dunes. Scripps Institution of Oceanography and Surfrider Foundation also are offering advice, Weldon said.
A long-awaited, massive dredging project in the lagoon early next year will “turbo-charge” the beachfront, providing sand for the future dunes as well as greatly increasing the surrounding beach area, Leslie said.
Planning Commission Chairman Glenn O’Grady asked for confirmation that the future sand dunes wouldn’t prevent drivers along Coast Highway from seeing the ocean.
There’s going to be a height limit on the dunes to make certain that doesn’t happen, Leslie said. At the northern end of the project, the height limit will be 3 feet, while at the southern end it’s 2 feet, 4 inches. That will allow anyone driving by, even people in cars that are low to the ground, to be able to see the ocean, he said.
Weldon said maintenance details are still being worked out, but the city is expecting to be able to care for a proposed decomposed granite trail along the roadway behind the dunes and its accompanying fencing.
The dunes are expected to last about 50 years and could be resupplied from other dredging projects in the future, a city staff report states.
Commissioner Bruce Ehlers asked if any parking spaces along Coast Highway 101 would be eliminated.
Associate Planner Todd Mierau said parking will be more orderly, with marked spaces replacing the double-parking and driving on the sand that now occurs.
Source: The San Diego Union-Tribune
