Posted on April 10, 2018
By Phil Diehl, The San Diego Union-Tribune
Beachgoers and boaters again are wondering when the Oceanside harbor will get its annual dredging, which keeps the entrance open and supplies sand for the nearby beach.
The work was scheduled to start this month, but the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which oversees the project, notified Oceanside city officials last week that the dredging will be delayed and possibly canceled.
“For the project to start, the Corps must receive all permits and issue a notice to proceed by May 1 in order to complete the work by the Memorial Day weekend,” states a staff memo to the Oceanside City Council. Memorial Day is May 28 this year.
Corps spokesman Brooks Hubbard said Wednesday the agency still hopes to get all its permits in time to complete the work by the Memorial Day weekend deadline, but so far no date has been set to start.
“This is a familiar situation,” said Alan Monji, an environmental scientist with the San Diego Regional Water Quality Control Board.
The Corps needs a “water quality certification” from the regional board, which requires detailed information about the volume of material to be dredged, where it will be placed, how that will affect water quality and more.
“That’s not the kind of document that can be issued overnight,” said David Barker, a supervising engineer with the water board. “They contacted us kind of late in the process, at the end of February.”
Collecting the necessary information can take six or eight months, Barker said, but the agency is making an effort to expedite the process.
The Corps should have everything it needs from the California Coastal Commission, Mark Delaplaine, a manager in Sacramento, said Wednesday.
The Oceanside harbor maintenance work takes at least two to three weeks, if nothing breaks down and the weather cooperates. City officials want the job to be completed by the Memorial Day weekend to be ready for the start of the busy summer tourist season.
“The dredging project is needed to maintain the harbor channel depths to reduce storm damage, provide surge protection to the harbor’s infrastructure, and significantly reduce navigational hazards,” said Oceanside Public Works Division Manager Kiel Koger in an email this week. “The dredged material also provides beach sand restoration, shoreline protection, and recreational and commercial benefits.”
“It’s been done annually for a long time,” he said. “I heard that it may have been dredged every other year back in the 1990s.”
This year, the Corps plans to dredge about 225,000 cubic yards of sediment, all of which would be piped onto the beach north of the municipal pier.
Last year, the project pumped about 440,000 cubic yards of sand from the harbor onto the beach, nearly double what it moves most years, and some of the sand was spread south of the pier for the first time in several years.
The project went fairly smoothly, except for a two-week delay after rough seas from a storm rocked the work barge so much that an important piece of equipment was knocked overboard and lost. The work ended the week after Memorial Day, taking it into the the tourist season.
In 2016, the Corps hired a new contractor with less experience who used a smaller dredge, which slowed down the job because it could carry less sand. Also that year, the work started in June, months late because of trouble getting permits. The project took five months, ending in October, and moved less than 240,000 cubic yards of sediment.
This year, the Corps has retained Manson Construction Co. of Seattle, the same contractor that did the work in 2017, and the job is expected to cost between $3 million and $4 million.
Oceanside’s harbor was built in the 1960s. Without maintenance, the prevailing north-to-south ocean current carries sand into the harbor, filling the entrance and starving the beach to the south.
The harbor maintenance is one of several periodic beach replenishment projects along the San Diego County coast.
Source: The San Diego Union-Tribune
