Posted on April 15, 2026
Oceanside – Dredging at Oceanside Harbor will add a second operation this fall as the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the city prepare to transition to a fall schedule.
Dredging began on April 6, according to Jayme Timberlake, the city’s Coastal Zone Administrator, who said the project was delayed for several days due to recent storms and dangerous conditions. She said the move to a fall schedule was in the works for years and has the support of the ACE.
The transition is aided by $8.2 million in federal funding from Rep. Mike Levin (CA-49), which covers the April dredging and another operation from September (after Labor Day) to mid-October. Once the fall project is completed, the next dredging will be in fall 2027, Timberlake said.
She said the reasoning is to avoid the southern summer swells, which push sand north. In the fall and winter, northwest swells push the current south, so the hope is that more sand will stay on Oceanside beaches or others in North County.
The ACE is expected to remove between 350,000 and 400,000 cubic yards of sand and another 100,000 in the fall, Timberlake said.
“It’s so hard to work with the ocean because you never know,” she explained. “Rather than do it in spring and wait an entire year and change, the Corps is going to do it twice this year. That’s really because of the extreme shoaling in the harbor this year. There’s been a number of instances with regard to waves breaking across the channel, boats capsizing, and folks having difficulty navigating the channel with all the sand.”
The channel to the harbor, though, was declared an emergency in November as sediment rapidly filled the harbor and channel. The ACE typically dredges to a depth between 25 feet and 30 feet in the harbor and channel, but storms, currents, and sand from Oceanside’s beaches filled in quickly, Timberlake said.
