Posted on July 31, 2018
Oceanside, Issa push for overdue harbor, beach-sand projectLocal officials are urging the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to complete the routine dredging that it failed to do this spring at the Oceanside harbor.
The leader of Oceanside’s tourism marketing agency, Leslee Gaul, and Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Vista, have written letters to the Corps expressing how important the maintenance work is for the safety of boaters and for the vitality of the city’s beaches and tourism-based businesses.
“This holdup has a tremendous impact on our local economy, especially when it comes to our small businesses,” said Gaul, president and CEO of Visit Oceanside, in a letter to Col. Kirk Gibbs at the Corps of Engineers office in Los Angeles.
The Corps was unable to start the project in April as scheduled because it did not get the required permit from the Regional Water Quality Control Board. The work was to be completed before Memorial Day weekend to free up the harbor and beaches for the busy summer season.
In addition to keeping the harbor entrance deep and navigable, the annual dredging provides sand to replenish the city’s beaches. In places south of Tyson Street, the shore is eroded down to a narrow strip of cobblestones.
Research shows beaches, the municipal pier and the harbor are the top destinations for Oceanside vistors, Gaul said.
Ocean currents, waves and seasonal storms continually push sand into the man-made harbor.
Large ocean swells, like the one expected to bring waves as tall as 9 feet through Wednesday, cause trouble for boats going in and out of the harbor, especially when the entrance gets shallow.
“We canceled yesterday, today, and we may cancel tomorrow,” Donna Kalez, owner of Oceanside Adventures, said Tuesday. She runs whale-watching and sight-seeing trips three times daily from the harbor.
“Last year, (cancellations) just didn’t happen,” Kalez said, because the harbor had been dredged. “It’s just going to get worse. These swells are just going to bring more sand.”
The center of the harbor entrance channel is about 20 feet deep now, she said, but just outside the harbor there are spots only 17 feet deep where the tip of the jetty captures sand. The shallower water creates bigger waves that make navigation difficult for smaller boats.
If there’s no dredging this fall, she said, she could lose much of its business over the winter, which is a busy time because of the gray whale migration.
Issa’s letter to Gibbs conveys his “sincere disappointment” that the dredging was cancelled.
“Unfortunately, this recent setback is not the first one,” Issa said.
The Corps’ three-year Shoreline Feasibility Study, which provides information needed for sand restoration projects, was 100 percent federally funded when it started in 2016. But a year later, the Corps informed Oceanside that the city would have to cover half the costs for the project. Since then, specific details needed for the study to proceed remain unavailable and the project has stalled.
A third Corps project, the San Luis Rey River sediment removal, also has fallen through. Cancelled in fall 2017 for the second year in a row, that excavation would have improved flood protection for homes along the river and provided sand for beach restoration.
“Respectfully, I urge you and agency officials to consider this history of setbacks to vital projects for this region, and implement appropriate policy changes that will enable such impediments to be avoided in the future,” Issa wrote.
Oceanside Mayor Peter Weiss said Tuesday that maybe it is time for the city to take the lead on its own beach replenishment project, an idea he plans to discuss at the Aug. 8 City Council meeting.
Studies for the San Diego Association of Governments’ replenishment project in 2012 showed large sand deposits in the ocean near the harbor, Weiss said.
A half-cent sales tax increase on the Oceanside ballot in November, if passed, could help pay for the project.
“I’d like to at least have staff look into it,” Weiss said.
The San Luis Rey River bed is among other possible sources of sand for a city project, he said.
Source: The San Diego Union-Tribune
