“I can’t tell you how exciting this is. That sand on the bottom of the ocean could protect this whole part of the Coastside,” he said on Thursday. “I need everyone to know this is a long-term solution.”
By all accounts, the protective breakwater built in the 1950s surrounding the harbor has had the unintended effect of intensifying ocean waves pummeling the beach line to the south. Those ocean waves have slowly decimated the land between Highway 1 and the water line, and officials say it is only a matter of time before the highway and other coastal roads are compromised.
Overfelt and fellow members of the Dredge the Harbor coalition say the best solution is obvious. Thousands of tons of sand have gradually accumulated in Pillar Point Harbor through natural river runoff, so they recommend taking that sand out to protect the southern shore as a “win-win” solution.
Corps officials aren’t so sure about dredging just yet; that’s why they are commissioning this upcoming study.
Tom Kendall, chief of planning for the San Francisco district of the corps, said dredging has the potential to solve multiple problems, but it could be far more complicated than just moving sand. The cost of dredging is unclear, he said, because no one knows whether it would be a one-time dump or something engineers would have to redo every year.
“It’s not like we can just put a slug of sand out there and walk away. The price tag is open-ended,” Kendall said. “We want to identify a plan for financial and environmental interests. We have to find the optimal solution.”
Initial plans for the study could include a pilot program to test the success of harbor dredging. A similar dredging project at Santa Cruz Harbor is done periodically each year, at an ongoing cost.
For that purpose, the Corps of Engineers is also considering alternatives, such as opening a “backdoor” exit to the harbor that could conceivably let the force of the ocean currents push the sand out. That solution has many uncertainties attached to it, but the possibility of having the ocean currents do the hard lifting — and for free — is definitely appealing, Kendall said.
As a last resort option, specialists could also rebuild the outer breakwater structure of the harbor. Army corps officials today acknowledge the barriers were poorly designed so that the waves were magnified along the southern coast.
Those ideas will ultimately depend on the Army corps study, which itself depends on reliable funding from the federal government. The corps has already prepared an initial installment of $25,000 to begin analyzing the harbor area, but the full study will take an unknown amount of time and resources. An additional $100,000 for the study has been requested from Congress as part of the corps’ annual budget.
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