In the Rush to Build Emergency Seawalls,
Who's Protecting the Public's Beaches?  

Ten homes were lost here when the bluff failed in February. More are likely to go, perhaps not this year, but certainly before long. Eventually the street along the blufftop may also go, despite efforts now being made to save it - as did streets in northern San Diego County which today exist only on old maps; as did blufftop houses at Big Lagoon, Humboldt County, where the bluff retreated more than 50 feet this year alone. The geological mechanisms may be somewhat different from place to place, but the basic cause for these failures is the same: construction on unstable bluffs that are inexorably eroding.
     "Pacifica could be a poster child for the Coastal Act," said Bob Merrill, North Coast District director for the California Coastal Commission. "A lot of houses were built too close to the cliff edge, so it's likely that this will be a continuing problem." The California Coastal Act of 1976 allows emergency permits for seawalls, revetments, and other shoreline armaments to protect structures. These permits can be issued at a moment's notice by local governments or Coastal Commission staff, without the scrutiny normally required before approval of construction within the Coastal Zone. After the hard structures are built a follow-up hearing is held and, in theory, they can be removed or modified. In practice, however, they often lead to more and more shoreline armament frequently built at public expense to protect private property in hazard zones. Dozens of emergency permits have been issued so far this year, though nobody has an exact count.  

A 1,000-foot-long seawall is about to be built here in Pacifica.

     The City of Pacifica is building a 1,000-foot-long rock revetment (retaining wall), 40' wide at the base and 20' high, below the red-tagged homes. If the homeowners agree to maintain it (at an estimated cost of $100-$150 a month), the City might permit them to move their houses inland, sacrificing one lane of Esplanade Drive. Maintenance would require bringing in more boulders when needed, as well as picking up those that fall to the beach and repositioning them.
     This is a desperate, risky, and expensive project, funded by a $1.5 million grant from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). The bluff is being undermined not only by wave action but also by groundwater that seeps from upslope and creates cavities in the bluff's sandy layers. To drain off some of that seepage, borings will be made into the bluff-face.
     Media attention and public sympathy have focused on the plight of the Pacifica homeowners. There has been little discussion of the long-range cost of emergency shoreline armament to Pacifica's beaches - which, as Carmany points out, "are probably the main asset of the town."
     The price is a steep one. "Over time," Merrill explains, "the beach may erode to the seawall and there might not be much beach left." With loss of sand that damps the waves' power, cliffs fail more rapidly. Kim Sterrett, engineering geologist in the Beach Erosion Program of the Department of Boating and Waterways, puts it this way: "In places with rapid beach or bluff erosion, if you protect one place and not the whole stretch of beach, that place eventually becomes an artificial headland. The unarmed shore on either side of a hard structure keeps eroding, eventually cutting off access along the beach."
     The only way to avoid this problem would be to encase the entire stretch of bluffs in stone and concrete. But that not only would be exorbitantly expensive, it also would degrade beaches that are beautiful in large part because of the eroding cliffs. Although people and communities have a legal right to try to protect their property, armoring the coast spoils and may even destroy beaches that belong to the public and to wildlife.
     In Tillamook County, Oregon, the owner of a $400,000 home built on a sandy bluff 150 feet above the beach was recently denied a permit to build a seawall when the bluff started to crack and slump. The state's coastal management policy is "no hard structures on the beach," said Robert J. Bailey, Ocean Program administrator for the State of Oregon. This allows "beach, foredunes, and ocean cliffs [to] move where they want to and maintain the sand." Some exceptions to this policy are allowed in designated zones and for buildings constructed before 1977, the year the coastal management program went into effect. This home did not qualify. The owner was permitted only to place netting at the toe of the cliff and pile sand on it as reinforcement.
     At Big Lagoon in Humboldt County, huge hunks of the bluff started falling on February 13. Rita Lakin's house, built in the 1970s with a 56-foot setback, threatened to fall to Patrick Point State Beach, so she had it demolished and removed except for the foundation. Four neighboring houses were moved inland and owners are now trying to find new lots for them. Had their property landed on the beach, they would have been required to pay for removing the wreckage, according to Donald C. Tuttle, environmental services manager in the Natural Resources Division of Humboldt County's Department of Public Works. Previous bluff failures were recorded here in 1850, '51, 1906, '40, '83, '84, and '85. "Never in a million years did I think something like this could happen," said Lakin, who said she had assurances that the house was safe for a hundred years.
     To a coastal geologist, erosion is normal. When bluffs fail, they replenish beach sand, thus maintaining the natural slope that coastal scientists have found to be the most effective bluff protection. No matter what humans do, the coast continues to retreat as the continental plate slowly rises, crowded and crunched by the Pacific plate as it slides below. 

- Rasa Gustaitis