“You’re kidding, right?”
Fun stuff on the beach this weekend… Ultra-low tides (-2.1 on Saturday), unseasonably warm weather, and in Encinitas, some strange traffic amid cloudy waters.
Sand, or material, or dirt, or sand-like-dirt-material is being deposited along Leucadia’s Grandview Beach in northern Encinitas, as developer John DeWald clears the property that is being developed for Whole Foods anchored “Pacific Station”.
“Sand-like-dirt-material you say? Looks like dirt to me.”
Slated for completion around the end of this year, Pacific Station will include 47 condominiums, a Whole Foods Market, restaurants, shops and offices. And…37,000 cubic yards of material needs to be removed to facilitate the underground parking garage.
Tipped off by Leucadia Blog who was on-site to take some great pictures, who witnessed semi-trucks hit the beach (no pun intended) at Ponto, and dropping their loads into the flinching tide.
“Surfs up!”
According to news excerpts from the below links, DeWald has ‘gifted’ the sand to the city of Encinitas, rather than sell it to say…a cement plant, at the suggestion of California Coastal Coalition executive director Steve Aceti. Compensation for the transport of the sand, $133,000, is being paid to DeWald from a sand-replenishment fund managed by SANDAG, collected from bluff-top homeowners building seawalls.
“Are we headed into murky waters?”
It took nine months for the Encinitas Coastal Program manager, Katherine Weldon, to get the green-light from the necessary regulatory agencies, and the city of Carlsbad. Does that mean that we know the composition of the construction excavation material, and that it’s compatible with the beach sand? Really? The excavation site is located close to the very beach it’s being dumped on, and we do have sand erosion problems…Blah, Blah…
Are we really just pouring “Sand On Top Of A Sieve”? As long as we keep fighting the forces of gravity and the tides, fees will be collected by SANDAG, so there’s money to spend. Let’s hope there’s some foresight that will extend beyond the end of our civic leader’s terms. It’s such a dirty business trying to keep the rip tides of ‘progress’ from pulling us kicking and howling out to sea…
We don’t artificial reefs in Encinitas because we are already blessed with many natural reefs. What we need is for the estuaries to remain tidal (open) so that all the good quality sand in the lagoons flows onto our beaches. The Ponto jetties have been great for this (it’s ironic that the beach in question has been receiving this sand for a couple of years now and doesn’t require this mass importation).
We lose sand in the winter due to storms and big north swells, we regain sand in the summer due to south swells. It’s the natural process of our local beaches.
Ponto doesn’t produce a net inflow. Batiquitos is a big basin that traps sediment. Even the Army Corps of Engineers admits as much.Our “wild” sand comes from bluffs and rivers north of Carslbad.