A sturdy seawall can do what the legendary commands of King Canute couldn’t: Hold back the tide.
When a coastal property is in danger of being eaten away by the ocean’s erosive force, a freestanding wall, or concrete reinforcement of a bluff, can halt the water’s advance and give the land a long lease on life.
Isn’t that a good thing? Beachside property owners would certainly think so. Ditto, one suspects, for most people who use public parks, roads or trails that hug the coast. But there are government officials in California who don’t seem to agree. In cases where the ocean is gradually wearing away the land, some regulators are starting to side with the tide-and against the building of seawalls.
Rigid environmentalists have been prodding coastal bureaucracies in this direction for some time. The seawalls-are-evil crowd scored a big victory in late 2003 when they persuaded the California Coastal Commission to nix Santa Cruz County’s plan to build a wall to protect East Cliff Drive, a popular road and pedestrian path, perched spectacularly above a surfing beach. Now, the drive is doomed to eventual collapse. The eventual loss of access for the public is only part of the price: The cost of this “victory” for environmentalism also includes the tens of millions of tax dollars that will be needed to relocate water, sewer and gas lines.
“Let the land erode” is the seawall foes’ philosophy. They’ve given the strategy a somewhat Orwellian title: “Planned Retreat.” Their ideal is to bar all seawalls-not just those that buttress public roads and protect beachside parks, but also those that shield private land. They would happily watch ocean-side homes crash onto the beaches below, with taxpayers picking up the tab to reimburse owners and clean up the beaches.
Beyond ideological fervor, the seawall haters’ position doesn’t have much going for it. They claim that seawalls somehow cause massive sand displacement that can make beaches disappear over time. However, they get an argument from the experts. Ocean engineering specialists up and down the state agree with R.L. Weigel, professor emeritus, at UC Berkley, that “seawalls, in general, do not cause long-term beach erosion.” Where beaches give way to the ocean, the main cause is rising sea levels. There isn’t compelling evidence that a properly engineered seawall will speed up that process.
“There are many examples [in California] of stable beaches that have not eroded perceptively during the past 50 years, in spite of being backed with well-sited seawalls at the back of the beach,” observes Dr. Richard J. Seymour, chief of the Ocean Engineering Research Group at the Scripps Institute.
A 1990 study by the National Research Council (affiliated with the National Academy of Sciences), concurred: “Properly engineered seawalls and revetments can protect the land behind them without causing adverse effects to the fronting beaches.”
Another anti-seawall claim-that walls deaden the surf by causing a shift in sand patterns-is also soggy. Many, if not most, of the best surf breaks in California are formed by reefs and jutting points, not sand bars. Others are located relatively far from shore. Fluctuating sand levels are of little consequence, as you can see at Rincon, Malibu, Cardiff and other California beaches where surfers still catch vigorous waves even though nearby homeowners have erected walls to stave off storm surges. Seawalls have protected beach homes for decades, but no one has yet identified a surf break that was destroyed as a direct result.
Nevertheless, seawall foes keep lobbying. Last month in Solano Beach, in San Diego County, the planning staff gave serious consideration to a “planned retreat” proposal that would have banned seawalls even for homeowners. Reason prevailed and the scheme was shelved … for now.
To overzealous environmentalists, the real problem with seawalls is that they’re “unnatural.” (Don’t let these folks near the Netherlands; they might faint from the horror of seeing an entire country thriving where the ocean was “unnaturally” pushed back!) “Planned retreat” is simply the latest tool for derailing development in the name of a coastal utopia.
But for the family whose house is threatened by erosion or the elderly person who can access the coast only by car, the anti-seawall extremist’s dream is a nightmare, and a stabilizing seawall is a thing of beauty. Robert Frost famously wrote that “good fences make good neighbors.” In California, public officials must be reminded that good seawalls often make good sense.
J. David Breemer (jdb@pacificlegal.org) is an attorney with the Pacific Legal Foundation, a California-based public interest legal organization that defends property rights and promotes a balanced approach to environmental protection. He is the managing attorney for PLF’s Coastal Land Rights Project. More information about PLF is available at www.pacificlegal.org