Orange County beaches face ongoing environmental struggles

To combat coastal erosion and replenish the depleting amounts of sand in local beaches, cities like Newport Beach are adding sand back in from the Santa Ana River. JAKE NEEDHAM, Staff Photographer

Within the past year, Orange County’s coastal regions have faced a multitude of coastal issues such as oil and sewage spills and coastal erosion, all of which are topics of concern among members of the OC community.

Oil and sewage spills in the county

Aside from the Oct. 1 oil spill in Huntington Beach that was covered nationwide, the county has since seen six other oil and sewage spills occurring in the Pacific Ocean, the most recent of which occurred March 2.

Over a week before state officials announced Dec. 29 that all 25,000 gallons of crude oil from the Huntington Beach oil spill was cleaned up, there were two more oil spills that occurred  Dec. 15 and Dec. 22 near Bolsa Chica State Beach.

Over a week later, a 12,000 gallon sewage spill took place on New Year’s Eve in the Dominguez Channel in Los Angeles County, and it trickled down to OC beaches, including Long Beach. Between 6 and 7 million gallons of raw sewage were spilled, and seven miles of beaches were closed. 

The Dec. 31 spill posed complications for coastal events scheduled to occur that same week, such as the 22nd annual Surf City Splash in Huntington Beach. The benefit, which was slated to occur the next day, was organized by the Huntington Beach and Seal Beach chapter of the Surfrider Foundation, an international nonprofit organization. 

The event typically features activities such as a vendor fair, an ice skating rink and a communal beach clean-up. But the event’s most popular activity occurs at noon: attendees are encouraged to run into the water and participate in the event’s version of a polar plunge.

“Due to (the) high bacteria amounts stemming from the sewage spill that were leaking out of Long Beach, we had to actually cancel the portion where people were allowed to actually be in the water,” Richard Busch, the treasurer of the Huntington Beach chapter, said in an interview with The Panther. “The city of Huntington Beach (officials) actually had to go out and post stakes in the beach, notifying people that it wasn’t really safe to be in the water.”

After this spill, three more sewage spills took place south of Belmont Pier, near Newport Bay and in the city of Paramount — which trickled into the Los Angeles River and down to the Long Beach coast — Feb. 1, Feb. 21 and March 2, respectively.

Coastal erosion: cause and effect

The issue of coastal erosion continues to affect the county’s beaches — specifically those in southern Orange County. Coastal erosion is a natural process in which sediments, including sand and rocks are carried away from the shoreline.

But within the last 10 years, OC residents, scientists, environmental activists and volunteer organizations within the county have raised concerns about rising sea levels — a primary cause of coastal erosion — as the effects are being witnessed firsthand.

Michael Moodian, a lecturer in Chapman University’s Attallah College of Educational Studies, told The Panther that Capistrano Beach in the city of Dana Point used to have beach volleyball, a basketball court and palm trees, which could be seen during the 1980s and 1990s. In recent years, though, the beach has gone through significant changes.

“(Capistrano Beach) is all gone because the area has just been decimated as a result of (the) height of rising sea levels, high tides (and) the depletion of sand,” Moodian said. “All these variables have led to the absolute decimation of this beach, and the beach looks nothing like it used to look back in the 1980s and 1990s. It’s a much, much different area today.”

These rising sea levels are being attributed to climate change and global warming, the latter of which has caused polar ice caps and glaciers in the Arctic Ocean to melt.

Brett Sanders, a civil and environmental engineering professor from the University of California, Irvine, told The Panther that climate change is also affecting precipitation patterns and wave climate, both of which affect coastal erosion as they raise the sea level. 

“Southern California is renowned for beaches, and I think that millions and millions of people living in this area or visiting this area enjoy time walking on a beach with their family (and) with their friends (and) enjoy access to the water,” Sanders said. “It’s an incredible resource we all benefit from, and they’re at risk.”

In 2017, the U.S. Geological Survey published a study in the Journal of Geophysical Research-Earth Surface finding that between 31% and 67% of Southern California beaches could be lost by 2100 if the sea level rises between three and six feet and there has been little human intervention.

Moodian also noted that if sea levels continue to rise in areas like Imperial Beach, climate migration may occur as a result of houses and businesses being built too close to the beaches.

“We’re actually going to see, in California, an instance of individuals having to move or having to migrate away from their current housing,” Moodian said. “We’re very likely going to be seeing that firsthand, right here in California, an hour and a half from Chapman, in the community of Imperial Beach.”

Also contributing to coastal erosion, according to Moodian, is the infrastructure that has been developed in beach communities, specifically the houses, businesses and highways that have been built along the coast.

Coastal erosion in Orange County differs between the northern and southern regions of the county. Beaches in the northern part of the county, specifically Huntington Beach, have remained relatively large and are not experiencing erosion as severely as the southern regions.

“In northern Orange County, we’ve invested quite a lot to sustain the beaches,” Moodian said. “If you (go to) south Orange County, we’ve invested very little to sustain the beaches, and as we’ve seen the supply of sediment reduced overtime from drought and from watershed development, we’re seeing the beaches thinning.”

Moodian produced, directed and wrote a documentary that aired on KDOC-TV Feb. 20 titled “Coastal Crisis: ‘California’s Vanishing Beaches.’” Moodian, a longtime resident of Orange County who grew up in the coastal communities, decided to create the documentary after he began seeing some of the rapid changes that the beaches were going through in recent years, which made him “very concerned” and “very alarmed.”

“I have always been very concerned about climate change and the effects of climate change, but seeing (these effects) firsthand was something that was very concerning to me,” Moodian said.

Moodian worked on his documentary for a year and interviewed several individuals, including former Newport Beach mayor Keith Curry, U.S. Congressman Mike Levin (D-CA) and State Sen. Dave Min (D-Irvine), the latter of whom introduced a bill in early February to ban offshore drilling in the state.

Moodian said that during the time he was working on “Coastal Crisis,” he was surprised to learn that climate change and its impact on coastal regions was a bipartisan issue for individuals living in coastal areas.

“Oftentimes, in the United States, there’s one major political party that tends to accept and want to address climate change to a much higher degree than another political party, but I found (that) that’s not the case,” Moodian said. “The urgency about having to deal with rising seas (levels) and to have to protect communities, it’s bipartisan, and I saw that firsthand.”

Solutions for coastal erosion at the city level

Currently, cities and volunteer organizations have been employing some methods in an attempt to mitigate the impact that coastal erosion and rising sea levels have on their communities. One such method is the construction of sea walls, which are man-made structures on the shore to defend against erosion and natural disasters. According to Moodian, this method has not been viewed favorably among activists and surfers.

“Seawalls tend to upset activists and surfers, because they result in the loss of (being able to access) beaches,” Moodian said. “By armoring the coast, it often results in (beaches thinning).”

KC Fockler, the chair of The Surfrider Foundation’s Huntington Beach and Seal Beach chapter, told The Panther that the organization does not support building sea walls, because they prevent sand from being able to naturally flow back and forth and refill the gaps caused by erosion. When this occurs, cities will sometimes move sand from populous areas like the Santa Ana River to beaches with depleting amounts of sand.

Instead of sea walls, the Surfrider Foundation supports a living shoreline, in which grasses and natural vegetation are rooted in the ground and act as a natural barrier to protect beaches from coastal erosion.

“If you’ve been to Bolsa Chica or to Huntington Beach lately, you’ll see they’re allowing some of the natural grasses and such to actually grow back up into the sand dunes that have (been) there, and that will also help mitigate the erosion that occurs on the beaches,” Fockler said.

Other methods include managed retreat, in which infrastructure near the beaches would be moved further inland. This method has also been debated upon due to the large financial costs it comes with.

Solutions for coastal erosion at the individual level

Thomas Piechota, an environmental science professor at Chapman University, said he thinks there are three options that community members can take: reducing their carbon footprint, volunteering with organizations and becoming aware of ongoing environmental concerns. Piechota said that students especially should be aware of the multiple sides of a story, issue and even some of the potential solutions

“(There is a) big debate going on right now, specifically where I live in Huntington Beach, on the building of desalination plants,” Piechota said. “You’d think a desalination plant would be something that would help with our water future, because we’re running out of water. But you know, it’s a complex issue, and there’s environmental issues associated with it. There’s also an economic case you can make for it, (and) there’s a water case you can make for it.”

Organizations such as the Orange County Coastkeeper, the California Coastkeeper Alliance and the Surfrider Foundation all offer various opportunities for community members to educate themselves, volunteer and speak up at local government meetings.

Garry Brown, the founder and president of OC Coastkeeper, said that aside from offering beach cleanups, his organization is collecting contact information from community members, including students, so that OC Coastkeeper can notify community members when meetings are happening in case they wish to speak at one. The organization is also accepting volunteers for its restoration projects, which consist of laying down bags of oyster shells to create a barrier against coastal erosion.

OC Coastkeeper also teamed up with the Surfrider Foundation and the California Coastal Protection Network to create an online climate crisis simulation which shows what parts of Huntington Beach, including the Huntington Beach Desalination Plant, would look like if a king tide or high tide rose to increments of 4.1 feet, 4.6 feet and 6.6 feet with a 100-year storm.