Our Battered Coast

The sobering lesson for Southern Californians from the recent winter storm is not that it was so unusual but that the area can expect to be battered time and again with comparable blows of wind and wave. Even more sobering may be the fact that there is little to be done about the damage from such storms so long as home and business owners insist on building as close to the water as possible.

Some corrective actions are possible. For instance, officials say that one reason there was so much damage at King Harbor in Redondo Beach is that much of the breakwater protecting the area is only 14 feet high while the rest of it is 22 feet. City officials have tried without success to get the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to add 8 feet onto the 14-foot reach of breakwater. If the lesser height is going to subject the existing development in the area to wave damage repeatedly, it should be raised. In that event, perhaps local agencies should share in the cost.

Still, all of Southern California cannot be protected by breakwaters. While this storm focused on widely scattered target spots in seemingly random fashion--Malibu, Redondo Beach and Huntington Beach, for example--other storms just as easily could batter coastal cities that escaped serious damage this time. A different wind pattern or a different direction of large ocean-going waves generated by an offshore tropical storm could result in another pattern of destruction next time.

There is one constant, however, that makes added damage even more likely with each successive storm: The continued erosion of the beaches. Less sand is reaching Southland beaches because of the damming, channeling and lining of rivers flowing into the ocean. The storm caused significant losses of beach sand, as did the tempest of 1983, officials said. Sand can be imported in limited quantities, but that is only a temporary solution and not a buffer against future damage to coastal buildings.

Count on this: Wave action will continue to erode California’s coast and destroy any development in its path. Those who build close to the water do so at their own risk.