$12-Million Sand Sucker Poops Out on Oceanside Beach

Oceanside’s experimental sand bypass system, seven years in the works, was termed a smashing success last month after limited testing proved its prowess in sucking sand off the harbor floor.

And it probably would still be a success, say officials at the Army Corps of Engineers, if only they could get the darned thing to work.

Although the $12-million system worked beautifully during tests north of the harbor, the complex machinery inexplicably stalled after being moved last week to its permanent home at the harbor entrance. Corps of Engineers workers have labored throughout this week to find the cause of the malfunction but, as of Thursday, they were still in the dark, spokesman Jim Crum said.

The sand at the harbor’s mouth has buried the system’s two jet pumps, causing them to clog and cease functioning, Crum said. Attempts at back-flushing the pipes with water have worked for a couple of hours at a time, but then the system breaks down again, he said.

The bypass system was designed to vacuum sand off the harbor floor and pump it to Oceanside’s eroded beaches, thus serving the dual purpose of ending expensive dredging and helping keep the beaches healthy. The federal government has fully funded the project, which has been touted as an experiment with potentially worldwide significance.

“It’s not just the city of Oceanside that stands to benefit,” said Dana Whitson, the city’s special projects director. “It has potentially international benefits in revolutionizing the way harbors are dredged.”

Whitson, although a bit dispirited at the system’s sudden failure to function, said she still has faith in the project. “This is an experimental system and every little step of the way they are expecting challenges,” she said. “I don’t think this is an insurmountable setback.”

Oceanside Mayor Larry Bagley also maintains confidence that the project will prove beneficial, but makes no bones about his belief that too many years and dollars have already been wasted.

“We don’t think it should have cost that much,” Bagley said. And, he said, beach erosion has progressed so far in recent years that now the city can only expect the bypass system to maintain the existing beach sand, rather than replenish it. Sand will have to be trucked in for the purpose of enhancing the shoreline, Bagley said, adding, “If they’d gotten the darn thing completed 4 1/2 years ago, when they said they would, that wouldn’t be the case.”

Had to Change Contractors

City officials say most of the delay is attributable to the project’s first contractor who, in Bagley’s words, “was screwing it up.” It took the Corps of Engineers about a year to remove the Irvine-based contractor, Maecon Inc., and six months to hire Healy Tibbitts Construction Co., the current contractor.

The bypass system, a monstrous contraption of pumps and pipes, is built on a movable barge and designed to be raised out of the water on pylons during operation. The first test run in mid-June proved so effective at pumping sand that the machine had to be shut down after three hours because the pumps had pulled all the sand out of a crater created by the sucking action.

That problem should be resolved within the next fiscal year, after the Corps receives an additional $2.6 million approved by the federal government for the project’s second phase. The money will pay for the installation of perforated pipes called fluidizers, which will mix sand with water and cause the mixture to flow more readily to the crater created by the jet pump, according to Whitson.

“Mother Nature may be teaching us already the need for the second phase, although we didn’t expect to learn it this way,” Crum said. The fluidizers, he said, should remove the current difficulties because they will keep the sand moving.

“It’s been an interesting project, and we are learning day by day,” Crum said. “The bottom line is that we’ve had success, so we know the system works. Now we’re just making the appropriate changes and modifications so it works more efficiently.”