COUNTYWIDE : Coast Cities Help Pay for Shoreline Study

Four coastal cities have agreed to help pay for the first comprehensive study ever done to assess the natural and man-made impacts on the California shoreline.

The Coast of California Storm and Tidal Waves Study, being conducted by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, will analyze such coastal changes as erosion, shifting sands and altered wind and ocean currents caused by man-made jetties, piers and harbors.

In cooperation with the county government, Huntington Beach, Laguna Beach, Newport Beach and Seal Beach have each agreed to contribute $25,000 this year toward the $4.5-million study. The federal government is paying half of the total costs.

Officials say the data will help cities’ planning and engineering studies for coastline developments. The effort also aims to find new ways to minimize the effects of storms and currents on beaches, bluffs, buildings and other structures.

Most of the existing information on coastal changes is more than 20 years old, and little of the data has been coordinated to provide a cohesive overview of the state shoreline.

The coastal study, authorized by Congress in 1981, began two years later with a pilot effort in the San Diego Region, between the Mexican border and Dana Point. The plan was formalized into a comprehensive statewide plan in 1987.

The Corps of Engineers has since started studying the other five regions mapped out along the state’s 1,100-mile coastline.

The five-year study of the South Coast Region, extending from Dana Point to the Los Angeles-Ventura County border, is scheduled to begin this year.

Eighteen data-gathering sites have been set up in the region, where engineers will study the winds and wave patterns, changing levels of ocean floors and beaches, cliff and sand erosion, and sediment pouring into the ocean from emptying rivers and sinking bluffs, among other environmental phenomena.

Erosion has been a particular problem along Orange County’s coastline, according to a Corps of Engineers report prepared on the study. The coasts of Seal Beach and Huntington Beach are eroding at a combined average rate of 300,000 cubic yards each year, the report said, causing some of the county’s cliffs to sink. A bluff area north of Huntington Beach has sunk several feet over the last 50 years because of erosion and oil drilling in the area.

Rip currents are also particularly troublesome off the Orange County shore, causing vast shifts in the level and configuration of the ocean floor and coastline, the report said.

Other areas of emphasis in the county’s portion of the study include large sediment runoff from the Santa Ana River and the effects of wide-scale development during the past two decades.