SEAL BEACH : Rain Could End Effort to Bolster Beachfront

The sound of big trucks lumbering onto local beaches early Tuesday morning was music to the ears of city officials who signed a last-minute deal for the delivery of sand to the city’s badly eroded beachfront.

Dawn-to-dusk delivery of sand will continue through next week while City Manager Jerry L. Bankston keeps an eye to the sky. Heavy rainfall could put an end to sand removal from the Santa Ana River excavation project near Anaheim Stadium.

Too much rain would endanger workers in the river’s flood control channel, but Tuesday’s light rain did not cause problems.

“A little rain will actually compact the sand better,” Bankston said.

Bankston won an extension of a Nov. 15 deadline imposed by the Army Corps of Engineers for removal of the sand, but only until the first heavy rains come.

A mile-long section of the beach between the Seal Beach Pier and the Naval Weapons Station has lost an average of seven inches of sand a year to erosion. The city was seeking up to 100,000 cubic yards of sand, but Bankston expects only about 30,000 cubic yards of sand because of time constraints. A double-trailer truckload of sand is about 15 cubic yards.

Bankston said the city is off to a good start.

“It’s a much heavier sand than we would normally put on the surface of the beach,” Bankston said. “Some of this will go out into the tide and it should slow the erosion.”

The city will pay $3.50 per cubic yard for the sand and $5.30 per cubic yard for transportation. The total cost is estimated at $294,000, which includes engineering services and grading. No additional sand replenishment is planned until the end of the rainy season in March or April.