Wilson Veto of Sand Project Is Political Swipe, Seal Beach Official Says : Politics: Councilman asserts funds for erosion control were cut because city supports Assembly Speaker Allen.

City officials expressed disappointment Monday and questioned Gov. Pete Wilson’s motivation for slashing $285,000 from a city project to replenish sand along the beaches south of the pier.

Councilman William J. Doane said the governor’s veto amounted to a political swipe at Seal Beach, because it is in the district represented by Assembly Speaker Doris Allen (R-Cypress).

“Doris has been a very good friend of Seal Beach,” Doane said, “and I think the recall petition against her and this decision is another example of state politics.

“Does Wilson take political swipes?” Doane said. “Sure he does. Undoubtedly this was one; that’s the way he plays the game.”

Wilson publicly expressed his displeasure last week with Allen’s leadership in obtaining Assembly approval of the new state budget. And Allen is being targeted for recall by the Orange County Republican Party for allegedly conspiring with the state’s Democrats to become Speaker.

“This was a project to enable us to buy some sand cheaply and pump it in,” said Jack Shelver, Seal Beach interim city manager. “We’re very, very disappointed with his veto.”

Allen could not be reached for comment.

But the governor left untouched about $500,000 in state funds for a much larger state and federal sand replenishment project in Seal Beach, a spokeswoman for Allen said.

“Speaker Allen is pleased that [one of two] Seal Beach projects were funded in the budget,” said Sharon Thomas, Allen’s spokeswoman in Sacramento. “She feels that everyone will have to work harder to get funding for the second project.”

Shelver, who read the governor’s veto message, said Wilson slashed the erosion project because the project was “not reviewed or evaluated” in the “context of competing needs” for a harbors and watercraft fund and wasn’t a component of the administration’s Beach Erosion Project.

Wilson’s office did not return telephone calls Monday.

Without the funds, the city must now weigh whether it can afford to have sand trucked in, a process that is twice as expensive as using sand from offshore. Seal Beach recently spent $183,650 to have 15,045 cubic yards of sand hauled and spread on the beach with heavy equipment, a city official said. The total cost was $12.21 per cubic yard, compared with $4 to $5 per cubic yard using dredged sand.

The vetoed funds would have allowed the city to piggyback on a federal Army Corps of Engineers project that calls for replenishing sand at Surfside in Seal Beach by dredging sand from two miles offshore, said Steve Badum, Seal Beach public works director.

The state grant would have helped pay to move the corps’ equipment to Anaheim Bay, where sand would be dredged and pumped onto city beaches south of the pier.

“With the Army Corps and their equipment already out there, the plan was to use their equipment after they were done and have them pump from Anaheim Bay onto our beach areas,” Shelver said. “It would have been a very cheap project to do.”

Sand replenishment affects millions of dollars of coastal property not only in Seal Beach but in coastal cities to the south, city officials said.

Surfside, a small community of Seal Beach on the south side of a long jetty, is regarded as a “feeder” beach. The several million tons of sand deposited there by the Corps of Engineers project every five or six years travels south, replenishing Sunset Beach, Bolsa Chica State Beach, Huntington Beach, Huntington State Beach and Newport Beach.

The erosion is worsened by the southern jetty into Anaheim Bay at the Seal Beach Naval Weapons Station. Before the jetty was built in the 1940s, the San Gabriel River carried sand and silt into ocean currents, helping replenish the coast.

But the jetty blocks that process, and the San Gabriel River, which once flowed unimpeded by structures, has been increasingly blocked by obstacles such as small dams.