Project Pumps New Life Into Beach

Residents of this seaside town spell relief “S-A-N-D.” And on Monday, they finally got some of it when a two-mile-long pipeline began sucking sand off the ocean floor and redepositing it on one end of the beach in an ongoing battle against erosion.

Every other year since 1960, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Navy have dredged Channel Islands Harbor and pumped tons of sand onto the strip of beach that fronts the city. The federal government agreed to foot the bill for that work after discovering that a Navy-owned jetty disrupted the flow of sand that replenishes the beach.

Although the corps was set to begin dredging in November, Port Hueneme officials pleaded with the agency to move up its usual start date because waves now crash within 10 feet of Surfside Drive, threatening streets and homes.

“Our appeal has been heard,” said Tom Figg, Port Hueneme’s community development director. “We are nearing a crisis.”

About 1:30 p.m. Monday, a dredging barge called the Mr. Manson began scouring the harbor bottom and funneling the material onto the city beach two miles down the coast at a rate of 15,000 cubic yards a day.

“There’s kind of a dual benefit,” said Donn Pease, a spokesman with the Corps of Engineers. “The beach gets replenished because the sand washes away and the channel gets re-dug because it fills in.”

Like a large serpent, the 26-inch wide pipe slithers off the dredging barge along pontoons in Channel Islands Harbor and snakes down Ventura County’s coastline across beaches and the Naval Construction Battalion Center ending about 1,000 feet from the northern end of Port Hueneme Beach.

Near Silver Strand Beach, Jesus Haro hoisted his 4-year-old grandson, Nicholas, onto the pipeline and asked him to teeter along the span, testing his sense of balance. Up the beach closer to the harbor, 17-year-old Mary McDonald and a friend sunned themselves with little curiosity about the pipeline that ran inches from where they had planted their lounge chairs.

“I know it’s necessary, but I don’t know what it does,” said Mary, a Silver Strand resident and Oxnard High School student.

Although Figg said he is grateful that the federal government is paying for the $2.7-million project, he said the beach actually needs more sand to counter erosion.

When Seattle-based Manson Construction and Engineering completes the project in about two months, Port Hueneme’s coastline will regain about 900,000 cubic yards of sand instead of the more than 1.25 million cubic yards Figg had hoped for.

“If that is all we receive, then we will be in a world of hurt two years from now,” Figg said.

Figg said city officials are lobbying Washington politicians to help them find more money to extend the sand-replenishment program.

Without the program, city officials estimate that the erosion could eventually displace 1,200 people from 420 beachfront homes valued at more than $55 million.

“If the sand-replenishment program was abandoned and the shoreline was allowed to go back toward the city, it would go inland 600 to 1,000 feet,” Figg said.