Beachfront Will Soon Sport Flattop

A corps of enormous yellow bulldozers brought the first signs of summer to Seal Beach on Thursday.

The heavy machinery moved in to flatten a 15-foot-high sand berm, running about eight blocks long, built to protect homes from flooding.

“We don’t see the seasons change here too much, but when the berm comes down you know summer’s here,” said Nancy Rezmer, who watched the work near the Seal Beach Pier with her young son and niece.

Although minor flooding from an early winter storm threatened to make this El Nino season one of the worst in the city’s history, Seal Beach residents escaped the rains virtually unscathed.

City crews have taken to the beach every winter for about 25 years to create giant walls of sand in the hopes of keeping the ocean from flood-prone beachfront homes.

The berm was bigger than usual this year.

As city workers began the estimated weeklong job of flattening the berms, crews on the other side of the beach continued dumping finer grain sand onto the shore as part of a sand replenishment program.

Observing from his bicycle in the city’s east beach parking lot, 75-year-old Roy DeMeire said he watched the berm go up and was happy to see it come down.

“I can see the ocean better and there is lots of activity down here,” the Seal Beach resident said. “It makes it kind of fun.”