Points of View

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Beach Preservation Efforts Built on Sand

By ROBERT M. NORRIS

Despite a long and depressing history of property losses, individuals and governmental agencies keep building things in one of Nature's most dynamic environments—the shoreline. When these creations are damaged or destroyed, there is much clamor for more protective structures, but seldom any acknowledgement that anything built in the immediate vicinity of the shore ought to be considered both temporary and expendable—and that includes beach parks.

There is no question that the hotly debated Goleta Beach Park is a valuable and popular community asset and ought to be preserved insofar as is reasonably possible. It also must be realized that the entire park lies within the shoreline environment; no matter what is done, some future storm will cause some damage.

About 1930, Goleta Beach was a low sand spit separating the slough from the open channel. It extended eastward from present-day UCSB to the tidal inlet, now a short distance east of the pier. Each winter, when stormy periods coincided with high tides, the sea washed over the spit and into the slough. During the quiet intervening periods, coastal vegetation returned to the disturbed areas and temporarily stabilized the surface of the sand spit.

In the 1940s, fill material was trucked in and piled on the low sand spit. In due course, roads, parking lots, grassy areas, and such amenities as restrooms and piped water were added. Each winter, storms nibbled at the seaward edge of this fill. The more amenities added, the more popular the park became, and the more the erosion was noticed, though these natural processes were going on long before the park was created.

Our local coastline is protected to some degree from the open Pacific by the chain of offshore islands as well as by its east-west orientation. Occasional winter storms, particularly in El Niño years, result in impressive erosion. During the storms of 1982-83, for example, most of the sand was stripped off Goleta and other South Coast beaches. With much of the protective beach stripped away, high waves attacked the cliffs of the campus and Isla Vista, causing as much as 18 inches of cliff retreat in a single storm. Such stormy conditions are certain to occur in the future, perhaps even next winter.

What can be done to minimize these continuing problems? At present, a low rock revetment has been added along the seaward side of the park, which provides some protection during some storms. But a powerful storm can scatter these boulders, as Carpinteria discovered in the 1982-83 El Niño years.

Any barriers to the longshore movement of sand, such as groins, breakwaters, or sea walls, are terrible ideas that usually result in starving beaches to the east and rapid erosion of coastal cliffs. The wider the beach, the more wave energy is absorbed. Maintaining a wide beach, if it can be done at reasonable cost, is an excellent solution.

Probably the cheapest nearby source of available sand is that which is annually dredged from tidal and stream channels, like the one paralleling Highway 217. If dredgings from this and other channels are distributed between UCSB and Goleta Beach in winter when beach use is minimal, the waves will carry away the clay and silt. The remaining clean sand will widen the beach to some degree. This will not stop park area erosion, but it should help.

Robert M. Norris is professor emeritus of geological sciences and a specialist in shoreline erosion processes.