Oceanside’s proposed Re:Beach sand restoration and retention project has been endorsed by an important advisory panel on San Diego County’s coastal environmental issues.

The San Diego Association of Government’s Shoreline Preservation Working Group voted last week to select the Oceanside proposal as a regional pilot project and a possible example for other cities facing eroding coastlines.

“We should all embrace it,” said working group member Amy Steward, a Coronado City Council member.

She called the plan a “nice compromise” between efforts to armor the beach with harmful structures such as seawalls and the more natural solution of replacing the sand, which can be effective in the short term but often washes away quickly.

Re:Beach calls for placing up to 1 million cubic yards of sand along a few blocks of Oceanside’s most eroded beaches. It also would include the construction of two small jetty-like headlands on the beach to help hold the sand in place, along with a submerged, chevon-shaped, artificial reef nearby in the water to diminish the force of the waves.

Oceanside’s neighbor Carlsbad and other coastal communities initially opposed the proposal to install any kind of sand retention structures on the beach. Hard structures such as groins or jetties can impede the flow of sand in currents that carry sediment along the coast, cutting off the natural supply to downstream regions.

However, Oceanside countered the opposition and has gained some support by working with its neighbors and publicizing the possible regional benefits of the project.

“In the beginning, our city took maybe some action a little too quickly,” said Oceanside Councilman Eric Joyce, a member of the SANDAG working group, at its June 5 meeting.

“Then we heard from our neighbors who said, ‘Hey … we’re here too.’ And so we turned around and tried to do a process that was collaborative, that brought in as many of the neighboring cities that wanted to participate in every step of the way,” Joyce said.

Working group member Kristi Becker, of the Solana Beach City Council, said Solana Beach also opposed Oceanside’s original proposal, but the current plan is different and she supports it now.

“This is a good way to monitor and have our (working group) updated,” she said, adding that it would be “a learning experience.”

The only vote against the endorsing the pilot project came from working group member Priya Bhat-Patel, a Carlsbad City Council member.

“The majority of our council was not in support and passed a resolution (in 2022) in opposition,” Bhat-Patel said, and more information is needed about the project’s possible effects across the region before Carlsbad can sign on.

Oceanside’s plan has changed significantly in the more than two years since Carlsbad approved its resolution. The initial proposal included a series of rock groins built out into the waves to hold the sand, and the idea included little or no input from nearby cities.

Since then, Oceanside has revamped the proposal. It held an international design competition, judged by experts and reviewed by the public, and selected a more environmentally sensitive alternative.

Liam Ferguson, a member of Carlsbad’s Beach Preservation Commission, said at the commission’s June meeting that it might be time for Carlsbad to rethink its resolution.

“I’m not a big fan of managed retreat or cliff failures to get our sand,” he said, referring to a policy widely promoted by environmental groups to move development away from the eroding shoreline and letting nature take its course.

“I think this is a really good project,” Ferguson said of Oceanside’s plan.

Still, not everyone is on board. Mitch Silverstein, senior policy manager for the San Diego chapter of the Surfrider Foundation, expressed doubts.

“There’s a lot of cool things about it, but let’s put it in perspective,” Silverstein said of the Re:Beach project. “This is a desperate way, the worst way possible to save a beach.

“The best thing you can do is prevent the need for this type of project anywhere,” he said. “It’s better to take proactive measures to prevent a beach from getting eroded in the first place.”

Keith Greer, SANDAG’s deputy director of environmental compliance and climate, said the Oceanside beach selected between Tyson Street Park and Wisconsin Avenue is the best place for a pilot project because, “It’s an area of chronic erosion.”

Sand placed in past replenishment efforts has quickly washed away there, Greer said, and, “We are looking for something more than just beach nourishment.”

“Re:Beach is a nature-based solution,” Greer said. “You can work with the structures to make it appear natural and to feel natural.”

Sand is intended to flow through and around the system, only more slowly than it would without the reef and headlands, he said. Also, the reef and headlands can be adjusted, if necessary, or removed entirely if they don’t work.

Human intervention has been contributed to beach erosion since the first West Coast groins and jetties were built in the early 1900s, said Reinhard Flick, a member of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography’s Coastal Processes Group and an advisor to the SANDAG working group.

The construction of the Camp Pendleton harbor in 1942 contributed significantly to North County coastal erosion, which continued to accelerate with the rapid coastal development after World War II. Dams built upstream on the San Luis Rey River, the San Dieguito River and other coastal waterways also held back beach-bound sand. Sea-level rise is another factor.

“Once you develop a coastline, interfere with the processes, have millions of people (living there), you really are, in a sense, stuck,” Flick said.

“Short of giving the land back to the Kumeyaay (native Americans) and all of us leaving, you really are stuck with continued intervention of some degree if you want to maintain recreation and all the benefits of beaches,” he said. “The beaches will never be wide in San Diego in most places. They weren’t naturally wide to begin with.”

The working group’s selection of Oceanside’s Re:Beach to be the pilot project means SANDAG will collaborate with the city on the environmental clearance process, support the city’s efforts to obtain construction funding, and coordinate the project with a separate proposed regional sand project involving all San Diego County’s coastal cities, Greer said.

SANDAG will not be responsible for the funding or construction of the Oceanside project, he said.

Earlier this year, the California Coastal Commission approved a more than $1.8 million grant to cover costs of baseline studies needed for the Re:Beach project.

Oceanside officials were pleased with the shoreline preservation group’s announcement.

“We are proud that Re:Beach will deliver a wide, sandy beach that Oceanside’s residents and our region’s beachgoers will enjoy in just a few years,” City Manager Jonathan Borrego said in a news release Monday.

“This affirms our vision that Re:Beach will benefit the entire region,” Borrego said. “We are grateful to SANDAG for helping develop and establish partnerships with our neighboring cities to learn together from this important pilot.”

Originally Published: June 15, 2025 at 5:00 AM PDT