As Washington beaches begin to go out with the tide, the state is scrambling to devise a plan that landowners fear may not help
Sunday, September 17, 2000
By Jim Lynch of The Oregonian staff
OCEAN SHORES, Wash. -- The sleepy Washington coastline, too far from Seattle to grab much affection or attention, is finally attracting condos, a new $56 million hotel-casino and even surfers. But the long-awaited fanfare arrives at an awkward time, as key stretches of the state's fat, gray beaches are suddenly riddled with erosion.
The collision between development and rowdy winter waves alarms coastal towns striving to partake in the state's economic heyday. It also pits environmentalists against an aggressive marine engineering firm with a powerful ally in Congress. And it heightens interest in the results of the first in-depth study of Washington's sandy southern flank..
Unlike Oregon, Washington doesn't have a coherent plan to deal with oceanfront erosion in part because it hasn't needed one until recently. But it's scrambling to put one together now, and many coastal property owners fear they'll soon lose their ability to protect their investments.
Brady Engvall, a 68-year-old Westport oysterman, broods over a different nightmare: a coastal free-for-all in which the public surrenders control of the looks and vitality of its beach to the rich people who chose to build along its volatile edge.
"Why should we give it up for a few people who've got a few bucks?" asks Engvall, who has spent his entire life on the shore. "Let nature take its course, and move back."
Washington is perhaps the last coastal state to grapple with the inevitable erosion dilemma: Should public beaches be "armored" to protect private properties, given that man-made barricades may trigger more erosion, steepen beaches and ruin seashore ambiance?
When Oregon passed its coastal land-use requirements in 1977, it vowed that only the owners of existing structures could qualify for emergency permits to stack boulders on the beach to keep their homes, hotels and condos from toppling into the Pacific.
Oregon continues to grant riprap permits to shield older properties in such popular spots as Neskowin and Rockaway Beach, but it refused to bend its beach law to allow a boulder barricade in front of The Capes, a new gated community teetering on a storm-battered dune in 1998.
George Kaminsky, coordinator for Washington's almost-finished five-year coastal erosion study, says it's unclear what the state will do when the findings are released next year. "We just want to understand the coast," he says diplomatically.
Still, many coastal property owners anticipate a barrage of regulations written by beach purists who live far from the ocean's roar. Sid Snyder, the top Democrat in the Washington Senate and a grocery owner along Long Beach's main drag, shared prevailing sentiments about the study in a letter to Kaminsky's boss.
"Business owners find it hard to believe they are even heard, let alone understood," Snyder wrote, "when those who have the power to tell them what to do show up wearing 'Save the Whales' T-shirts and Birkenstocks!"
Considering they're neighbors on either side of the same river, Washington and Oregon beaches are stunningly different.
Washington's coast is as flat and sandy as Oregon's is steep and rocky -- in part because the Columbia River flushes most of its sand to the north.
And while you can drive alongside Oregon's coast, Washington's beaches are awkward to access and hard to view unless you actually drive out on the sand, which is the most popular way to visit them.
Oregon's coast is a playground for the masses, a consensus state treasure. Washington's coast is an afterthought for people distracted by Puget Sound and other more convenient attractions. It's a quiet home to half the nation's oysters. And its tourism remains mild compared with Oregon's bustling beach towns.
Visit Washington's coast in the winter, and it's hard to find someone else there. Or as Long Beach City Planner Jim Sayce puts it: "Oregon's beach is getting loved to death, whereas Washington's beach is too remote to hug."
For decades, Washington's beaches widened while Oregon's winnowed.
Since 1968, oceanfront property owners along Washington's southwest corner have watched their land expand 400 feet westward.
In fact, until the early 1990s, Washington's coast had just one main erosion hot spot. Aptly named Washaway Beach, the northern tip of Willapa Bay has lost so much ground so swiftly that more than 100 properties on Pacific County tax rolls are under water at high tide.
But the dams and dredging along the Columbia River have decreased the volume of sediments swept north. And this lack of new sand combined with brutal winter storms wrought erosion crises, including:
A storm blasted a hole in a seemingly invincible rock jetty protecting the town of Westport in 1993 and threatened the city's sewer treatment plant.
Thirty-foot waves dissolved Ocean Shores' southern dunes in 1996 and menaced $60 million in condos and homes.
A huge swath of Washaway Beach vanished in 1997, bringing high tide unnervingly close to a bend in Washington 105.
Fort Canby State Park, just north of the Columbia's mouth, continues to recede at about 70 feet a year, making it impossible to reserve oceanfront campsites a year in advance for fear they'll be washed away by then.
State and federal officials responded to the onslaught by launching an unprecedented study of the coast -- examining erosion and accretion patterns during the past 4,000 years.
Pacific International Engineering of Edmonds, Wash., responded with swift solutions.
PIE has spearheaded about $60 million in coastal erosion remedies during the past seven years: bolstering the Westport jetty, erecting a boulder barricade in front of Ocean Shores condos and extending a rock barrier seaward near Washaway Beach.
Josh Baldi of the Washington Environmental Council says it's troubling that an engineering company seems to guide the decision-making on how best to tackle coastal erosion issues on public beaches.
"We question whether PIE is really doing the communities a service in leading them to believe that they can beat back the Pacific Ocean," Baldi says, adding that he advocates "letting the ocean breathe."
The council was alarmed enough by the "beach armoring" precedent at Ocean Shores to contest PIE's project and still threatens to sue if the barriers aren't removed. PIE Manager Harry Hosey says his company is simply responding to emergencies. He also stresses that PIE's projects are environmentally benign.
Sue Patnude, former Ocean Shores planning director, describes PIE as an unusual full-service company.
"There's a lot of companies that can do this work, but there's not a lot of companies out there that can do the engineering and the lobbying," she says. "I think their ability to bring funding in, and to get the political forces involved, raises a lot of questions."
"We don't provide any lobbying services whatsoever," Hosey says.
Although his company is registered to lobby in Olympia and Washington, D.C., Hosey calls the lobbyist filings precautions that allow company brass to attend meetings between lawmakers and coastal clients.
Hosey's coastal work is often supported by U.S. Rep. Norm Dicks, D-Wash., who represents many oceanside towns. Dicks sits on the House committee that oversees spending by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which has financed much of PIE's work.
Hosey and Dicks met with Corps staff at Dicks' Tacoma office in May to suggest that the Corps suspend its study of erosion issues at Ocean Shores until after PIE-proposed jetty modification could be examined, says Steven Babcock, a Corps project manager. Two weeks later, he says, the Corps received a note from Ocean Shores requesting the same, and that's what happened.
Dicks spokesman George Behan says Dicks enjoys working with Hosey -- who has contributed a combined $8,000 to Dicks' last four re-election campaigns -- because he gets things done.
"We brought him in early on some of our first problems and kept him involved in Ocean Shores and other areas," Behan says. "We're getting things done quickly when it was extremely important. Harry was able to cut through the state bureaucracy."
Washington's coastal study is expected to conclude that the days of widening beaches may be over because the Columbia and its enormous rock jetties built in the early 1900s are no longer steering sand-rich waves to the north.
And state officials are preparing a formal scientific argument that the sand dredged from the Columbia during the proposed two-year deepening project should be dropped near the river's mouth -- where it has a chance of replenishing beaches -- rather than far offshore as proposed.
Oregon State University professor Paul D. Komar suggests Washington officials also should consider that the state is simply getting ravaged by enormous waves.
Komar, author of "The Pacific Northwest Coast; Living With the Shores of Oregon and Washington," is finishing his own study that indicates Washington, Oregon and California have seen increasingly bigger waves over the past 25 years. The waves have grown the fastest in Washington, he says, where 30- to 40-foot swells are no longer a rarity.
Peter Jordan, mayor of Ocean Shores, the closest ocean beach town to Seattle, hopes new shoreline rules don't undercut the city's development binge.
Created just 30 years ago, the city's properties are valued at a combined $520 million. And the investments continue. The Quinault Beach Resort, a 150-room surfside hotel-casino, was just built north of town for $56 million.
"We're somewhat frustrated in that they tend to tell us that they favor those sorts of things that let nature take its course," Jordan says of state officials handling the erosion study. "That has very little local support.
Very little. We're interested in doing something that has minimal ecological impact, but we're also concerned with saving our cities."
Jordan says he thinks people are overreacting to slight changes in the appearance of the beach. "The beach will be here long after we're all dead and gone," he says.
Engvall, the oysterman across the bay, isn't so sure. He recalls when Ocean Shores was just wetlands where his father's friends went duck hunting. He fears quick erosion solutions could ruin the character and appeal of the coast. "People usually don't think past their own retirement," he says. "I'm thinking about my grandchildren."
But for many people bracing for another unpredictable winter, it's hard not to think about tomorrow. When PIE built the rock spit near Washaway Point, the Shoalwater Bay Indian Tribe agreed it was a good idea, seeing how Washington 105 is the tribe's lifeline to Grays Harbor County. But since the barricade was built, some tribal members fear it may exacerbate their own erosion problems.
Chairman Herbert Whitish says, philosophically, that he endorses the state's effort to get a big-picture grasp of coastal erosion patterns and forces. "I'm against piecemeal solutions," he says. "Very seldom have I seen man take on nature and win."
But most of the 100 tribal members on the small reservation live in houses at or slightly above sea level. And Whitish is uneasy with worst-case scenarios if there's a bigger break in the sand bars shielding the reservation from the pounding surf.
Whitish says the tribe has discussed its concerns with Pacific International Engineering and might ultimately ask the company to help draw up "an emergency solution."
You can reach Jim Lynch at The Oregonian's Puget Sound bureau at 360-867-9503, or by e-mail at lynchj@home.com.
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