SOUTH BEND, Washington -- A Duke University professor has written a paper critical of Pacific County and state efforts to battle erosion on the Southwest Washington coast.
Geologist Orin Pilkey is featured this month (August) in National Geographic for his work on the coastal processes of the barrier islands along North Carolina and the Atlantic and Gulf coasts.
However, Pilkey spent a recent five-month sabbatical in Olympia and during that time had a chance to speak with coastal geologists and DOE staff.
Pilkey said he was interested in Washington's barrier coast -- the Peninsulas of Long Beach and Twin Harbors -- and was dismayed to discover a Department of Ecology which seemingly has no control over beach development. Furthermore, he saw three recent projects proposed by a single consultant as beach "armoring" that has proven disastrous in the barrier islands of the East Coast.
In a recent white paper, Pilkey asserted that the state has no control over the beach resources on the coast and that declaring "emergency actions" to combat erosion damage to private and public property effectively allows proponents to skirt what little environmental controls are in place. With erosion problems beginning on the coast, Pilkey says the lessons learned on the New Jersey coast 100 years ago are not being applied.
More importantly, Pilkey asserts the future of Washington's beaches is under the control of a single consultant, Harry Hosey of Pacific Inter-national Engineering, who is working with local jurisdictions on locally driven solutions.
"Preservation of beaches for future generations has never succeeded in this country under exclusively local control," Pilkey wrote. "Local input is useful, but state control is a must if long-term problems and the interests of tourists, surfers, clammers, environmentalists and others who use the beaches a day at a time are to be considered."
Pilkey asserts that the state has backed away from its responsibilities to manage the beaches for the benefit of all of Washington's citizens. Pilkey says leaving these management decisions to local jurisdictions cannot be allowed to continue.
"The beaches of Southwest Washington are in danger," Pilkey writes. "For decades these beaches have been building seaward. Now the wolf is at the door; the beaches are beginning to erode. The state, especially the Department of Ecology, must begin beach management and to do so must wrest back control of beach management. This must be done if the next generation of beach users is to enjoy the same quality beaches as we do today."
In the paper, Pilkey also takes on three erosion "hot spots" on the Washington coast which he claims all now have solutions designed by Hosey and PIE -- a seawall at Ocean Shores, a jetty extension in Westport and the erosion project on Willapa Bay to save State Route 6.
Pilkey says all three projects represent "hard" solutions that try to go head to head with the ocean's natural processes. The Ocean Shores project -- a $500,000 effort to protect condominiums from erosion -- will lead to many more sea walls along the coast, Pilkey claims.
On the East Coast efforts of this type have protected buildings at the expense of beaches. Instead of building a seawall, Pilkey said that either the recently built condominiums should have been moved back or a beach replenishment effort should have been started to provide a soft buffer for wave action.
The state DOE should have prevented this, but instead actually facilitated the process, Pilkey claims.
DOE defends coastal projects
DOE's Southwest Regional Director Sue Mauermann disagrees.
Mauermann explained that the Ocean Shores project was approved under an emergency exemption from the state Shoreline Management Act. The city of Ocean Shores approved the shorelines exemption, but DOE did not exercise its right to appeal.
In fact the city coordinated with Ecology when the exemption was issued, Mauermann said.
Pilkey says this means DOE helped "the city and the property owners to overcome provisions in the law that would have prohibited the structure."
Mauermann disagrees, saying there is nothing in the law that would have prohibited the structure. Nor was the proposal brought forward by the city even developed by Hosey or PIE.
In fact, Hosey's firm was only involved after a DOE recommendation.
Mauermann said the city came to DOE with a different proposal for a bulkhead designed by a different company.
"We looked at it and thought the design would cause problems to the adjacent beaches and would not have had the effect the property owners wanted," Mauermann said. "We suggested to the city that they get good expertise to review the situation, and that's when they hired PIE."
Hosey came up with "wave bumpers" to reduce the impact of the waves on the beach. However, recently a neighbor of the project said he thinks the bumpers are increasing erosion on his property just as Pilkey says occurred on the East Coast.
Mauermann added that the Washington State Department of Fish and Wildlife and the state Parks Department also consulted on the Ocean Shores project. The structure was installed on short notice with the best information available. It is only authorized for two years.
"By that time, they need a long-term solution," she said. Without one they could be required to remove the structure.
Pilkey also writes that this will be the first of many such structures, installed on an emergency basis whenever private property is threatened. Mauermann disagreed.
"That structure is there to buy time for the public and local government and the state to figure out how bad the problem is and what the solution is," Mauermann said. "I don't think last winter we had the information to know what the right decision was. So we allowed a temporary structure to allow us to get more information and to provide adequate process for the public to get involved in the decision making."
Extending the jetty near Westport is another hard solution where a soft one would have been better, Pilkey claims.
Instead of extending the jetty to protect a sewage outfall from erosion, Pilkey recommended moving the outfall and allowing nature to take its course.
Pilkey blames Hosey for much of this, saying that he is financially motivated to come up with costly solutions and lobbies in Washington, D.C., for study of "immediate coastal issues."
Pilkey also says that Hosey's solutions are short-term only and cannot be expected to take into account the long-term picture of preservation of the beaches for future generations. Pilkey stresses there is no impropriety on Hosey's part, but he comes close and says there is a "contractor conflict" that is recognized by DOE staff. Pilkey notes that "the person who lobbies, designs, builds and coordinates, and identifies problems is the same person who makes the profit. It is not a healthy management situation."
But is that really the situation?
Hosey, for one, notes that the problems were identified before he was recruited and he went through a competitive bid process to get the jobs. Hosey also notes that his primary recommendations were not always followed, nor were they more expensive than the options proposed by Pilkey.
Take Willapa Bay, for example. To control erosion threatening State Route 6 and homes and cranberry bogs in the North Cove area, Hosey proposed digging a relief channel in the middle of the bay to allow the water exiting the bay to go though it rather than the north channel. This is considered a "soft" solution.
Pilkey's recommendation is to move the road at a cost of $30 to $40 million -- more than double the $12 million solution Hosey had proposed -- an action that would also make access to the already remote Shoalwater Bay Indian Reservation and Tokeland even more difficult.
Agencies insisted on 'hard fix' approach
However, Pilkey doesn't address Hosey's specific proposal. Rather he takes issue with the current proposal to build a groin perpendicular to the shoreline to protect the highway, then to sink long Kevlar bags filled with sand in the channel to divert the water south.
Ironically, this solution is one made up in response to demands made by federal and state agencies which Pilkey accuses of not having any oversight authority over Hosey's recommendations.
"Hosey's proposal was a soft fix and the regulatory agencies made him change it," said Pacific County Administrator Vyrle Hill. "I think the dear doctor, during his short sabbatical, picked up some inaccurate information."
In fact, Hosey is reluctant to defend the current proposal as the best option, and says "it's not the way we like to do business."
"We've been continuously modifying the original design to respond to numerous agencies and numerous engineering reviews and the project is substantially different from what was originally conceived," Hosey explained. "It is a lot more conservative and a lot more expensive."
It is also now a "hard fix," Hosey added.
The original project contained no rock, none of the hard surfaces that Pilkey says are so damaging to the dynamics of these types of coastlines.
"The original concept was to provide relief from erosion by shifting flow to the middle channel," Hosey said.
"The current proposal will, at best, shift the north channel to the south. It is a substantial change, and a little bit scary for us."
Pilkey said the preferred approach is to work with the hydrology and the natural processes, not against them.
Hosey agrees.
"With Willapa, the whole approach was to identify the forces of nature and work with those forces," Hosey said. "We consider the geo bags soft, not a hard fix. We were happy to move from building the plug out of pure sand to the geo tubes. It is both a risk reduction and money-saving technique. But all the rock on the beach, the revetment and the groin, were the result of state and federal agency requests. They work just fine and we support them technically, but that's not the way we like to do business."
However, Hosey said the structures have been designed to be environmentally sensitive as much as possible.
"I don't want to undermine the position or be negative," Hosey said "If we have to do them, we'll make sure they're done right. Do they increase the likelihood of success? That was true up to point where when it was decided (by WDOT and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers) to eliminate the relief channel. That added more risk rather than reducing risk."
Present design creates uncertainties
Hosey said without the relief channel, any hard structures will have to stand up to a lot more pressure from the fire hose-like channel as it empties into the ocean twice a day.
Additionally, the likelihood of a new channel forming to the south of the plug becomes very high without something to take up the flow from the plugged north channel.
As for Pilkey's assertion that Hosey operates without oversight on coastal projects, the engineer said "I wish that were true."
On the Westport project, Hosey was working for the city of Aberdeen when he answered a request for qualifications from the city. Westport asked Hosey and another firm to work together. The Willapa project came next when Pacific County sought advice from Westport. Again, PIE went through the competitive bid process before being selected.
When Ocean Shores contacted them about their services, Hosey said he didn't want to get involved at first because the firm already had plenty of work.
"It is not anything I had designs on, in some cases we resisted getting involved," Hosey said. "It's hard work, very hard work."
Hosey noted that Pilkey is not a coastal engineer and states in his paper that he did not perform a scientific evaluation or review of the projects. Hosey said that he's met Pilkey only once and was surprised he seemed to know so much about his firm.
"Each of the decisions that have been made on these coastal projects have been measured decisions by the communities," Hosey said. "They face very difficult trade-offs -- financing, the types of solutions and the environmental trade-offs -- all of these are very difficult decisions to make. I think it's very unprofessional for Pilkey to present simplistic positions and dismiss the huge amount of work and effort by the state, communities and federal government on these projects."
"Pilkey has been critical of my involvement and of actions I have been involved in, but he has never talked to me about them," said DOE regional assistant director Chuck Gale. "As far as I know he never contacted PIE, never looked at the engineering or discussed with staff why these things were being done. It's strictly an outside observer's opinion, and that's about the value I put on it."
Mauermann said that contrary to Pilkey's claims, DOE is actively involved in coastal erosion issues and in helping local communities figure out the best solutions for these problems. However, she notes, erosion on the Washington coast is a relatively new problem.
"Things have changed on the coast," Mauermann said. "The potential for property damage has increased.
Erosion is something we've not faced in the past. It's been a luxury in the past that our beaches have been accreting, with this change, there has not been a lot of time to think about the most appropriate thing to do."
Mauermann said the process of answering these coastal questions needs to start now. The hot spot issues such as Ocean Shores require a short-term answer, but at the same time, work needs to begin on a long-term plan for the future of Washington's beaches.
"DOE can't do it alone," Mauermann adds, "And the coastal communities can't do it alone either. We have to do it together."
Mauermann said DOE is in the process of talking with the coastal communities to put together a working group to answer the long-term questions and an interlocal agreement between the communities is already in place.
"We can't afford not to take a long-term view," she said. "But we also can't afford to ignore the short-term implications."