The Seattle Times, Today's News: 11/9/97
Ocean creeping toward homes
Sunday, Nov. 9, 1997
Ocean creeping toward homes
by Jim Simon
Seattle Times staff reporter

OCEAN SHORES, Grays Harbor County - This city's most valuable land, beach property that has grown by hundreds of acres this century as the ocean deposited sand and sediment, is also its most vulnerable.

In the past five years, big chunks of the beaches and dunes fronting Ocean Shores' priciest homes and condominiums have vanished in winter storms. And a city-funded study suggests that if wave erosion continues unchecked, at least 19 homes or condos might be swallowed by the sea in the next 25 years.

Now a top Ocean Shores official suggests what sounds like heresy for a place literally founded on the idea of marketing beachfront real estate: Consider letting nature take its course.

"We're seriously looking at the idea of not allowing any engineering out there. There are worries that anything we do, will give people a false sense of security," says Sue Patnude, Ocean Shores community-development director, who heads a committee of local and state officials studying the erosion.

"It may make a lot more sense to abandon those buildings and buy people out."

The Ocean Shores City Council is considering its options at a time when traditional engineering solutions for holding back the ocean, such as building bulkheads or sea walls, have become controversial.

Councilman Fred Winge thinks a hands-off approach to beach management, while gaining support among many experts and some public officials, would meet stiff resistance in a town whose lifeblood is tourists and retirees.

"I don't think it's realistic to leave it to nature," said Winge, whose own condo is in the erosion zone. "I think many people would start taking their own steps to protect their property. And then you've got a real disaster."

Harry Hosey, head of Edmonds-based Pacific International Engineering, has given the city several engineering options: Build a giant sea wall, construct less intrusive rock "wave bumpers" to dissipate wave energy, or construct a new dune system farther back from the water and relocate the beachside homes.

The alternative preferred by Winge and many others is "beach nourishment." That would require pumping in 100,000 cubic yards of fresh sand yearly to replenish the beach.

But beach nourishment, while considered an environmentally benign solution, has problems. For one, in the first few years, sand pumped in every summer would wash away each winter, and the city has no guaranteed source of sand.

Whatever is decided, federal and state taxpayers will almost certainly be asked to pick up the tab to protect beach residents. For example, it's estimated that beach nourishment would cost $31 million to $39 million over the next 20 years, far exceeding the resources of a city with an annual operating budget of about $7 million.

The land where the city's most vulnerable homes are perched literally didn't exist a century ago.

The beaches and dune systems were created from sediment and sand that once flushed down the Columbia River in annual floods. The new land was sold by the state to real-estate developers in the 1950s and became part of Ocean Shores when the city incorporated in 1971.

Some scientists suspect that wave erosion at Ocean Shores and other Southwestern Washington beaches is evidence of major changes in the coastal ecology. Jim Phipps, a marine geologist at Grays Harbor Community College, believes many beaches have stopped "accreting," or growing.

His theory is that the 14 dams on the Columbia River have choked off sediment flow reaching the beaches. Others believe that a longtime, natural cycle of growth is simply winding down. Whatever the cause, the implications are significant.

"We've long based our policies, our zoning and our engineering on a perception that our beaches are accreting," says Phipps. "When things start changing on the beach, we're in the position of telling people what their grandfather did with his property, and what their father did with his property, can't be done anymore."

At this point, Ocean Shores isn't sure what to tell its citizens.

Banks have withdrawn financing for one condo project in the erosion zone. The city now warns those seeking building permits about erosion threats.

And there is still controversy about the "wave bumpers" that Hosey designed last year, though they are widely credited with saving the 6-year-old Brisas Del Mar Condominiums.

The twin bumpers are 900-foot-long piles of low-lying rock, intended to dissipate wave energy before water reaches the dunes. They are supposed to be removed when the city chooses a permanent erosion strategy.

Just north of the wave bumpers, Gary Austin suspects that what saved his neighbors' homes may have put his own three-story dream house in jeopardy.

He says erosion in front of his house worsened last winter, after the bumpers were installed, taking out nearly 20 feet of dunes that separate his property from the water.

Hosey contends the bumpers had no effect on Austin's land. But Patnude said Austin's concerns should be a caution light for the city: "It says to me if we start putting rock and other structures on the beach, we'll never stop."
Back to Estuary Index Page
Back to Whats New Index Page
Back to Chehalis River Council Index Page
Grays Harbor County Issues Page