One coastal geologist's view of north county's State Route 105 Stabilization Project
DURHAM N.C.: Orrin Pilkey, a coastal geologist from Duke University who spent his sabbatical on the southwestern Washington coast one-and-a-half years ago and dipped his fingers into the region's erosion problems, which resulted in a white-paper, does not miss a breath when asked about north Pacific County's State Route 105 Stabilization Project.
"The project is nonsense, unadulterated nonsense," he said via telephone. "It would not have gone in on most states which are far more sophisticated and have had a lot more experience. It's a matter of experience.
"This giant groin in Washaway is a pure experiment. Nobody knows what's going to happen. Most of the guesses indicate there's no reason to think it is really going to work. It might. But I've never seen a structure of that magnitude that you don't pay a pretty stiff price for. The price is erosion somewhere else.
"As long as you got, one, a navigable channel where ships want to come in and out, or two, a shoreline lined with buildings, these changes create problems."
"It is exceptionably poor quality engineering in the sense that nobody knows what it is going to do.
"What Washington State has not come to and what we have to some extent on the East Coast we still have the problem to some extent is finally getting over this problem of two or three very important people being able to control policy by pointing out that their interests will be damaged.
"In North Carolina especially, we've gotten to the point where we recognize that the cries of beach front property owners are a very small number of people as compared to the number of people who use the beach.
"Each situation is different. I don't mean to imply North Carolina applies to the Washington State situation, but it does in the sense that Washington State allowed a few cranberry bog people to make huge inroads into the political system.
"But, I think, fundamentally, the problem is there is no experience and in all fairness to the folks in Washington State, who do you listen to but to your consulting engineer, and when your consulting engineer gives you the wrong information, you don't know it. 'You stick that thing out there and it will save the road.' It may save the road.
"What was needed to be done, a couple of things. First, you needed to look at this long-term. That's been the problem else where. You solve an immediate problem and 20 years later it creates a disaster.
"Second, another fundamental problem is shorelines need to be recognized as being flexible and dynamic, and things along shorelines should not be considered permanent. A highway especially. It is so easy to move a highway. Yes, it is expensive, but it is a lot cheaper in the long run than building that monstrosity.
"A word for the folks of North Carolina, just like for the folks of South Carolina, part of Rhode Island, Maine, Texas, and Oregon. They're just going to have let their houses fall in or move on, period.
"Yah, it's painful. It's not easy and probably the people in Washington State are saying, 'Give me a break. We can't move our house or let it fall in.
"In North Carolina they don't say that any more. They said that 20 years ago. We recognize that is the only way we are going to save our beach.
"Of course our beach has different priorities here in the warm water than yours do. I recognize that. You have clamming on yours, we don't. People swim by the millions and they don't on your beaches. Each state has a different priority for beaches.
"I don't mean to sound like we know it all here. We don't, but we've gone a lot further. We learned from New Jersey. New Jersey started out 200 years ago, 1801, with the first shoreline advertisement. So, they've had 125 years of hard stabilization in some places. We've learned from that and you can learn from us.
"Hawaii is doing the same with their beaches. They are starting to learn from the mainland. Forty percent of the beaches on Maui are gone because of seawalls. Thirty percent of the sandy beaches on Oahu are gone because of seawalls. All of a sudden it's occurring to them, 'We shouldn't be saving roads. What's more important roads or beaches?'
"I so much wish I recommended this, it is common sense that they (Washington State) impaneled a group of geologists and engineers from out of state, way out of state, to evaluate this project. A thing to having a single company's opinion on this is just, was not, appropriate.
"I was really distressed with PIE. I've never seen anything like that where a single company just controls everything. It even goes to Washington (DC.) and gets the money for itself. It's good for everybody but the environment and the people, ultimately. But for those who want a nicely engineered shoreline and a quick solution to their problem, PIE is the perfect solution. PIE is not good for the long-run. Boy's it's bad for the long-run.
"Even in science and engineering, a democratic system is important. I think it's really bad there are no checks and balances here. Nobody on the outside that's listening.
"Impaneling was very successful in North Carolina when there was a pair of jetties the Corps of Engineers wanted to build. The National Parks Service formed a panel. Nobody from North Carolina was on that panel. Nobody who knew anything about it was on the panel. It worked beautifully. They just in a gentle sort of way, they shot the Corps down and pointed out the errors in their reasoning, and more questions that had to be answered.
"Just because we recognize a seawall will destroy beaches, doesn't mean the people in Washington State have any idea. It took me a while to realize this. It makes perfect sense we have these buildings along the beach, we can't let them fall in. They have to go through the same painful process that we did.
"Basically, the most important process is passive with shoreline erosion. You put up a seawall because the beach is retreating. Whatever is causing the shoreline to retreat, it continues to retreat after you put up this solid, immobile whatever. It continues to retreat and backs up against whatever and the beach becomes narrower and eventually disappears.
"What makes it politically difficult and politically easy for the people in Washington State to mess-up badly is that it takes decades for this to happen.
"Some engineers claim that seawalls don't destroy beaches. During storms, seawalls may cause wave reflection. That's what we call active degradation as opposed to passive degradation. Active degradation is controversial, a legitimate question as to if it really occurs or not. So if engineers say seawalls don't destroy beaches, they maybe perfectly accurate because they are talking about active degradation.
"In the case of Ocean Shores, the seawall there, PIE said that the shore would move back ex number of feet and stabilize there. That was utter and complete nonsense. They used a mathematical model, a model we studied here. We think the model is nonsense and the conclusion how can you tell how far back the shore is going to move and they don't really even know why it is moving back. It's for that lack of sophistication that Washington State is being sold down the river.
"But I must say Washington State is not trying very hard. PIE and others like them are going to give the answers they want: distinct, solid answers with solutions and why worry about the future and so forth. Everybody has to take some of the blame. I really fear for future of the Washington shoreline.
"There are many ways of measuring erosion. If they take a profile and go well into the water, sometimes they measure the volume of sand on the entire profile down to a depth of so many feet. In that case, the shoreline, the wet/dry line of high tide may have gone way back into the woods, but they can still say it hasn't eroded.
"But it is nonsense, because what counts for people is not the volume of sand, but the beach at high or low tide the sub-aerial beach, the beach exposed to the air.
"That's a common problem. Sometimes engineers, they loose track of what's really important for people. People want to use the beach.
"The groin at Washaway is intended to interact with tidal flow, so it is a little different than a seawall. Small groins on a beach only interact with surf zone currents. There at Washaway you are dealing with something much bigger the surf zone and tidal currents. That's where they don't have they foggiest idea what will happen.
"I was very impressed with the sophistication of the geologists at the Washington State Geological Survey. These guys, if they could speak, they would have said virtually what I have said about the project. They felt it was just an experiment and didn't know what would happen. They knew what should not 'We don't want experiments on our shorelines.'
"They have the same intuition as I have, as many coastal geologist have, that over the long-run you pay a price, now or later, a bad price. You are not going to be happy.
"Engineers tend to be very skilled at figuring out a reason why it really did work. 'Maybe it looks like it didn't work, but actually if you consider the following.' They are very skilled at that. It's amazing to watch.
"Sadly, politicians will be educated about the time you have really messed the system up. That's the sad part of it. That's what has happened in Hawaii. Now the politicians are saying, 'Oh my god, look what seawalls are doing.' But it's too late."
This page created and maintained by Chehalis River Council
Send comments or questions to the: Chehalis River Council