CA - Firms preparing final pitch for Oceanside sand project that will preserve its shoreline
North County leaders meet with Orange County counterparts to compare notes
Three design teams competing for Oceanside’s sand replenishment and retention project will make their final pitch to the community Dec. 13, with hopes the city will choose one of the proposals in January.
Participants in the city’s Re:Beach competition will present their ideas refined with suggestions collected from the public at two previous community meetings. Nearly 250 people participated in the most recent workshop Oct. 17.
A jury of local leaders and regional experts will choose a preferred design after the December meeting, and the Oceanside City Council will make the final decision. Completion of the project will require approval from local, regional, state and federal agencies. Also needed is funding for construction, which could cost $50 million or more.
Meanwhile, mayors and staffers from seven coastal cities in Orange and San Diego counties have begun meeting to review the Oceanside sand project and others that are underway or planned in the region.
Oceanside hosted the first so-called C7 meeting Oct. 26 with representatives of Dana Point, San Clemente,
Oceanside, Carlsbad, Encinitas, Solana Beach and Del Mar, said Jayme Timberlake, Oceanside’s coastal zone administrator on Thursday.
“The overall intention of the meeting was to see if there was any overlap with projects that are slated to begin in the next few years, and to see what kinds of funding hurdles we may be collectively experiencing while trying to bring forth these larger coastal projects,” Timberlake said.
No date was set for the next meeting, she said, but it probably will be after the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers begins its Coastal Storm Damage Reduction Project to widen beaches in Encinitas and Solana Beach later this fall. The federal project has been in development for more than 20 years and will take sand dredged offshore near San Clemente periodically over the next 50 years.
Another possibility is a third regional replenishment project by the San Diego Association of Governments, the regional planning agency. SANDAG completed regional projects in 2001 and 2012, taking sand from nearby offshore deposits and placing it along the coast at sites from Imperial Beach to Oceanside.
