Dredging prep work begins on Oceanside beach

By: PAUL SISSON - Staff Writer
Should avoid busy summer season | Monday, March 17, 2008 11:07 PM PDT ∞

OCEANSIDE -- In an effort to prevent last year's August dredging do-over, crews are already preparing to start annual harbor dredging this spring.

Yellow earth-moving equipment is working this week on the beach just south of the North Coast Village condominium complex to lay the groundwork for dredge pipes that will soon carry about 180,000 cubic yards of sand south past the Oceanside Municipal Pier and deposit it on the beach just west to Tyson Street Park.

Ray Duncan, lifeguard manager of the city's Harbor and Beaches Department, said Monday that he worked with the Army Corps of Engineers to make sure that the dredging would finish before Memorial Day, after a remedial dredging effort in 2007 disrupted beach traffic in August, when thousands of tourists flock to the coast.

"Last summer, it was just ruthless with the complaints we were getting about the pipes on the beach," Duncan said. "We wanted to make sure that never happens again."

Annual dredging is necessary because waves gradually wash sand inside the harbor, causing it to grow ever more shallow. Shallow conditions can become dangerous for small craft if waves begin breaking inside the harbor channel.

In December 2002, a 42-year-old Apple Valley man drowned when his 12-foot aluminum skiff was hit by a winter wave in the harbor entrance during shallow conditions.

During the next few weeks, a crew will install large steel and plastic pipes along the shoreline, Duncan said. A suction dredge, the same one that has slurped sand from the harbor bottom in previous years, will begin work in early April.

Project manager Keith Ayer, of the Army Corps of Engineers, said Monday that the project would cost about $2 million. The bill will be split evenly between the Corps and the U.S. Navy, which uses the harbor for boat access to neighboring Camp Pendleton.

Last year a mechanical dredge scooped sand from the harbor bottom, dumping it in a split-bottom scow, or flat-bottomed boat, that released its payload just off shore. Ayer said that method worked well inside the harbor, but ran into trouble in the harbor's entrance and just outside the harbor mouth.

"This is one of our more high-wave climate harbors," Ayer said. "When you get out into the entrance, you're pretty vulnerable; there's no breakwater protecting you."

The project manager said that, last year, waves kept smashing the scow against the side of the dredging barge, forcing workers to give up before the entire harbor mouth was clear. A suction dredge, by comparison, does not have those problems because the sand it removes is pumped to shore.

-- Contact staff writer Paul Sisson at (760) 901-4087 or psisson@nctimes.com.

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