The spigot is on, spitting sand dredged up from the ocean floor out through large pipes onto the Surfside beach where trucks then spread out the grains, growing the shrinking shoreline.
After years of waiting, some Orange County beaches are about to get much sandier.
Heavy machinery and equipment set up on the beach at Surfside in north Orange County have started in on a much-awaited replenishment project that will pipe in an estimated 1.1 million cubic yards of sand dredged offshore by ships.
It has been 14 years since the last project of its kind, an Army Corps of Engineers-led effort that dates back to the 1960s to mitigate for the impact to the beach created when harbors and storm channels were built. Shrinking beaches have allowed ocean water to threaten parking lots, streets and other infrastructure.
Though it was supposed to happen every five to seven years, federal funding delays had shelved the project since 2009. It received $23 million in the latest federal budget go around.
The ocean’s swells and currents are expected to help spread the sand grains toward the south, to deposit onto Huntington Beach and Newport Beach.
Newport Beach, as part of this project, is also getting a shot of 100,000 cubic yards of sand, to be plucked from the Santa Ana River and placed between the rock groin jetties, which were built in the ’60s to protect homes against the battering sea.
That project also got underway last week, with orange netting set up where truck started hauling sand to be deposited.
Equipment has also been set up in San Clemente to prepare for a similar sand replenishment project two-decades in the making. That work, expected to begin early this month, will put an estimated 250,000 cubic yards worth of sand between T-Street and Linda Lane, enough to fill two football fields, in coming months.
That $14 million project will scoop sand up from offshore in Oceanside, to be hauled to San Clemente, then piped onto the beach. The pipes were…
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