Guardian: "A California town’s beaches are washing away. Can its residents turn the tide?" by Lois Beckett.
"Rapid coastal erosion threatens coastal homes + economies, and as Super El Niño rounds the corner, a town is reckoning with the reality of climate crisis." Beach erosion has become a crisis all along the southern California shoreline this year, with towns from Dana Point + Long Beach to Malibu sustaining dramatic damage.
"San Clemente is where the major regional train line, which carries $1 B in freight a year + is the nation’s second-busiest passenger line, runs right along the edge of the Pacific Ocean." Severe waves + high tides during big storms at the beginning of September forced the repeated closure of the tracks. “We’re in for a run of pretty exceptional erosion events if this Super El Niño develops as it’s expected to,” said Sean Vitousek, an oceanographer with the US Geological Survey (USGS).
"As the potentially historic El Niño season overlaps with a massive surge of warm water called a Kelvin wave, residents worry it will leave coastal infrastructure in pieces, beachfront properties leveled and more beaches carved away to crumbling slivers of gravel + bare rock." After nearly a century of reliable service, the coastal rail line has been shut down 7 times since 2021 for repairs after landslides + surging tides on stretches of the line in San Clemente + further south down the coast.
Environmentalists + some coastal experts say the only viable long-term strategy for the California shoreline is “managed retreat.”
“Most people don’t want to be managed, and most people don’t want to retreat,” said Griggs, the coastline expert. But, he added, “they’re not going to have a choice at some point.”
My wife + I have a dog in this fight, as we have spent time on many beaches up + down the West Coast. And one yr a very romantic overnight Amtrak trip to get to the Indian Wells tennis tournament. A trip we plan to repeat—assuming the track is open.
If we could just get the fossil fuel folks off our back, we could begin to fix this problem.
