Steve Aceti: Double Agent

I found the following editorial in the Encinitas Historical Society's archives. It was published years ago by The Coast News. I wanted to link to it but I couldn't find it in their archives, so I typed it up.

It is written by Steve Aceti who runs the California Coastal Coalition (CalCoast). Now that it is clear that Aceti represents bluff-top property owners (like the Gordons on Neptune). I look at his editorial less as conciliatory and more as manipulative.

Seawall Opponents: Missing the Real Battle

I begin this column with its conclusion: I do not like seawalls, but an acknowledgment that we will continue to see them built until the real problem, the one that makes shore protection devices part of our life is solved- beach erosion.

Last week, the LA Times ran a front-page article condemning seawalls and the "wealthy home owners" who request them. The article trotted out a simplistic, not to mention false, idea that residential seawalls are causing our beaches to disappear.

Coastal homeowners are an easy target, but the fact is that much more damaging things have been done in the coastal zone which have led to the disappearance of beaches up and down the coast. Have you driven Highway 101 or PCH lately?

They are two of the biggest dams in the State in terms of keeping sand from the beaches the parallel. And they are not part of the problem that the state and federal projects have created. This is not just a private landowners issue, although that's the way the die has been cast.

[Blogger's Note: The sand researchers I've spoken too say it is a suburban myth that San Elijo and Batiquitos would be productive sand sources if the train and roads were removed. Those estuaries were/are sediment traps not sources. The data has been available longer than I think Steve has been in California.]

No one likes seawalls, but the issue is more complicated than it looks. Residential seawalls are more obvious than some of the other culprits in the case of the disappearing shoreline so they take the most heat. But you could remove all the homes from the coast and you still wouldn't have nice, sandy beaches.

[If attracting tourists to come to our beaches is Steve's goal he needs to be careful because even nice seawalls detract from the sense of place that brings people to visit Encinitas. Natural beauty, not concrete jungle, is a tourist-oriented asset.]

From a distance the Solana Beach seawalls
blend in and are better than the ones
in Leucadia, aesthetically. When closer tourists
still know they aren't natural.

Coastal highways, inland dams, concrete riverbeds, harbor jetties and the like are prevent millions of cubic yards of sand from getting to the beach. The amount of sand held back from a residential seawall is microscopic in comparison. In face of a severely eroding shore-line, property owners are seeking permits for seawalls and other structures.

[We would still have bluff erosion and cobblestones in some years if we returned the coast to its wild state. When sand levels are low bluff generated sediment grows increasingly important, even if small fraction of the total sand budget. I'm not advocating planned retreat, just pointing out that Aceti likes to play both sides.]

The opponents of seawalls prefer a strategy known as "planned retreat" allowing the shore and bluff to erode without intervention. For many activists, however, that also includes good intervention, such as sand nourishment. Planned retreat is one of many planning tools that should be used along the coast where it is appropriate. Some homes and public facilities are in the wrong place and they should be moved or removed. But, the ocean is a dynamic environment and a one-size-fits-all approach to at he challenges along the coast will not work.

The face-off between proponents of planned retreat and homeowners incites an expensive ware of the experts in a never-ending debate over the merits of shore protection devices. There are no winners in the fight and the current debate (like the Times article) avoids the real issue: how to rebuild the shoreline so that seawalls, revetments and the like are unnecessary.

[Maybe we decide to do that, but we should not be fooled into thinking we are "restoring nature's patterns", because what is being advocated is barracaiding the coast with sand levels beyond the wild condition and making the taxpayer pay for it.]

The answer is easy. Put sand on the beaches and maintain them, both by restoring the natural flow of sediment to the shore (to the extent possible) and through artificial means (see Santa Monica, Coronado, Mission Beach, Newport Beach, Huntington Beach). Wide, sandy beaches will go a long way toward solving the problem, which makes it surprising that many of the groups that oppose seawalls don't support beach nourishment legislation.

[Aceti acknowledges that those wide beaches are man-made and that they are a solution to his real problem. Sometimes he spins the issue as a lack of sand for tourists but his solutions are optimized for bluff-top property owners' and not the taxpayer, and definately not the most common user of the beach–surfers.]

It is difficult to implement a strategy of planned retreat in the urban setting which prevails along most to the shoreline in the central and other regions of California. It would be great to allow the shoreline to just take its course, except that one major piece of the equation has been missing: an ongoing source of sediment to replace the sand that has washed out to sea or in the ocean canyons.

[Wouldn't bluff retreat help increase the sand that tourists could sit on? Here is a quote about some recent research, "[The] results call into question the conventional wisdom that coastal bluffs don't contribute much to the beaches," said Scott Ashford, a professor of structural engineering at UCSD.]

Before the construction of federal marine navigation projects, dams, highways, mall and parking lots, there was an adequate supply of sand reaching the shore through natural means.

[Coastal bluff erosion has been happening for millions of years and is part of the wild system. We even have pictures of it happening early in this century. Aceti is advocating that man-made projects block a source of our beach's sand. Why the inconsistency? Don't get me wrong. I don't subscribe to the "return our ecosystems to the wild condition" ideology, because we can't and because we don't optimize the use of our natural resources that way. It is just that something about CalCoast doesn't add up. ]

Since this is no longer the case, allowing the shoreline to erode at will is like jumping out of a plane without a parachute.

[I think he means it is like building a house in a floodplain.]

We can't expect beaches to fight this fight without some ammo. Another issue: what do we do with all the public infrastructure that has been built along the coast?

[Steve Aceti has a good point about the public infrastructure. We should be consistent with the way we look at private and public assets. Just for fun, I'll point out that the State Parks hasn't been armoring their Encinitas property with seawalls.]

Until we get off the adversarial "us versus them" merry-go-round, we will never have the types of solutions that our counterparts on the East Coast have to maintain their shorelines.

[I am sure that is easy for Aceti to say that since he represents two sides. Aceti clearly does not represent the dominant users of our beaches–surfers.]