Comparison with the retreating bluff south of the Distillery is apples and oranges for the specific, multiple known forces working the beach and bluffs.
The beach and retreating bluffs at any given location are dynamically linked. Focus on a simple rate of erosion for the bluffs is, in the first place, specious because it does not consider the whole system at a location like the cove. The direction storm waves come in is a factor, and so is the height of the storm surge. The tides on which the storm waves arrive is another factor. The near offshore seafloor (steepness, composition, etc.) and rock formations (reefs, etc., that provide anything from protection of some spots to channeling wave energy at others)modify the waves at any given location, as surfers will testify. The season--winter when sand is pulled off most of our beaches beaches by higher than average wave energies or summer when sand piles up on most local beaches is another factor. The sand sources for the two beaches below the bluffs mentioned for comparison are different, leading to different average widths of the beaches, and, therefore, different degrees of protection of the base of the bluffs by beaches. With different percentages of sand from the basic three sources making up the two beaches, things like average grain size and grain surface contour of the sand on the beaches may differ, and that will contribute to yet other natural differences between beaches in any attempt at comparison of bluff/beach systems. Saturation of the bluffs with water from above and from drainage on the land is different for the two locations due to at least some differing sources of water for saturation--and the mass of the bluff adds into this important aspect of bluff failure, being greater on the high bluffs south of the Distillery than for the lower bluffs of the cove. So, on the basis of these factors and more that are well understood, the two bluffs would have to be “calibrated” to one another over a broad range of physical considerations before any comparison could be made.
And avoiding consideration of beach loss due to bluff armoring is disingenuous.
Carl May
It’s a naturally retreating bluff in that cove. Eighty-five percent of the California coastline is retreating (eroding). The question is not whether or not the bluff is eroding. It is about the changed rate and location of erosion due to armoring.
Beaches are not lost because bluffs retreat. In fact, if their sand sources persist, they maintain their width and follow the bluff. One source of beach sand on our coast, by the way, is bluff erosion. While it lasts, armoring starves the beach of the sand that would have come from its stretch of bluff. Also, more sand is lost than in natural conditions because some of the wave energy that hits the rip-rap is reflected back in greater amounts and pulls more sand off the beach in that location.
So the house with the rip-rap at Fitzgerald is a triple whammy for the beach in its immediate vicinity: the beach cannot follow the bluff and maintain its natural width, the beach is starved of the sand that the retreating bluff would have provided, and more sand is removed from the beach by reflected waves.
Of course, these are just some of the negative impacts at the location of the armoring and do not address negative impacts on neighboring properties or the contribution to the cumulative negative impacts on the entire cove from bluff armoring.
But has anyone mentioned the initial loss of beach in the location of the armoring? This is the loss due to the footprint of the rip-rap on a public beach. All in all, each instance of rip-rap armoring in the cove in question constitutes an uncompensated taking of public property by private property owners. This in a marine reserve where natural conditions are supposed to be preserved.
Carl May
Leonard,
Just musing, but do you suppose the supes decision to allow relatively little development on the Burnham Strip in the LCP revision is mostly about driving another nail in the coffin of the Harbor District (which pleaded for greater development options on the strip as they have used the developable value of their property to collateralize a big loan)?
Or were they just tossing a crumb to those who want the strip open to preserve Burnham’s plan while they further overburden the community with development elsewhere?
Carl May
Lost your library card? Read the few pages here on impacts (beginning on page 13) to see brief mention of most of the major and varying factors that need to be considered for a location before placing artificial structures on retreating bluffs:
Carl May
The basic information is out there for folks to get past step 1 in their knowledge. Bob and Kevin found sources, others can too.
We are talking about interacting natural forces observable to all. To suggest that government is responsible for a private landowner’s mistake on a bluff moves responsibility one or two steps down the line from the origin of the mistake. To suggest that government should pay for extending a type of damage already done and permitted is nothing less than a con job to get we taxpayers to pay to extend or mitigate the mistakes of private landowners. To suggest that something is not stupid because government stupidly permitted a stupid activity makes no sense at all. It is not the taxpaying public’s responsibility to correct the mistakes of private property owners whether or not the mistake was permitted.
Welfare for beach wreckers in the name of property “protection,” what a concept.
Carl May
I check in to see if anyone has learned anything about beach sand and associated bluffs that would allow them to make sensible statements rather than simple-minded ones that defy, at least in part, basic geological knowledge.
In “geological knowledge” I include the natural phenomena studied and characterized by the field of geology, not the contrivances rent-a-geologists might come up with to try to ameliorate the forces of nature over the short term for a particular piece of property in service of their employer and in full knowledge the amelioration--bluff armoring in this case--will harm the property of neighbors and harm public property. That is simply paid service to someone who wishes to overwhelm natural conditions by artificial means, and to heck with the consequences to nature and other people.
Yes, it is stupid, destructive, and irresponsible to knowingly engage in activities that harm the property of others and defy the natural condition of an area that is supposed to be preserved (features of California coast covered by the Coastal Act, natural features of a publicly owned marine reserve, etc.).
Most ridiculous of all is the notion that everything in a location has as its highest purpose the appeasement of the arbitrary whims of private property owners, no matter how ignorant they may be of the impacts of their mistakes and no matter how greedy the people selling to them to get a profit or commission. To suggest that degradation of the very natural features that make the coast attractive (even to many who do not understand the very real values of its natural assets) in service of reshaping by artificial means the physical condition of a piece of property to serve an arrogant or ignorant owner is to suggest that the negative environmental impacts of one’s whims should be discounted and that onje’s arbitrary desires should take precedence over everything and everyone else’s interests and that everyone else is at fault for not getting in on the stupidity of building on something like a retreating bluff and for not causing their own damage.
Hey, it’s also stupid to build in flood plains, on landslides, on soft substrate in seismically active areas, and so forth. Why blame the messenger for someone’s failure to deal with the realities of their world in a responsible manner?
When it comes to beach sand beyond this particular location, there are other negative impacts and stupidities due to past mistakes with development on the midcoast. Those who eventually decide to educate themselves on the geologic basics to the degree that they understand them will easily recognize these.
Carl May
Checking in again. I see all are still avoiding learning the basic interacting conditions and forces involved in sandy beach dynamics.
Of course it’s stupid to build on a retreating bluff, and anyone who would sell a geologically ignorant person such a piece of property with any expectation of permanence is irresponsible.
Of course bluff armoring redirects erosive forces and deprives the beach of one of its sources of sand.
Of course waves that reach bluffs erode them. But do you know that a big factor in this is the degree of saturation of the bluff material with water?
Of course water moves sediment, including the size range of particles we refer to as “sand.” Waves, streams, runoff from artificial hardscaping, etc.
These are just bits of the overall scene for the cove in question and for all sandy beaches. The picture is not clarified at all by simple assertions that ignore most of what is going on.
Carl May
Just checking in. Still no awareness of the dynamic geologic basics of the origins of beach sand and the relationship of that sand to all the conditions and forces influencing the beach to make it what it is.
Carl May
Dear folks,
Some of you are still avoiding a basic self-education on beaches, bluffs, and sand. What is going on at the beach in question (which, as a biologist by education, I have been visiting since I moved here in 1974 as part of perambulations in the marine reserve) is not what would be going on without the armoring of the bluffs and other artificial influences (some of which I alluded to in the questions I previously posted as ones that people could have in mind as they pursued the understanding that is to be had easily by those who desire to get beyond shooting from the hip or making specious prouncements from an uninformed standpoint). How’s that for a sentence?
Carl May
Please, folks, just learn the geologic basics of sandy beaches. There’s a world of easy understanding out there to be tapped into and end your flailing at local subject matter. It’s only partly book an school learning. What drives it home is what you can see, verify, and figure out for yourself once you have an idea what is going on with physical conditions and forces.
My amazement concerns how little long-time local residents bother to learn about the area in which they live, how little they observe, how seldom they actually get out into their surroundings with an informed, analytical eye. It shows up constantly in failures of half-cocked local endeavors, beach and bluff damage from ill-advised artificial bluff armoring being just one example. (This is not to say much local damage to the environment and our quality of life is not also done quite consciously and knowingly for monetary gain.)
Carl May
The lack of an awareness of even basic geology for our area always amazes me. The lack of awareness of the negative effects of some kinds of development and other artificial activity in light of well-known geological factors compounds my amazement.
Sandy beaches are dynamic areas, in constant change due to a variety of interacting physical conditions and forces. It does not take years of technical education to get the basics distilled for us by coastal geologists. What are the kinds of beaches? On what kinds of shorelines are beaches found? What is sand? Where does the sand on beaches come from? How does the sand on beaches change with the interacting forces of seasons, storms, tides, waves, winds, currents, runoff from the land, etc.? How do beaches change with artificial impacts from impoundments on streams and rivers, hardscaping of coastal watersheds, bluff armoring, breakwaters and beach structures like groins, introduced vegetation, trampling and vehicles on beaches, blufftop development, etc.? What kinds of natural organisms live in and on beaches? These matters are all well understood in principle and are fortified with extensive examples.
The kinds of negative impacts caused by bluff armoring such as rip-rap and sea walls are not controversial. The impacts have been observed in dozens, even hundreds of varying situations on the California coast and in thousands of locations elsewhere. Anyone who walks beaches on the West coast of North America soon builds empirical knowledge of what geologists have studied and classified. The exact impacts of bluff armoring on any given beach will depend on the morphology of the coastline and the multiple forces in play at that location, but they are never positive in terms of retaining natural beach conditions, including the beach’s changing complement of sand. Changes to adjacent unarmored bluff due to bluff armoring are also well-documented and never positive in terms of retaining the natural rate of bluff erosion.
There is no mystery about the mistakes made by development and armoring on the soft bluffs of the midcoast. The negative impacts are clear. To continue such damaging behavior is irresponsible to the public that owns the shoreline up to the mean high tide line, to shoreline ecosystems, to taxpayers who are sometimes called on to bail out the mistakes, and to naive buyers of beautiful blufftop property.
Leonard, if you want an oceanside view house, only buy on hard, solid (not fractured by seismic activity) rock extending all the way into the ocean. There are good reasons why rocky points stick out farther into the ocean than low shorelines with dunes or soft bluffs. You won’t have a beach below your house unless it is a very small and probably inaccessible pocket beach, but that’s what one gives up for a relatively stable place adjacent to the ocean.
Carl May
The long history of rip-rap on the California coast is that it damages both bluffs and beach. Where rip-rap and other shoreline armoring go in, beach is lost--sometimes entirely. Where rip-rap and other armoring go in to “protect” a particular property, property to either side usually experiences faster bluff erosion. This is certainly the case with the bluff above bedrock in every armoring location on the midcoast. I leave doubters to consult ther geology texts for the basic natural processes involved with beach sand and bluff erosion.
So, neither beach nor land is “protected” by rip-rap. Only development where development was unwise in the first place gets a short-term reprieve at the expense of beach and neighboring land. People unable to live with the consequences of their ignorance extend problems by trying to preserve their artificial mistakes. Something stupid permitted by government during ignorant flailing at a problem is still stupid.
Basic geology has some simple lessons on where to develop, such as don’t build in a flood plain if you don’t want to get flooded. Another is don’t build on a retreating coastal bluff if you don’t want to lose your building to natural coastal erosion. Making a bad situation worse with bluff armoring is not a way to live comfortably or economically with natural forces that always bat last.
Carl May
Question: What notable lives in the house with the rip-rap?
The full arc of this cove has long been a location for damaging effects of several kinds of bluff armoring associated with individual properties. Another question: Why should everyone have their natural environment degraded by a few who were crazy enough to build or buy developed properties on soft, retreating ocean bluffs? This questin will be repeated more frequently as sea level rises and we get more intense storms.
Carl May
Who better to say “no” to damaging changes to local environments and communities than the people who live in them. Being called a “NIMBY” by developers should be taken as an appellation of honor by local people seeking authority over their own lives.
People need to read *all* of Proposition 90. Hint: the Supreme-Court-approved abuse of eminent domain that allows government to take property from one private entity to give to another private entity is being used as a stalking horse for something else. One should never trust complicated, multi-part ballot initiatives in California based on what is emphasized in their campaigns.
Carl May
Um, Janet, you know Ph.D. is also commonly taken to mean “Piled higher, Deeper,” following in progression from B.S. and M.S. degrees below it. Can we really be certain what Barry had in mind when he keyboarded those three letters? Maybe a psychologist would have insight, ergo the ire?
Heck, any school kid can see that a bigger pipe coming into an area coveted by developers but already using water in quantities that are not locally sustainable is an expansion of infrastructure that will be growth-inducing--even with the required usage restrictions that are too trivial for a Ph.D. to even acknowledge. All the the approval babble is nothing more than hacking about with semantic machetes until a myth people will buy is carved out and the desired path cleared.
Carl May
Apparently the worsening situation on the midcoast, including HMB, through growth following every infrastructure expansion for the past thirty years is not reality to some who hold their growth ethic and head-n-the-sand myths closely.
Every major intersection in HMB “improved” with lights, more lanes, restriping, etc., over the past twenty years. Result: congestion worse than before.
Major new intersections with additional lanes and lights at Frenchman’s Creek and Coronado. Result: new major congestion points on Highway 1; residents of northern midcoast communities increasingly go north to Pacifica for shopping.
Lower speed limits on Highway 1. Result: see preceding paragraph.
Third middle lane for turns added through Moss Beach and Montara. Result: multiple cars in turn lanes back up into traffic lanes; use of middle lane confusing to drivers so lane is avoided and drivers turn directly into traffic lanes anyway; continuing accidents at highway intersections.
SAM plant prematurely expanded to full capacity (rather than in the incremental steps originally designed for the new plant). Result: plant, which was not the cause of infiltration during storms, still overloaded during big weather events.
Hardscaping of the coastal terrace increased with every additional bit of pavement, roof, etc. Results: removal of vegetation needed to hold soil and water; runoff in brief pulses that overloads and erodes streams during storms but then causes streams that had water in them year-round to go dry due to water not being held in natural landscape; erosion of slopes in developed areas; pollution of waters due to chemicals picked up in runoff; reduction of water filtering down to recharge aquifers, etc.
Good ag land zoned for new development and infrastructure in city and county LCPs that could be used for crops. Result: reduction in food and other agricultural production; reduction of ag jobs and productivity; pressure to develop ag to less productive land causing unnecessary damage to such land; provision of excuse to give up ag for the “final crop.”
Development of new shopping centers peripheral to downtown HMB. Result: loss or move out of downtown of retail businesses providing for everyday needs of populace; replacement of locally-owned businesses by out-of-town corporations or corporate franchises; hardscaping of large areas that is then heavily trafficed with vehicles and their associated problems.
And that’s just for starters.
Carl May
If one calls all the additional accidents, deaths, excuses for development, greater delays and congestion, and more hardscaping that have hammered the coastside with numerous highway infrastructure expansions since the slide outage of ‘82-’83 not based on fact--well that is to be expected from a faction basing its desires on repeatedly failed myths.
Due to population/driver growth, as many drivers must go through the enlarged and improved intersections of HMB and the midcoast when the slide is open today as the number that had to go through when the slide was closed in the winter of ‘82-’83. With all the infrastructure expansions (largely at intersections and in water and wastewater systems) of the past 20 years, we now have a situation worse than back then thanks to the ongoing induced and permitted population growth. Ever is it so--and obvious to any who look at the numbers and the plain evidence of lost values in their surroundings. There are no facts to demonstrate success--only failure of local closely held growth myths.
The contrived myth that more degradation and growth is needed to fix past destruction and growth has no local support--no history of success unless environmental wipeout, an artificially inflated and ever-increasing cost of life’s necessities, wipeout of natural life-support systems and amenities, and increased frustration and waste of time due to overwhelmed systems (both artificial and natural) is considered “success.” The record of local highway improvements and expansion of water and sewer systems is failure, thanks to the growth that always overwhelms infrastructure. Without prior caps on population and development, infrastructure improvements are a fools game as far as improving any situation goes. And even then any expanded infrastructure must be designed so as not to increase damage due to an already overdeveloped coastside.
The record of failure of those lost in homage to the growth ethic has played out dozens of times on the coastside and tens of thousands of times in California since WWII. So many places have been destroyed with unsustainable urbanization that one wonders why more of the same is continually advocated for the coastside when so many options for living in a thoroughly degraded environment are available elsewhere. That’s a rhetorical musing, of course, because we well know the ignorance of some easily-led, memory-challenged segments of the public and self-serving motivations of the few individuals who actually benefit from overdevelopment.
Carl May
Myths are real, especially those which have been behind repeated failures in the past when suggestions based on them have been tried? Such as the thoroughly discredited myth that a little more damaging, growth-inducing infrastructure is all that is needed to solve traffic and water problems?
Carl May
Very weird, these local development discussions. They often seem to be conducted by people who got here yesterday, have read no background material on their areas of concern, have no idea how the overdeveloped coastside got to be how it is, are unaware of faulty planning decisions that were made repeatedly over the years by county and HMB governments, do not know the actual authority of various government sectors and bureaucracies in play and how citizens interact with those offices (some truly ignorant statements about the Coastal Act, Coastal Commission, and LCP’s--what they do and do not address). How can so many concerned with fostering further overdevelopment (in the face of already depleted resources and overbuilt infrastructure) lack the ability to look outside their windows and count and measure things essential to living here? (Elected politicians get a free ride from me on such matters because they *never* address what exists in favor of machinations that serve whatever elites put them in place.)
Superficial “solutions” are repeatedly suggested that have already been tried in multiple versions and failed multiple times (the hackneyed “expand infrastructure” angle, for example). Empirical data and recorded recent history is dismissed as “opinion” in favor of myths with no real-world support and proposals with established records of failure.
So now a PAC concerned with coastal matters that picks up the acronym LCP is subject to mischaracterization as to what it represents, a charge that bursts off in all directions into a fractured rant on alleged motives and non-activities of “environmentalists.” Huh? Since when is a PAC supposed to be a shadow government? A lot may be said about all the kinds of so-called “environmentalism” that are hypocritical and actually advocate damage to the natural environment, so it amazes that all such examples are missed entirely by vocal local pro-urbanization, pro-congestion, pro-degradation, pro-spending wags. And why are the pro-overdevelopment PACs not subjected to equal and objective scrutiny--when did they ever support anything that actually benefitted the citizens of the coastside over the past 20 years?
Carl May
When ones sees noted factual shortages and trends that have already pushed the coastside beyond sustainability called “opinion,” one wonder if those who would assume the mantle of reason care anything about the numbers, the quantities, the empirical condition of our place. Using terms like “smart growth” and “sustainability” for their contemporary cachet and to frame convenient arguments without knowing their meanings and implications gives lie to the assertions of facile word manipulators.
Those of us who point out the foibles of persons who depend on myth and magic rather than supported, established principles and numbers are frequently mischaracterized. We are veterans of ages of self-serving assaults from dingleberries in such as the “wise use” movement. We know that even though numbers of people using available resources and natural subsidies at observable rates are at the heart of what calculations of sustainability are all about, some are so dedicated to superficial popular myth and narrow, short-term political and economic motives as to talk about any consideration of population in the pejorative.
Too bad, because by closing their eyes and stomping their feet in favor of greater degradation of a coastside already overstressed in a number of ways, the dedicated preservers of myth and magic as the determining factors in our local living conditions only abet the worsening of the area in terms of infrastructure, appeal to visitors, cost of life’s necessities (food, water, shelter, transportation, etc.) for residents, and so on. The longer one keeps one’s head in the sand or misleads others for personal gain, the more resources (some nonrenewable) and natural life support systems are destroyed and the more costly and time-consuming any eventual attempts to reverse our now-worsening multitude of problems on the midcoast due to overuse and abuse of what our limited geography provides.
Getting worse, even at what is claimed to be a “smart” rate and style, is never a reasonable route to getting better. People unwilling to recognize their impacts, face their logical responsibilities, and cap an obviously excess population now will always have the same unjustified arguments for not capping an even more overgrown and unsupportable population in the future. When it comes to declining environments and life support systems, there is never a better time than the present to get real.
Carl May
Cairns in Princeton Harbor?, Aug 29 7:51pm comment by Kevin J. Lansing, Deb, it seems you may have uncovered something of extreme archeological importance: "The Druids taught the existence of one god,…
MWSD residents invited to 50th anniversary celebration, Sunday, Aug 29 4:28pm comment by Paul Perkovic, Montara Water and Sanitary District's 50th Plus 5th Anniversary Celebration was a tremendous success, thanks to the many community residents…
Editorial: Senator Yee's SB863 gets it right, Aug 29 3:11pm comment by Sofia Freer, Barry thanks for a great editorial. My husband and I posted a message on Senator Yee's website on Aug. 21…
Editorial: Senator Yee's SB863 gets it right, Aug 28 9:21pm comment by Kevin J. Lansing, Many thanks to Senator Yee. It is instructive to contrast Senator Yee's efforts to strike a compromise bill that addresses…
Editorial: Senator Yee's SB863 gets it right, Aug 28 2:25pm comment by Steven Hyman, Glad to hear that the appraisal issue was anticipated. Everybody would sure hate to have this blow up in our…
Editorial: Senator Yee's SB863 gets it right, Aug 28 1:49pm comment by Mike Ferreira, It might be wiser to read the bill before popping off. It's for "acguisition and associated park and trail development"…
Editorial: Senator Yee's SB863 gets it right, Aug 28 1:15pm comment by Steven Hyman, I too am glad that this long running nightmare may be coming to an end. Although, as you all know,…
Overnight: Patchy fog. Otherwise, cloudy, with a low around 53. WSW wind between 7 and 9 mph.
Saturday: Patchy fog before 11am. Otherwise, cloudy, then gradually becoming mostly sunny, with a high near 63. West wind between 9 and 17 mph.
Saturday Night: Patchy fog after 11pm. Otherwise, increasing clouds, with a low around 53. WNW wind between 16 and 18 mph, with gusts as high as 22 mph.
Sunday: Patchy fog before 11am. Otherwise, cloudy through mid morning, then gradual clearing, with a high near 62. Breezy, with a NW wind between 18 and 23 mph.
Sunday Night: Mostly clear, with a low around 52. Breezy, with a NW wind between 17 and 23 mph, with gusts as high as 29 mph.
Labor Day: Sunny, with a high near 69.
Monday Night: Clear, with a low around 54.
Tuesday: Sunny, with a high near 69.
Tuesday Night: Patchy fog after 11pm. Otherwise, partly cloudy, with a low around 54.
Wednesday: Patchy fog before 11am. Otherwise, mostly sunny, with a high near 70.
Wednesday Night: Mostly cloudy, with a low around 55.
Thursday: Mostly sunny, with a high near 71.
Thursday Night: Partly cloudy, with a low around 54.
Friday: Mostly sunny, with a high near 69.
PFC: 6:30pm; AFD: 10:45pm
