The revival of the beach in twentieth-century Los Angeles | Hacker News Reader

The revival of the beach in twentieth-century Los Angeles

bbc.com

58 pointsThevet25 comments

A significant fraction of the California coastline is engineered like this. In San Diego all the way up through Carlsbad and Oceanside they dredge up sand every few decades and dump it on the beach to replenish the sand and keep the tourism dollars flowing.

https://www.sandag.org/projects-and-programs/environment/sho...

This is pretty common with iconic beaches. Waikiki in Honolulu is also not natural, and in fact uses sand from southern California.

I don't see how this is problematic if it works. And it does seem to work. Are humans not allowed to alter nature? We have been doing that for a very very long time.

The problem with artificial beaches is that they erode away pretty quickly and need replenishing at great expense, since there’s no natural way to sustain that. Hence the article

The benefit stills seems to outweigh the cost by a lot.

This is very debatable. Hawaii for example is no longer dredging sand from Socal at the very least, and the state has prioritized its unique ecosystems as a bigger tourism draw.

You can find sandy beaches pretty easily, but in tourism often you live and die by what differentiates you, particularly if you are expensive like Hawaii.

The main beaches for tourists in the Canary Islands (on Tenerife and Gran Canaria, at least) were built with sand imported from the Sahara. (There are black volcanic sand beaches there naturally, but those were thought to be unappealing to tourists — at least back in the 1960s, when the tourism industry was starting up.)

This is largely necessary in San Diego County because a major source of sand replenishment has been suppressed: natural erosion of the soft sand bluffs that back the beaches. At the top of every accessible bluff there is a phalanx of small palaces, maintained -- though often left unoccupied -- by an ever-growing class of billionaires, and now protected from nature by steel-reinforced concrete seawalls built upon nominally public property below.

The dredging projects are of course not paid for by the private owners whose seawalls necessitate them, but by the public.

The walls themselves, while nearly invisible to palace occupants, present as egregious eyesores to the ordinary citizen trying to enjoy what remains of the beachfront below:

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=solana+beach++seawall&t=ipad&iar=i...

You make it sound like it's just bare concrete walls. The pics in your link show they've at least attempted to make them look like sandstone that blends and fits much more than your description.

> You make it sound like it's just bare concrete walls. The pics in your link show they've at least attempted to make them look like sandstone that blends and fits much more than your description.

Unless you're a local you won't understand, there are subtle things images cannot show accurately; for example just north of Oceanisde in what is technically S. Orange County exists a surfing hot-spot, for locals and tourists alike and is host to many surf competitions: but, because Nixon had his 'White House of the West' the area was covered with those spiky plants to deter riffraff like 'hippy surfers' or 'beatniks' from enjoying what he deemed 'his' coastline. It's totally invasive plant and now those spikes are all over the place and you can be terribly injured (I got an infection on my foot once when I stepped on one in an open wound from surfing low tide) just walking down the beach without sandals.

Lets just say they leave there mark, and it's one we all wished we could do away with, including places like Billionaires Bluff.

Again, its Californian culture for everyone (local or otherwise) to enjoy the coastline entire industries are built around this and it's a total disservice to do otherwise; but it must be said that it's usually outsiders that try to carve their own enclave solely for themselves and these are the results--that Indian billionaire comes to mind.

> The foundation knew that if they could stop the beach grooming and bring back native communities of plants to the area, sand dunes would reappear, providing a natural buffer against erosion.

This is all very nice but I can attest that if the beaches weren't regularly "groomed" they would be filthy and trashed. The amount of litter left by inconsiderate beachgoers or washed up onshore is a legit problem.

I've walked along SM beach hundreds of times in recent years and these new cordoned off dunes attract the homeless who camp and defecate there. I wouldn't walk barefoot in that sand for love or money. What would be nice is if, in conjunction with dune restoration, the City could get it together to remove the vagrants and fine the litterers. Not holding my breath for that.

> dunes attract the homeless

Interesting to contrast with Cardiff, where the dune strip is narrow and exposed to view. No homeless, but occasional rip-rap or sand supplementation -- contrary to the article, the dune topography does not appear self-sustaining.

On the positive side, the snowy plover are about the cutest seabird you'll ever find: https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Snowy_Plover/overview

Fascinating. I had no idea. It’s crazy how, once a thing is done, those who come after assume it was always this way. I believed it always looked like this. Crazy.

Interesting. Related, I finally made it inside Marion Davies’ guest house on Santa Monica beach last summer. Only open on Sunday afternoon? Took me twenty years to arrive at the right time for the tour (by accident). It was part of a huge mansion that was torn down a long time ago.

Anyway photos inside show the property right on the beach, though today it is a good ~half mile/1km away. That part of the beach is too wide imho makes it seem empty.

it's funny the article mentions miami. miami also dredges sand from offshore and even imports sand from overseas

I thought this was going to be about the fact that the beaches in California seem much less crowded than they used to be.

> As the plants grow, they capture windblown sand beneath their branches and leaves, over time creating natural sand dune barriers that protect against coastal erosion. The project was experimental, Ford explains, and so there wasn't any quantifiable success criteria that was set. But in Ford's view, it's been a resounding success. The dunes have already reached between one and three feet tall (30 to 90cm).

The whole article is aspirational fluff and projects such as these prevent us from forwarding solutions, that would rather work, versus some heartwarming stories. In this case, about how snowy plovers returned randomly with a whole 3 eggs, and how trees have created one foot dunes.

California has a serious problem with non-profits and foundations, successfully pulling on well-meaning and loaded people's hearts and wallet strings

Not all writing is about just giving the facts.

I thought this was an interesting piece on the mistakes of our past, some education on beach and sand dunes formation, and a lovely journey through a topic I had no knowledge of.

Why be so dismissive?

The sand dunes formed over just 9 years. Imagine how much bigger they will be in 20, 50, or even 100 years. Why be so short sighted?

You also selectively cut off part of the quote about the eggs. That was in the first year, it goes on..

"Since then, plovers have returned to the restoration area to nest. Native plant species that had not been planted by The Bay Foundation appeared too, such as pink sand verbena. And dune beetles – which provide food for foraging birds, and which had not been observed in baseline surveys prior to restoration – also arrived."

Not everything happens instantly. We're lucky to live in a time of rapid innovation. Some things just take time.

It seems reasonable to apply to NGOs the same skepticism you would apply to anyone else trying to sell you something.

If the same level of fluff was written by a crypto startup, would you accept it at face value?

There’s a 120 page report with all sorts of detailed analysis reviewing 5 years of the project linked in the article.

If this is genuinely your concern you should read that before deciding whether they are trying to rip anyone off.

Coming to the conclusion that this is not a worthy effort because you read a feel good general news piece and it only included feel good general news seems silly at best.

I lived there between 2004 and 2023 and used to walk along the perimeter of the protected dunes. I didn’t know it was an intentional engineering. I thought it was just natural dunes that were protected. They are really beautiful and you get a sense that there’s a lot of life going on. I always wondered why Santa Monica’s beaches were so barren otherwise compared to other beaches on both the West and East coasts. Good read!

How does this preclude other solutions?

In theory it doesn't, but in practice there's limited public attention, and money. The interviewee is obviously pushing his own particular mitigation project, and the BBC reporter has uncritically accepted it. In much of San Diego County, there never were dunes but rather sandy bluffs dropping to a beach, wide or narrow depending upon exposure, bluff geology, and proximity to river outflow.

What would you suggest? Like it’s not a magic bullet, the plover won’t be parting the oceans like King Canute or anything, but, er, yes, a living beach is more resistant to coastal erosion than a desert; that’s fairly uncontroversial, I thought?

I don't know about Californian beaches, but I know in Australia there's been a significant attempt to replant native grasses in erosion zones and maintain the dunes. The article describes this.

What do you mean by "solutions that would work"? The solutions to coastal erosion are many, but one that sometimes works is having dunes held together by plants with sturdy root systems.

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