Photograph by Thomas K. Arnold

The trouble starts way down south, just north of the Mexican border.

San Diego County’s oceanfront beaches have long been showered with praise by everyone from local tourism officials and travel writers to hotels, travel agencies, and even universities. Platitudes about our “70 miles of glorious coastline” (San Diego Tourism Authority) and “70+ miles of sparkling coastline” (San Diego Convention Center) abound. The Town and Country Resort’s website brags about San Diego’s “more than 70 miles of breathtaking beaches,” while both The Dana and the University of San Diego talk up San Diego’s “70 miles of pristine beaches.” Trafalgar Travel rhapsodizes, “San Diego’s beaches are world famous. Golden sand and warm waters are enjoyed by people and wildlife alike — with seals and sea lions often spotted laying by the shore.”

Photograph by Thomas K. Arnold

Even respected travel publication Conde Nast Traveler says, “You’ll find some of the state’s best beaches in San Diego. It’s got perfect temperatures throughout most of the year, which means a sun- and- sea-filled trip doesn’t have to wait until summer. And with 70 miles of coastline, San Diego has many beach options that range in size, accessibility, and offerings, which means there’s a stretch of sand to suit all personalities and types of travelers. You can head up north to find wide sand beaches in Oceanside and less-crowded spots with wilder waves in Carlsbad and Encinitas, or venture south to Mission Beach or Coronado to enjoy calm waters with a festive amusement park or a historic hotel as a backdrop.”

And yet the cold, hard truth is that San Diego’s glorious, sparkling, breathtaking, pristine, and world-famous beaches are in trouble — their magnificence threatened by persistent sewage spills in the south to erosion in the north, and everything from falling cliffs, shark attacks, a pinniped turf war and crumbling piers and sea walls in between.

Dirty Water

The trouble starts way down south, just north of the Mexican border. The wide, sandy stretch of sand in the city of Imperial Beach has been dogged by sewage spills from the Tijuana River for as long as I can remember. Back in 1980, then-Mayor Brian Bilbray made international headlines when he manned a bulldozer and tried to build a damn to block sewage from spilling into the ocean, where currents carry the effluence — laden with heavy metals, toxic chemicals and bacteria including E. coli — toward the north.

This sort of pollution has been a problem since the 1930s, but has steadily worsened as the area’s population has mushroomed, overwhelming a pair of wastewater treatment plants on either side of the border — particularly during periods of heavy rains, which lead to flooding. A CBS 60 Minutes report last March noted that over the last five years, more than 100 billion gallons of untreated sewage have flowed through the Tijuana River and into the Pacific Ocean, leading to an unprecedented 700 consecutive days of beach closures for Imperial Beach.

The good news is that the Mexican government is now in the process of replacing the broken Punta Bandera Treatment Plant at the San Antonio de los Buenos Creek, while on the U.S. side, Congress is providing funding for short-term repairs to the South Bay International Wastewater Treatment Plant. But long-term solutions, which include more plant improvements and expansions as well as river diversion projects on the U.S. side, depend on millions of dollars in additional funding and faster approval processes by the federal government.

In June, a coalition of South Bay leaders urged the state of California to declare a state of emergency over the sewage crisis. At a news conference, Imperial Beach Mayor Paloma Aguirre said the goal in seeking the state of emergency declaration is “to accelerate the diversion and treatment of the Tijuana River, the primary source of pollution to our south San Diego communities. This project has not undergone environmental review, nor has it received any funding appropriated by Congress. Without a state of emergency, we are five to ten years out before we see relief. The funding for the treatment plant was a step in the right direction, but it doesn’t solve our core source of pollution.”

Bilbray, who after two terms as Imperial Beach mayor served on the county Board of Supervisors and in the U.S. Congress, says he is beyond frustrated that sewage continues to spill into the ocean waters of his hometown. “We are ready to go to war over the stupidity that has reached criminality,” he says. “My grandchildren will never be able to surf at their own beach in their childhood.” Indeed, in July Channel 10 News reported that the Imperial Beach YMCA had to move its surf camp to Mission Beach, at a busing cost of $100,000.

Over the last few years, contamination has spread even further north, impacting the Silver Strand and even the tony seaside town of Coronado, where between June 3, 2023 and June 3, 2024 beaches were closed for 169 days because of high bacteria levels. Ironically, Coronado Beach was ranked No. 5 on USA Today’s 2024 list of the Golden State’s top 10 beaches. It was also named one of the 10 best U.S. beaches in Dr. Beach’s annual list for 2024, in which Dr. Beach — aka Steven Leatherman, a noted coastal ecologist and author — described Coronado Beach as “the toast of Southern California.”

Mr. Sandman

Up north in Oceanside, on the opposite end of the county, the once wide, sandy beaches along the city’s 3.7-mile oceanfront coastline are disappearing. Even 20 years ago, it was possible to walk or jog along the beach from the mouth of the Buena Vista Lagoon, between Carlsbad and Oceanside, all the way north to the Oceanside Pier, a distance of just under three miles. Today, that same stretch of beach is impassable except at very low tide.

The large jetty that protects the two harbors in Oceanside, which share an entrance to the ocean, creates a barrier that blocks the sand that would naturally be carried south by ocean currents.

Photograph by Thomas K. Arnold

The problem began with the 1942 construction of the Camp Pendleton Boat Basin and was compounded by the development of the Oceanside Recreation and Small Craft Harbor in 1963. The large jetty that protects the two harbors, which share an entrance to the ocean, creates a barrier that blocks the sand that would naturally be carried south by ocean currents. Additionally, with the two harbors being built in the mouth of the Santa Margarita River, its estuaries, and coastal dunes, natural sediment sources have been removed, severely limiting the ability of Oceanside’s coast to naturally build back beaches. A second natural source of sand, from the San Luis Rey River, has dwindled due to construction along the riverbanks for flood control and the damming of tributaries. And the protection of coastal bluffs with large rocks has restricted the natural addition of sandstone.

“What Oceanside is currently experiencing is a myriad of coastal management issues that are compounding on one another,” said Jayme Timberlake, coastal zone administrator for the city of Oceanside. “With natural sediment sources being cut out of the equation and coastal development within the city extending westward of the natural shoreline, there is a need to more consistently and aggressively manage the coastline and its beaches. The wide sandy beaches that were experienced in Oceanside over the past 70 years are largely the result of large sand placement efforts done from 1945 to 1990, and not the result of natural beach building. Essentially, the construction of the two harbors and the levees in the San Luis Rey River all yielded millions of cubic yards of sand that needed to be disposed. Oceanside was the receiver of these disposal materials for many decades, but since the construction of these elements, there have only been sporadic sand nourishment projects.”

Climate change and rising sea levels are also having an impact, with the end result being that Oceanside’s beaches are a fractional sliver of what they once were, despite periodic sand replenishment efforts. It’s reached the point where, two years ago, the city of Oceanside created the position of Coastal Zone Administrator, charged with “restoring shoreline resilience,” according to advocacy group Save Oceanside Sand’s website. Then, this past January, the Oceanside City Council approved an aggressive sand replenishment and retention project that calls for the pumping of nearly 1 million cubic yards of sand from the ocean floor onto the beach and building two artificial reefs, or offshore “speed bumps,” to help sustain the shoreline for longer. “So what we’re proposing now is to get back on track with more consistent sediment management, but doing it in an efficient and responsible way,” Timberlake said.

Work is expected to start in early 2026, provided the city wins approval from the California Coastal Commission and various other government regulatory agencies and comes up enough money to cover the project’s cost, which could be as high as $50 million. The city estimates that construction funds could come from myriad sources, including federal or state grants or local taxes such as modest increases in sales or transient occupancy taxes.

But Chuck Lowery, a former Oceanside deputy mayor and longtime civic leader, isn’t convinced of the project’s future success. “We will pay millions of dollars to save our sand, but it will all wash away with time,” he says. “The only realistic approach is to realize we can’t stop sea level rise and behave intelligently. One workable solution is called ‘managed retreat,’ which moves development away from the immediate coast and puts distance between where we build along existing waterways. The city paid for an expensive study when I was on the City Council from 2014 to 2018. It shows that as sea level rises, the entire harbor will go underwater, and the San Luis Rey River will flow inland and flood areas on both sides. The timeline is coming, but we’re still building right on the ocean and along the river.”

Calling your bluff

Another coastal North County town, Encinitas, has six miles of oceanfront beaches that are mostly below towering sandstone bluffs. These bluffs have been known to collapse. In August 2019, three women — Julie Davis, 65; her daughter, 35-year-old Anne Clave; and her 62 year-old sister, Elizabeth Charles — set up their beach towels beneath the bluffs at Grandview Surf Beach to celebrate Charles’ recovery from breast cancer. Other family members were also on hand, but the celebration turned tragic when a 30-foot chunk of clastic rock broke loose and fell onto the beach, killing the three women.

The Mission Beach Town Council has been complaining about the deteriorating seawall, originally built in 1925, for years.

Photograph by Thomas K. Arnold

In March 2023, another bluff, this one a few miles south off the 2000 block of South Coast Highway, collapsed onto the beach amid a heavy rainstorm. Dozens of firefighters arrived on the scene and, fearing the worst, requested cadaver dogs, although first responders quickly determined that the beach had been empty. And last May, popular Beacon’s Beach in the north Encinitas community of Leucadia reopened after a four-month closure that had been prompted by a landslide near a cliffside access trail.

The bluffs that tower over Encinitas beaches, particularly in the northern part of town in what prior to incorporation was known as Leucadia, are pockmarked by seawalls and private staircases that lead up to the opulent private homes perched on top. Over the years, homeowners have warred with the California Coastal Commission over restrictive permits, arguing they should have the right to protect their properties, while critics, including the Surfrider Foundation, advocate natural dynamic coastal erosion processes, and say seawalls interfere with those natural processes and threaten the existence of sandy beaches.

“The shape of our shoreline is ultimately crafted by Mother Nature,” says Encinitas Mayor Tony Kranz, a longtime Encinitas resident. “For centuries, we humans have been contributing to the work she’s doing -- both by paving paradise and building seawalls -- but any attempt to stop erosion is futile. The toe of the bluffs gets pounded by high tides, which removes the natural support for the bluffs above and huge chunks eventually fall, sometimes with disastrous consequences. “Our struggle to maintain beach access is very challenging. Whether it is the repairs needed to keep staircases down the bluff faces open, or mechanically covering the cobblestone with imported sand, the cost is significant and continues to grow. Cities up and down the coast face the same battle, and sometimes solutions are proposed that impede natural sand migration that is important for keeping our beaches usable.”

As for the “managed retreat” concept Lowery encourages for Oceanside, Kranz says, “The notion of ‘managed retreat’ isn’t something that will happen one city at a time. The cost of acquiring private property in order to implement such a thing is way too high for any one city to absorb. And while some property owners I know along the coast might be willing to consider selling their land, many are not. But the conversation will not get started until someone identifies the resources that could be used for this purpose. And it would be in the tens of billions of dollars.”

Jaws

The beaches from Torrey Pines north through Del Mar and into Solana Beach are among the nicest in the county. The water temperature tends to be higher, due to the shallow surf, and the beaches cleaner, since they are mostly situated either inside a state park or behind wealthy residential enclaves — rather than alongside busy streets, as they are further south, in Pacific, Mission and Ocean Beach, and to the north, in Carlsbad and Oceanside. But beachgoers are increasingly sharing those warm waters with a relatively recent new visitor: the Great White Shark. Shark experts say the approximately 10-mile stretch of beach since about 2019 has become a popular nursery for juvenile Great Whites, with plenty of food — including stingrays and other fish — in a relatively calm spot.

San Diego County beachgoers are increasingly sharing with a relatively recent new visitor: the Great White Shark. Dr. Christopher Lowe says “We assume they’ve always used these beaches, which means we’re actually the guests. We’re just seeing sharks get repopulated.”

Photograph Courtesy California State University Long Beach

“That’s technically their home,” says Dr. Christopher Lowe, who heads the Shark Lab at California State University at Long Beach. “These sharks tend to move around. For a while, the population was down, and now it’s going back up. We assume they’ve always used these beaches, which means we’re actually the guests. We’re just seeing sharks get repopulated.”

The influx of baby Great Whites has become something of a novelty, similar to the popular pastime of snorkeling among tiny leopard sharks in La Jolla, Lowe notes. In December 2023, national newspaper USA Today even ran a story headlined, “Great white sharks appear in waves at popular San Diego beach,” noting that shark watching has become popular among hikers making their way up the trails at Torrey Pines State Park. “I think what’s happening now is that we’re starting to look at Great Whites in kind of the same way that we look at leopard sharks,” he says. “But the problem is Great Whites are not like leopard sharks – they’re not just in there trying to get warm. They are predators on leopard sharks and other fish.”

In June, a 46-year-old swimmer was bitten by a shark off Del Mar, suffering “significant injuries,” according to an article in the San Diego Union-Tribune. The man was swimming about 100 yards offshore from the main lifeguard tower at 17th Street with about a dozen other swimmers who routinely meet there in the morning. The victim suffered bites to his torso and left arm and hand. DNA taken from the bite marks on his wetsuit identify the shark as a Great White.

Shark attacks are rare, but this was not the first one in the ocean waters off San Diego’s ocean beaches. In April 2020, a surfer suffered minor injuries when he was attacked by a shark near Moonlight Beach in Encinitas in the late afternoon. In September 2018, a 13-year-old boy was nearly killed by a 12-foot Great White Shark while diving for lobsters off Beacon’s Beach in Encinitas. And in April 2008, a large Great White Shark bit a 66-year-old man as he swam in the ocean off Solana Beach with a group of fellow triathletes. The shark bit the man around the legs and torso, resulting in massive blood loss, causing him to bleed to death. David Martin, a retired veterinarian who had lived in Solana Beach for most of his life, had been swimming about 150 yards offshore about a half mile north of Fletcher Cove.

Even so, Lowe insists there’s no cause to panic. “Based on a drone study we did, there are white sharks around people every single day, and people aren’t getting bitten every day,” he says. “We might see a shark bite at this location once every two years, but we have to look at how many people are using those beaches in that same period — hundreds of thousands, maybe a million. Accidents happen, and we have to put those things in perspective.”

The Wall

The three-mile stretch of beach between the Mission Beach jetty on the south and Palisades Park on the north is ground zero for San Diego’s hippest and hottest. During the summer months, the boardwalk that runs alongside the beach is abuzz with bikinis on wheels — bikes, skateboards, roller blades — while the beach itself is a popular gathering spot for teens, families and tourists. But except for a 0.3-mile section that was rebuilt in 2015-2016, the seawall that separates the boardwalk from the beach is falling apart.

The Mission Beach Town Council has been complaining about the deteriorating structure, originally built in 1925, for years. In January, the council issued a plaintive plea on its Instagram social media page, urging residents to lobby the San Diego City Council to make the needed repairs. “We need your help!” the post read. “The seawall in Mission Beach has been in need of repairs/replacement for many years. Following the January 2023 storms the need for immediate repairs increased dramatically and after this year’s king tides the need for repairs has become severe. There is virtually no area of the seawall that is not cracking and crumbling with the exception of the new wall between Ventura Place and San Gabriel Place.

“Accelerate Sports is a team of former college and professional athletes that take pride in their ability to negotiate and facilitate closings of win-win transactions for clients at the highest level of Sports and Business,” says the company’s website, suggesting a motive for boosting local taxes here.

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“Since June 2023, only one eight-foot section of the seawall has been repaired. It is understood that repairs are a band-aid but without repairs the seawall is deteriorating at a rapid pace. Cracks allow moisture into the wall which swells rebar creating more crumbling. The longer repairs are put off, the more expensive they will be. In order to get the attention of our city representatives and encourage them to act on this huge problem in our community, we are requesting that anyone with photos of damage to our local Mission Beach seawall please submit your photos to Seamus Kennedy with City Council Member Dr. Campbell’s office at office at skennedy@sandiego.gov.”

Larry Webb, vice president of the Mission Beach Town Council, says the goal of the January social media campaign was to get the city to repair damage caused by the 2023 storms. That summer, the City Council had approved $750,000 in seawall repairs in its annual budget, but nothing was done. After the Mission Beach Town Council’s social media push, more storms caused further damage. “The city in May came out and did some patching in areas where rebar was exposed across the top of the wall,” Webb says, “but that was it. It still needs a tremendous amount of work – there are areas that just continue to crumble.” The long-term solution, Webb says, is a complete replacement.

Seamus Kennedy, senior policy advisor for Councilmember Jennifer Campbell, told the Reader, “Two strategies are planned for the seawall. The short-term repair work is under design currently, and a long-term replacement of the seawall is under environmental review currently.”

Take a long walk…

Ocean Beach’s star attraction, the Ocean Beach Municipal Fishing Pier, is falling down. As we noted in an earlier Reader story, the pier — at 1971 feet, the longest concrete pier in the world — was improperly built back in the middle ‘60s. There were numerous engineering and construction mistakes, including an incorrect assumption about wave crest height that resulted in the pier being built too low, causing it to be continually pounded by destructive waves. Factor in the increasingly intense winter storms and you’ve got the proverbial recipe for disaster.

The latest: The city of San Diego has decided that no amount of renovation or rebuilding can save the pier and is looking at spending close to $200 million to build a new pier in its place. In the meantime, the entire structure has been closed to the public and a demolition notice has been posted on the locked entrance gate.

Turf wars

It’s old news that harbor seals have taken over Children’s Pool, the little protected beach in La Jolla created by the 1931 construction of a concrete breakwater. The project was financed by local philanthropist Ellen Browning Scripps, who wanted to create a spot for children to swim and play in the water that was protected from the surf.

Harbor seals began arriving at Children’s Pool in the mid-1990s, prompting the San Diego City Council to declare the area a Marine Mammal Reserve. In 1997, Children’s Pool was closed for swimming because of high fecal coliform counts caused by seal excrement. A protracted debate, complete with legal challenges, pitted those who wanted to save the pool for kids against those who wanted to preserve the seal colony. Ultimately, the seals won. Children’s Pool is now off limits to humans during pupping season, which runs from mid-December through mid-May. Swimming is allowed during the summer, but few venture into the water because of the seal poop.

But over the years, the seal population has grown so big that the pinnipeds have begun showing up at other nearby beaches, along with their larger cousins, the sea lions. Last year, the city of San Diego roped off Point La Jolla, which has become a sea lion pupping area, and the adjacent Boomer Beach. Around the same time, videos surfaced on YouTube that showed seals and sea lions chasing beachgoers at La Jolla Cove, the treasured beach surrounded by cliffs that is popular with swimmers, snorkelers and scuba divers.

Bob Evans, president of La Jolla Parks and Beaches, a nonprofit advisory group to the city, wants La Jolla Cove to be preserved for humans, noting that the pinnipeds already have several other nearby beaches. “For the most part, the sea lions do their own thing, while beachgoers, swimmers, divers, and snorkelers enjoy their recreation,” he says. “However, with tourists and visitors now crowding the stairs and beach and getting too close to the sea lions, many people — everyone on social media is a wildlife expert! — and animal groups are concerned and want to rope off or close access to the beach entirely to everyone. Thus, there’s a strong concern by many in the community of a partial or full beach closure at the very popular and unique Cove beach, as what’s already happened at Children’s Pool and Point La Jolla/Boomer. Of particular greater concern for many of us is the negative environmental impact of these pinnipeds’ presence. With this non-native and growing population of 300+ mammals at 200-800 pounds each, that’s a LOT of eating and pooping! The odor in and around the park can be overwhelming, the tidepools have been decimated, the beach routinely tests at unsafe levels of fecal contamination, and the rest of the marine animals in the State Marine Reserve (which borders the Cove) are surely getting devoured.”