In the effort to save valuable infrastructure from encroaching ocean waves, the city of Ocean Shores is using the natural material it’s perhaps best known for.
Millions of pounds of sand.
On Thursday morning, construction crews began dumping truckloads of the stuff above the beach on part of the city’s southern shoreline, an emergency measure intended to fend off high tides and winter storms from reaching roads, a water tank and a freshwater lake nearby.
Ocean Shores’ Lead Planner Marshall Read called it a “sacrificial berm.”
“It’s designed to be a temporary berm,” Read said Thursday as dump trucks hauled sand onto the beach. “We know it’s going to erode over the winter.”
About two months ago, a report from engineering firm Mott MacDonald projected millions of dollars of damage to infrastructure and private property from erosion on the city’s southern shoreline without action to stop, or at least slow, the waves that have washed away 3,000 feet of beach in the last four decades, scouring what’s now known as Oyhut Bay. The report predicted the ocean, without a mitigation measure, could eat away Marine View Drive and impact the water tank within five years.
After the report’s publication, Read began working with the engineering firm on an emergency solution for this winter that could be quickly permitted and constructed. He said the city hopes parts of the berm will hold in place until the city can develop a more long-term solution.
Located about a half mile west of the Damon Point trailhead, the sand is piled on the pale dune grasses just above the sandy beach. It will stretch about the length of a football field, and its width will vary from 30 to 60 feet. On its far west end the berm is designed to wrap in front of an exposed house on Marine View Drive.
That amounts to about 1,500 cubic yards of sand, or 100 dump trucks worth. Luckily for the city, there’s plenty of the material to go around.
The city regularly maintains the popular beach approaches on the west side of the peninsula, which results in large piles of sand. Crews are simply loading the sand at those beach approaches and toting in down to the south end.
As another emergency measure, and to remedy erosion at a beach entrance near the North Jetty, the Army Corps of Engineers gave the city “super sack” sandbags that could be used as a stopgap.
Read said the shoreline’s state of constant flux in the last several weeks forced engineers to alter designs for the berm, slightly lowering its height and position after recent king tides chewed at the miniature bluff breaking off the grassy dune.
“Every tide we’re losing ground,” Read said.
Read, who administers the shoreline master program, which guides land use on banks and beaches, said he wrote a letter of exemption for the berm to be placed on the vegetative buffer above the beach. That area lies within the city’s shoreline jurisdiction, but the project still required permits from the Department of Ecology and the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife. Any projects on the beach below the dune would require involvement of the Army Corps of Engineers, Read said.
The project is scheduled to be finished in the first half of next week, said Ocean Shores Project Manager Becky Leach. While bulldozers and dump trucks from Brumfield Construction will be milling around the area during construction, Marine View Drive will remain open except for a nearby gravel shoulder road.
Leach said because the project is expected to cost fewer than $50,000, it didn’t require specific city council approval. On Nov. 25 the city council approved a budget amendment allocating $500,000 from the city’s general fund for erosion work.
Ocean Shores Mayor Frank Elduen, who took office on Nov. 28, visited the site of the sacrificial berm Thursday morning as work commenced.
“I think it’s in good hands,” he said.
According to city officials, the city can only use public taxpayer dollars to protect public infrastructure, and not solely for the purpose of protecting private homes. Much of the Oyhut Bay area is private land, even the parts of the beach that are now underwater due to erosion.
The city worked with private landowners to secure easements for the sand berm, although it won’t stretch far enough east to protect a row of houses on Marine View Drive. At some of those properties, many of which are second homes, owners have piled up driftwood and small stones to stop encroaching tides.
Contact reporter Clayton Franke at 406-552-3917 or clayton.franke@thedailyworld.com.
Clayton Franke / The Daily World In the last several weeks, king tides have chewed at the grassy dunes on Ocean Shores’ southern shoreline, where the city has contracted to build a large sand berm. Several months ago, an engineering report predicted erosion here would continue to advance in the next several years, threatening a nearby street and water tank.
