An excavator has reopened the ocean inlet to San Elijo Lagoon, helping to remove water that was backing up and flooding area trails for weeks, but this project is only a temporary, land-based fix.
An aquatic dredge, which will remove some 70,000 cubic yards of sand inside the lagoon basin, ultimately will fix the problem on a longer term basis, officials with the Nature Collective, the nonprofit organization that’s coordinating the project, said last week.
The exact date for that dredge’s arrival, however, is still up in the air. The dredging was originally supposed to begin late last year, but that was later postponed to February, the Nature Collective notes on its web site. And, after experiencing multiple delays on its way from Florida to the West Coast due to hurricanes, the dredge now is undergoing maintenance and upgrading work in San Diego, and that also is taking far longer than expected.
“The (the dredge’s) modification and retrofitting are nearly done, but we’re waiting on one piece of equipment that’s been delayed,” Nature Collective Interim CEO Jennifer Bright said Tuesday. “As soon as they get that piece, (which is now on back order), they can finish the retrofitting and modification … and get the dredge out there to start the work.”
Bright and other lagoon officials are eager for the dredging to start — they’re hoping it does so before the lagoon once again begins experiencing the flooding issues that were temporarily resolved by the inlet excavation work earlier this month.
Many lagoon visitors started to notice that lagoon water levels were rising in late January and early February when a popular pathway between the lagoon nature center and Solana Beach’s Harbough Seaside Trails overlook closed due to flooding. A popular running trail along the south side of the lagoon also experienced flooding problems, Bright said.
The lagoon looked like a huge lake at the time, and visitors could see that there was no longer an open channel of water connecting the lagoon to the ocean because the inlet was blocked by a sand bar. However, that was just the visible part of a much larger problem, Bright said. The main issue is that over time the lagoon basin between the railroad line and the nature center has steadily been filling up with sand, pushed in by ocean waves.
Removing the sand bar at the lagoon entrance, which the excavator did Feb. 12, helps in the short-term when the lagoon basin’s water is at a very high level, but unless the aquatic dredging occurs, the inlet area will once again start to close because of sand blockage issues in the basin to the east, she said.
It’s already starting to happen, she added. The inlet is not completely closed, “but water is not coming in and out,” Bright said.
West Coast communities have long struggled with sand removal issues. Dredging equipment is shuttled from the East Coast, where it is more frequently used, to the West Coast, a lengthy process that often results in delays. There’s also a shortage of dredges. In fact, the dredge that San Elijo will be using — the Sanderling — is so old that it began its career in the 1970s doing a project at Agua Hedionda Lagoon, Bright said.
Its San Elijo job is expected to take six to eight weeks, including the equipment set-up and removal periods. The sand that will be sucked up from the lagoon bottom will be placed on Cardiff State Beach in front of the Chart House restaurant.
