Buccaneer Beach To Close Temporarily For Sand Replacement: Sep 6-7

OCEANSIDE, CA — Buccaneer Beach in South Oceanside will be temporarily closed on Tuesday, September 6 and Wednesday, September 7 as the city places compatible beach sand on the upper/back portion of the beach to replace sand that has eroded. The import of sand will involve heavy trucks and equipment.

The public can access the ocean via paths to the north and south of Buccaneer Beach.

With nearly four miles of coastline, the beach is a way of life in the City of Oceanside. The City’s new Coastal Zone Program aims to responsibly manage coastal resources to benefit the community while improving the natural habitat and resiliency against coastal storms and rising seas.

Coastal ecosystems in Oceanside include sandy beaches, estuaries, kelp forests, groins and jetty reefs, associated pelagic organisms and, of course, people. Sustaining these ecosystems is critical to ocean health, while also supporting human society.

The Oceanside economy depends on a functioning coastal ecosystem, and sustainable management of coastal areas supports many industries, including fisheries, tourism, recreation, and more. The dynamic and evolving Coastal Zone Program includes the latest research, grants, projects, and partnerships allowing adaptation to the changing conditions to maintain Oceanside's coastline as a thriving ecological and recreational resource for generations to come.

Sand Nourishment and Retention Pilot Project

The City of Oceanside understands the importance of sandy beaches for protection of coastal infrastructure, recreation, and the local economy. In 2021, a year-long study was completed to identify feasible solutions to protect the beach from long-term erosion. Strategies were sought that would be environmentally sensitive, financially feasible, and have a reasonable chance of being approved. Six concepts were put through a multi-criteria decision matrix and ranked. As a result, four alternatives were developed and evaluated in the study. The use of groins, a rocky structure built perpendicular to the beach to retrain sand, was ranked highest, based on an analysis of technical performance, financial, and environmental considerations. A sand bypass system around the Camp Pendleton Boat Basin was also recommended to complement the use of a retention structure, like groins.

The City of Oceanside also hosted public workshops on September 15, 2020, and June 30, 2021. Polls were conducted on both September 15th, and June 30th, to gain community input on the study.

Since the completion of the Feasibility Study in 2021, the City has been gathering information through public outreach efforts and meetings with cities within our regional littoral cell, or sediment transport zone. Several consistent concerns relating to downcoast erosion were noted, as well as recommendations to pilot a more innovative engineering solution to retention than traditional groins. In the next phase of the program, the City will further define our replenishment and retention options, with the first order of business being to locate a local sand source or decipher a method of consistent sand delivery from around the Camp Pendleton Boat Basin. This is crucial to the Program; retention of any sort can only be done if we can determine a dedicated sand source that will add sand to the littoral cell. We intend to use the results of our sand investigation and our new SCOUP permits to provide immediate relief to our shoreline while working out design features for maintaining the sand.

One significant shift from 2021 Feasibility Study is that rather than moving forward with traditional groins, the City will be investigating a hybrid approach to our pilot retention project, something that is more nature based, serves to provide a multitude of benefits to the community, and will serve as an example to other coastal cities in the region for building coastal resiliency.
For further information on the Sand Nourishment and Beach Maintenance Program, see: City of Oceanside Feasibility Staff Report.