State of the beach in California ahead of El Niño

We are already seeing devastation along the California coast from surging waves and high tides. El Niño conditions could make the situation even worse this winter. A new report gives California only a C when it comes to being prepared for big waves and rising tides. For more, we are joined by Mitch Silverstein, California policy coordinator with the Surfrider Foundation. You guys do such good work. Thank you for joining us. Great to be here. Talk about, you just put out this state of the beach report uh california gets a C um what is california doing wrong when it comes to protecting our coastline because coastline is essential to people's lives our economy many things yeah thanks pam great to be here so yeah we put out this report state of the beach and it grades states on how they're managing their coast and their beaches public access to them and that and that sort of thing and in california we have the coastal act which is actually the most protective coastal protection law in the nation if not the world but we only got a C on our response to emergencies which is very timely because it's the El Niño emergency right now and what we what we find and what the report finds overall is that we don't plan for these emergencies and then instead we had these knee-jerk reactions and what we find is waves start to damage infrastructure damage properties and we armor the coast as a response throwing big boulders on the coastline on the beach and when we do that they they often become permanent and then we the people we lose our beaches because the armoring doesn't give the beach a place to go and it starts to get drowned as our sea levels rise all right so talk about what's going on because we've already seen these emergencies along the California coast if you've not seen the video of Southern California I mean the beach is near and dear to my heart and I have family down there and we've spent a lot of time San Diego all the way up through Huntington Beach Newport Beach um what do you think about there was definitely that knee-jerk reaction right those Kelvin waves came in and we're seeing those huge sand berms yeah what do you think about the response down there so far and what we need to do ahead of this sure I mean you know for surf rider a sand berm or sand replenishment that's better than a seawall or a pile of boulders at least it's a softer so softer strategy so we're really pushing for nature-based solutions uh like when you have a beach like an Ocean Beach San Francisco you have a pretty wide beach and we're working with the city to restore those sand dunes that's like a natural buffer for whatever's behind it but in Southern California a lot of places up here too we've just developed really too close to the coast and we've cut off the ability to adapt the coast is not a place as much as it's a process and if we don't have room to move the beach back we're not going to be able to stop the Pacific Ocean right we're looking at that video I believe is Long Beach um as you're talking about um ocean beach we're lucky Huntington Beach is lucky it's a very big massive amount of sand before you get to any um building or construction we do have the that construction along um you know homes what kind of damage you're expecting with El Niño and the continuing sea rise and the tides and any other natural changes that you're seeing yeah i wish i had like great news but it's just gonna get worse and it's really important like what we're seeing right now it's not a blip on the radar this is like gonna be the new normal within 20-25 years just a normal winter it's gonna look like this And you can see we are not prepared. So the best solution is to actually just start talking about this, start planning, because really the only way we're going to save our beaches and protect the infrastructure we need to protect is proactive sea level rise, climate adaptation for our coast. And there's no easy solution. We are going to have to relocate certain things, and nobody wants to talk about that. I was just going to ask you that, because when you talk about ongoing, that means relocating homes? beach right in many places i mean but the reality is that's that's what's going to be needed sooner or later and just again you know no one wants to talk about managed retreat nobody wants to retreat in america no one wants to be managed but we need to have these conversations because we need to make hard decisions and as a community if we want to have beaches in the future and we love our beaches right and they are huge economic generators for this state they're the reason we live here a lot of us the reason we come here exactly and it's our right to access the beach in california so if we want a future with beaches the beaches can't speak up for themselves but we can so it's really important to to think about this how can we do nature-based solutions to save the beaches we still have and how can we start making hard decisions about what needs to move what can stay so that our kids and their kids still have a beach to go to yeah not everybody gets to live on the beach but we all want to spend time at the beach with sand yeah not just rocks All right. Mitch Silverstein, California policy coordinator. We really appreciate the work that the Surfrider Foundation does. Now you do a lot of research and help on this matter. Thank you for coming in. My pleasure, Pam. Great to be here. Thanks for having me. All right. We'll be back with more after this as we leave you with that nice shot of Ocean Beach. Again, we're lucky to have a lot of sand before we get to the houses at Ocean Beach.