Rising sea levels due to climate change pose a threat to coastal communities worldwide. The City aims to protect the community's coastal infrastructure, recreational opportunities, and ecosystems by building coastal resilience through the following projects. 

San Diego County, CA Project (formerly known as the Encinitas-Solana Beach Coastal Storm Damage Reduction Project)

The San Diego County coastline is in a constant state of erosion, as natural sand processes have been interrupted by coastal and upland development, flood control, dams, harbors, and hard infrastructure along the shoreline, like seawalls, groins, rip-rap, and levees. This erosion is exacerbated by storm surge and strong waves at high tide. In Encinitas, the impacts of this erosion result in  the narrowing of our beaches and wave encroachment on our bluffs, which threaten public and private infrastructure and beach safety. The primary goal of the San Diego County, CA Project (Project) is to add sand to our eroding shoreline, with the aim of attenuating waves that further erode the coastal bluffs and providing more useable beach sand for safer beach conditions. 

In Encinitas, the Project involves the installation of 50-foot-wide beach fill along a 7,800 foot-long stretch of shoreline (from Beacon's to Boneyards) using 340,000 cubic yards of compatible sand, with re-nourishment every 5 years on average over a 50-year period. Though the Project was authorized by Congress since 2016, critical federal funding was not allocated until early 2020. U.S. Rep. Mike Levin and Senator Dianne Feinstein along with the Encinitas and Solana Beach City Councils, concerned residents, and City staff led a vigorous campaign to secure the funds from the Army Corps and the U.S. Office of Management and Budget. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (Army Corps) announced in February 2020 that funding was approved to allow the cities of Encinitas and Solana Beach to begin pre-construction monitoring and design engineering for the Project.

Since April 2020, the cities of Encinitas and Solana Beach have been working with the Army Corps (Los Angeles District) on the development of a Project Management Plan and Design Agreement, to solidify our participation in the Project as the local sponsor. Additionally, the Project team has been developing pre-construction monitoring plans. Initial monitoring for the Project will begin in Fall 2022 and continue until Fall 2023, and will entail studying:

• beach profiles and sand volumes
• surfing and wave characteristics where sand placement will occur
• physical conditions of the sand in the offshore borrow sites
• biological conditions of the nearshore reef and intertidal zone

These studies will establish a baseline that will be utilized by the cities and resource agencies to track any physical or biological changes seen over the life of the Project. Project construction is expected to begin in late 2023/early 2024.

Click here to view the Project's plans.

---

Sand Compatibility and Opportunistic Use Program (SCOUP)

SCOUP is part of a regional sediment management plan intended to streamline beach nourishment projects. The standardized permitting process facilitates the use of available sand from construction sites and other opportunistic sources. The program includes stringent environmental regulations to ensure that the sand sources are compatible with receiver sites. The timing and location of sand placement are also strictly controlled to reduce any negative impacts on coastal habitats and recreation. For more information on SCOUP, visit SANDAG's Website.

The City of Encinitas has used beach nourishment for many years as a method of building coastal resilience. As of summer 2022, there are three potential SCOUP project locations at local beaches.

Past SCOUP Projects include:

• 2019 Encinitas Beach Resort SCOUP Project at South Ponto Beach
• 2021-2022 Caltrans Work Berm at San Elijo Lagoon SCOUP Project at Cardiff State Beach and Moonlight Beach

---

Cardiff State Beach Living Shoreline Project

2020 winner of American Shores & Beach Preservation Association Best Restored Beach Award!

The Cardiff State Beach Living Shoreline is an innovative "green infrastructure" project featuring 2,900 feet of reconstructed dunes. Located on the seaward side of Highway 101 on Cardiff State Beach, the dune system protects a vulnerable segment of the roadway in addition to restoring natural habitat.

The project involved the replacement of existing cobble revetment with an engineered natural dune structure.  Historically, sand dunes naturally occurred along the Encinitas coastline before urbanization.  The constructed dunes provide numerous ecological and human benefits including habitat for native species and protection from sea-level rise and storm surge flooding. The newly renovated shoreline can now support flowering native plants and other coastal dune species once again.

The project was co-funded by the State Coastal Conservancy, the San Diego Association of Governments, the United States Fish and Wildlife Service, and the Ocean Protection Council. For more information about this project, please review the article published by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS).

---

FEMA Mapping

The California Coastal Analysis and Mapping Project (CCAMP), completed in 2018 by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), was an extensive, 15-year undertaking involving detailed coastal engineering analysis and mapping of the Pacific Coast of California. The data was used to create an updated, interactive map of the coastal flood risk and wave hazards for the California coastline. The project also establishing new Base Flood Elevations (BFE) using key coastal processes such as dune erosion, wave setup, wave run-up, overtopping, overland wave propagation, and evaluation of coastal structures.