sand

If you’d like to live near the water along the spectacular California coast at some point in your life, you have a number of options.

You can settle in, say, Culver City, which is several miles inland, and wait for rising tides to arrive.

Or, if you just can’t wait that long, I saw a listing you might be interested in. It’s in Capitola, near Santa Cruz, right next to the wharf. The three bedroom, two bath, 1,850-square-foot condo, one of a string of Venetian, pastel beachfront homes, is listed for $3,995,000.

“The beach is your backyard, the cool ocean is your pool,” says the promo.

Given what’s happening right now along the California coast, you might not have to leave that condo to go for a swim. But UC Santa Cruz oceanographer and geologist Gary Griggs, who has seen the thrashing of that row of homes in previous years, is not going to make an offer.

“I’ve got a number of photos,” he said, “that show waves breaking over the top.”

Someone will buy the place, eventually, despite the chance of it becoming a fish tank. California is flush with dumb money and bad judgment, and an insatiable romance with an epic 1,200-mile shoreline.

But it’s time to rethink the relationship.

Last weekend in Long Beach I said a few words at the 50th anniversary of the California Coastal Act, which has kept our shoreline from looking like Atlantic City or Miami Beach by balancing sensible development with conservation and public access.

“The coast is never saved, it’s always being saved,” I said at the 50th, borrowing as I often do from the late Peter Douglas, hammering home the need for constant stewardship, from one generation to the next.

But in an ironic twist, part of the parking lot was underwater, a tractor had raised a berm to hold back the ocean, and just to the south, homes were being thrashed by waves. The coast wasn’t being saved, it was being reclaimed by the sea.

From there I headed south for a friend’s planned birthday party on the sand in Newport Beach, but city streets had been flooded and beaches were closed. The party was moved indoors.

We have not seen the worst of it, with a fall forecast that includes the possibility of an epic Super El Niño that could coincide with king tides, Kelvin waves and a peak lunar nodal cycle, all of which my colleague Rosanna Xia laid out a couple of days ago.

It’s not going to rain hammerheads and sea horses, I don’t think, but coastal destruction could be dramatic.

“We’re likely going to break a number of water level records,” said Timu Gallien of the UCLA Coastal Flood Lab. “It’s not implausible to see some of the piers wiped out, or breakwaters or jetties.”

“This is a glimpse of our future,” said former California Coastal Commission Director Jack Ainsworth. “This is it. It’s here.”

Some low-lying communities have been warned for years to prepare for rising sea levels, Ainsworth said, but have put off the inevitable.

In some areas, the only sane maneuver is what’s called “managed retreat,” meaning relocation of structures farther inland. But that is fraught with legal and political challenges and resistance.

Look, if you want to live on the sand and can afford to do so, good for you. But the general public should not be on the hook for your losses. Along the entire coast, public infrastructure that we all benefit from is under threat, including roadways, parks and railroad tracks, and that’s where any public investment ought to go.

Among the tools available are sand berms, cobble berms (sand on top of small stones), jetties, dredging and relocating sand, and below-surface breakwaters. Living shorelines, such as those along the Orange and San Diego county coasts, involve piling sand atop boulders or smaller stones and covering the berms with vegetation.

But these projects don’t happen overnight, Gallien said. “Right now we’re seeing reactive responses. OK, let’s throw up some sandbags and plywood.”

Kelsey Ducklow, coastal resilience director for the Coastal Commission, said the agency has awarded millions in grants for local planners to study the threat to their communities and come up with plans. Some locales are further along than others, Ducklow said, but there’s no single strategy that will work everywhere, and one typical response is, “Yeah, we know we need to do something. But where’s the money to do it?”

The three choices we have are mitigation, adaptation and suffering, Griggs said. We’re likely to do some of each, but on the mitigation end of things, sea walls, rock revetments and armored cliffs are temporary fixes.

“In the long run, there’s nothing we can do to hold back the Pacific Ocean,” said Griggs, 83, who has been teaching for 59 years. “Everything we do is a Band-Aid, and comes with different price tags and lifespans.”

Griggs was featured in Xia’s award-winning book “California Against the Sea: Visions for Our Vanishing Coastline,” which explores the impact of sea level rise and community responses that range from denial to respectful intervention.

Precious ecosystems are under threat, Xia wrote, “trapped between rising water on one side, pavement on the other.” And multiple Southern California beaches that are “so deeply tied to the state’s heart and soul” could be lost.

I asked Xia what she thought about the rising threat this year.

“So many people think about the coast as a place — a place that doesn’t move,” she said. “But the coast in reality is a living dynamic process that changes every time a wave crashes ashore. That’s the heart of the issue — we’re fundamentally trying to impose permanence onto a space that is meant to be constantly changing.”

We haven’t been the best stewards of the planet, and maybe what’s happening now is a bit of a reckoning. From the first time I saw the California coast as a young lad on vacation from the hot interior, I think I understood that the truest way to love the sea was to fear and respect it.

I now have more fear and more respect.

And maybe, too, a deeper love.

steve.lopez@latimes.com

A short flight from the UK, the Channel Islands offer wild coastal walks, peaceful beaches and a new style of upscale autumn stays

If you’re craving an autumn escape but don’t fancy spending hours travelling, the Channel Islands could offer the perfect change of scenery. Just a short flight from the UK, Jersey, Guernsey and Alderney can feel a world away from everyday life, particularly once summer crowds have disappeared and autumn arrives.

There’s something particularly appealing about spending the day outdoors with the autumn air on your face before retreating somewhere warm and cosy as the sun begins to set. The islands offer plenty of reasons to embrace the season, from dramatic coastal walks and windswept beaches to cold-water swims and changing woodland.

That’s the idea behind Hand Picked Hotels’ new Amber Hours – Autumn by Hand Picked campaign. Designed to celebrate the Channel Islands, the short breaks are a perfect way to breathe in the landscapes as they take on a wilder, more atmospheric character.

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Think bracing walks along the coast followed by Champagne Afternoon Tea, a dip in the sea before warming up in a sauna, or settling beside a window with a glass of wine one of the five Hand Picked Hotels in the Channel Islands that are offering their own take on an autumn break.

Jersey, the largest of the Channel Islands, is a brilliant island escape, with golden beaches, rugged coastal paths and pretty villages offering plenty to discover beyond its sunny summer months. From windswept seaside walks to cosy cafés and historic spots, it’s an easy place to embrace the changing seasons and enjoy a relaxing autumn break.

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Hand Picked Hotels

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There are a selection of hotels across Jersey and Guernsey offering autumn breaks with room and food upgrades.

If you fancy a little island adventure of your own, L’Horizon Beach Hotel & Spa makes a rather lovely base for an Amber Hours escape in Jersey. Sitting right beside the golden sands of St Brelade’s Bay, it’s just a 10-minute drive or around 20 minutes by bus from Jersey Airport – so you can be on the beach before you’ve had time to properly switch off your out-of-office.

Dating back to 1850, the hotel has plenty of character, while its terrace comes with uninterrupted views across the bay. After a bracing coastal walk or perhaps a chilly dip in the sea, you can retreat to the spa for some well-earned relaxation and a choice of treatments.

Enjoy golden days on windswept shores

Grand Jersey Hotel & Spa,

This five-star hotel puts you within easy reach of Jersey’s attractions, while its rooms make the most of the seaside setting, with some offering ocean views. There’s also an indoor heated pool, sauna and steam room – ideal for warming up after a day spent exploring the island.

Guernsey is the kind of island escape where dramatic cliff paths, hidden coves and sandy beaches make it easy to forget you’re only a short flight from the UK. With wild coastal walks, pretty scenery and plenty of cosy spots to retreat to afterwards, it’s a particularly tempting choice for an autumn getaway.

An Amber Hours autumn break with Hand Picked Hotels is available at the Fermain Valley Hotel. Located a 15-minute drive or 20-minute bus away from Guernsey Airport, this hotel is perched on a clifftop above Guernsey’s southeast coast for spectacular views and offers a variety of dining options between its steakhouse, Mexican restaurant and tea rooms.

Also in Guernsey is St Pierre Park Hotel, which is 10 minutes by car or 50 minutes by public transport from Guernsey Airport. Home to an award-winning spa and nine-hole golf course, the grounds of this hotel are home to a picturesque lake and gardens, with master suites offering guests their own private garden and hot tub.

Another accommodation option in Guernsey is Hotel Jerbourg, which is the number one choice on Booking.com based on guest reviews. Set on the clifftop at Jerbourg Point with views stretching as far as France on a clear day, this hotel is home to two restaurants as well as a coffee shop with a sun terrace and an outdoor swimming pool open from May to September.

Over on the island of Alderney, Braye Beach Hotel sits right beside a stretch of pristine white sand, with turquoise waters just steps from the door. It’s the sort of place where you can slow right down, taking in beautiful bay views from the sun terrace, spotting local wildlife or simply settling into a peaceful island escape.

Renowned for offering one of the most luxurious stays on the Alderney island thanks to its 4-star status, the hotel boasts beautiful sea views, while the Terrace and Beach Bar is a relaxed space to unwind. For something a little different, The Vaults is a popular spot for sampling some of the finest wines and steaks, or mingle with the locals in our popular Divers Inn pub.

“An absolute Gem”

Meanwhile, the selection of Hand Picked Hotels across Jersey and Guernsey have all earned a rating of 4.3 out of five stars or higher on Tripadvisor, having earned thousands of reviews from visitors. The top favourite is L’Horizon Beach Hotel & Spa, with one guest writing of a recent stay: “The location is fantastic. A sea view room gives a panoramic view of the wonderful St Brelade’s Bay. Direct access to the beach from the hotel.”

They added: “Comfortable accommodation. Well equipped room. Food excellent. Breakfast selection very good and quality high. Dinner in the terrace restaurant was very enjoyable, again with a matchless view.”

Another visitor fed back: “Stunning location, excellent service and customer care. Lovely open air terrace, wonderful glass-fronted dining terrace, good menu choices with different options for dining, outstanding selection of breakfast choices. Nice pool and spa with good treatment options. Good parking. Convenient for airport and access to all other parts of the island. All in all a wonderful experience and will definitely return.”

Although, they went on to note: “The music on the terrace only happened a couple of times but is it really necessary to bring in loud music to ‘entertain’ people in such a stunning location in a place that oozes tranquillity?”

Another delighted guest added: “An absolute Gem found right beside a lovely wide beach which will give you great childhood Vibes and an enchanting memory. Honestly we can’t wait to go back -to walk on the perfect soft white sand , enjoy the beautiful sea view & savour the calm & peaceful oasis that this wonderful hotel serves up. An absolutely fantastic find.”

Meanwhile, someone else wrote of their stay: “Rooms were of a high quality and always attended to by housekeeping every day and night to turn down your bed. Food in hotel was fantastic. From breakfast to evening meals. Can say it is some of the best food we have had on holiday. Location and staff really made this an unforgettable holiday for us.”

For Dylan Feierabend, there are few things more life-affirming than fishing for redtail surfperch and smelt at Centerville Beach in rural Humboldt County.

His favorite spot, where the Eel River meets the Pacific Ocean, is a few miles from the main road — too far to walk with fishing poles and an ice chest in tow. He instead gets there by driving a side-by-side, a small off-road vehicle, right onto the sand.

He might not be able to do so much longer.

If the California Coastal Commission has its way, vehicular access will soon be nixed at Centerville Beach County Park outside Ferndale — one of just a handful of beaches along the state’s 840-mile coastline where driving is allowed.

This month, the Coastal Commission approved a request from Humboldt County for a coastal development permit to rebuild a 0.17-mile segment of a storm-battered road adjacent to the fast-eroding beach — but only if the county stops people from driving on the sand.

Coastal Commission staff, in a 78-page report, said motorized vehicles threaten both sensitive vegetation and critical habitat for the federally threatened western snowy plover, a small, white-bellied shorebird.

“California’s dune habitats are particularly rare and important, so where driving could damage these sensitive areas, the Coastal Act requires that we protect them,” commission spokesman Joshua Smith said in a statement to The Times.

However, he said, the agency does not “have a one-size-fits-all policy on driving on the beach.”

But Humboldt County residents and officials decry the move as just the latest example of overregulation and government overreach in liberal California — and of the disconnect between its rural and urban places.

“What you see in Southern California isn’t what we see up here,” resident Joey Sancho told the Coastal Commission during its meeting in Eureka this month. “The beaches aren’t overly populated. They’re not being torn up by ATVs and so forth. But yet, [it’s] just one more thing just to take away from us up here in the North Coast.”

Humboldt County wants to make improvements to Centerville Road.

(Google street view)

Feierabend, a 36-year-old loan officer, told The Times: “It’s about slowly choking out the individuals that utilize the beach and gaining control under the ruse, or the guise, of conservation.”

The discord in Humboldt County comes as the Trump administration is taking aim at what it calls “environmental extremism” in California, with federal officials trying — largely over state objections — to open the treasured coastline to more offshore oil drilling, expanded rocket launches and floating nuclear reactors.

Amid this wider debate, beach driving has emerged as an unexpected flashpoint.

Last month, Republican gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton called coastal commissioners “idiots” for their years-long effort to end off-road driving at Oceano Dunes State Vehicular Recreation Area, the only state park that allows recreational driving on the beach.

Cars, bikes and pedestrians share the sand at Oceano Dunes State Vehicular Recreation Area near Pismo Beach in February 2021.

(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)

Oceano Dunes, near Pismo Beach in San Luis Obispo County, temporarily closed to off-roaders this spring amid long-running legal battles between recreation advocates and environmentalists who say all-terrain vehicles are tearing through western snowy plover habitat and sending clouds of unhealthy dust into nearby neighborhoods.

“Surprise, the Coastal Commission are trying to shut it down because they’re joyless bureaucrats who don’t want anyone to have fun,” Hilton said in a social media video as he leaned on a bright yellow dune buggy on the sand. “And it’s not just about fun. This is a real economic engine for this community.”

If elected, he said, he would create a state “Office of Fun and Freedom.” Its first task? Protecting off-roading at Oceano Dunes.

The campaign for Xavier Becerra, the Democratic gubernatorial candidate, did not return requests for comment.

In Humboldt County, residents have stressed that rural Centerville Beach is nothing like Oceano Dunes, where thousands of pickup trucks, ATVs and dirt bikes may carve through the sand on a given day.

Centerville Beach’s nearest town, Ferndale, the childhood home of celebrity chef Guy Fieri, has a population of just 1,500. Residents say the beach typically sees a handful of four-wheelers and side-by-sides — with most heading out to fish, not joy-riding.

“Centerville is not a beach anyone can just drive on — you’ve got to know what you’re doing,” said Shawn Griggs, a painter who surfs there most mornings. “It’s a very volatile beach with coarse sand. It’s steep right off the shore; the sand bars are transient.”

A view of Centerville Beach, near where Humboldt County is looking to repair a stretch of Centerville Road.

(Beau Sanders / For The Times)

Griggs, 57, described himself as “an environmentalist at heart” who appreciates efforts to protect threatened species. But he doubts vehicles are doing much harm at Centerville.

“With the amount of sand that is pushed off that beach every year and moved around, it’s hard for me to imagine that beach would be a super stable beach for the snowy plover,” he said.

The Coastal Commission staff report says the area is “moderately suitable for plovers,” but that “heavy human use” has degraded the habitat.

In Humboldt County, driving is allowed on a handful of county-maintained beaches, as well as portions of the Samoa Dunes Recreation Area, which is managed by the federal Bureau of Land Management.

Feierabend, who grew up next to Centerville Beach, said vehicles are not destroying the beach — the ocean is.

“No one’s going too fast,” he told the Coastal Commission. “No one’s driving through dunes. In fact, there are no dunes.”

Centerville Beach, home to some of the state’s fastest-eroding cliffs, has been shrinking for decades. The rising and warming sea has accelerated that process in recent years, and powerful El Niño-charged storms this fall and winter could wreak further havoc on the coastline.

A beach parking lot that once accommodated up to 100 vehicles has already washed away. And Centerville Road — a narrow county thoroughfare that provides access to the beach, a few rural homes and the federally managed Lost Coast Headlands — is so regularly slammed by powerful storm waves that it is often covered with sand and made impassable.

The road is what initially brought Centerville Beach to the Coastal Commission’s attention.

The Humboldt County Department of Public Works applied for a required coastal development permit to repair a short stretch of storm-damaged roadway, a project for which it had already secured federal and state funding.

The county has proposed elevating the road 10 feet and adding a new parking area. It also is looking to build a revetment — a sloping layer of rocks on the sand meant to protect the road from waves, at least for a few decades.

Humboldt County initially pushed to move the roadway farther inland, but faced resistance from private landowners.

According to the Coastal Commission staff report, beach erosion puts Centerville Road at “severe risk of being destroyed” within the next five years.

Given the urgency of the needed repairs, the decision to tie the development permit to beach driving felt like “a backroom deal stuck into the project,” Humboldt County Planning Commissioner Iver Skavdal said at the Coastal Commission meeting.

The commission is “holding the project, the residents and the county hostage,” said Skavdal, noting that seven generations of his family had enjoyed the beach.

Though the commission approved the permit on the condition beach driving will be stopped, it added an amendment after locals pushed back — giving Humboldt County an opportunity to write a plan to allow restricted driving, provided it would not harm sensitive habitats. That plan would have to come back to the commission for approval.

The Humboldt County Board of Supervisors still must decide whether to accept the stipulations of the coastal development permit before any construction begins.

The potential loss of driving on Centerville Beach — a unique attraction in California’s sparsely populated, economically depressed northwest corner — struck a chord with residents, about two dozen of whom sat through several hours of a Coastal Commission meeting on a Wednesday morning to speak about it.

“Families here don’t have a lot to do,” Sue Long, former mayor of the nearby city of Fortuna, told the commission. “There’s not a lot of the kind of entertainment you guys have, with waterslides and Disneyland and all of those things. … We count on nature.”

Mike Astry, who runs a small off-road recovery business pulling out vehicles stuck in sand or mud throughout the region, told the commission most people towed off Centerville Beach are out-of-town tourists who traveled just to drive on the beach.

Stopping vehicular access is “a big deal to a lot of people,” Astry, 49, said in an interview. “People driving from out of town that want to come drive on that beach are not going to come to our town and spend money on hotels and food.”

Astry, who also is an automotive maintenance supervisor for Humboldt County, started the towing business with his souped-up Jeep during the COVID-19 pandemic, when people flocked to outdoor spaces during lockdowns. Now, he typically gets one or two calls a week.

At Centerville Beach, he said, “I’ve had some pretty gnarly tows,” including some “little old ladies who thought, ‘Oh, I thought my Prius could go here,’ and it can’t.”

A few years ago, he yanked a Tesla out of the ocean. Powerful waves ripped off its bumper. The driver was from the Bay Area.

“People are just sick of California, their mandates, and this is just one more thing to add to it,” he said of the coastal commission decision. “It’s just a power trip. We pay our frickin taxes.”

Jennifer Savage — California policy associate director for the Surfrider Foundation, a coastal protection nonprofit — was one of the few speakers at the Coastal Commission meeting who focused on a different aspect of the county’s Centerville Beach proposal: the rock revetment next to the old, crumbling road.

Revetments and sea walls, which generally are not allowed for developments built after the Coastal Act took effect in 1977, “make a beach erode significantly faster,” she told The Times.

Erosion has been a known problem for a long time, she said, and “the failure to prepare doesn’t justify sacrificing the public beach.”