August 28, 2011 Sunday

Ventura	Surfers' Point
7:00 am to 8:00 am	3' to 4', sets to 5'
Mid upcoming tide	Slight onshore breeze
On the deck fog to patchy sun	Fun session

Surfrider Foundation California Conference

I had one brief hour to get in some waves before the conference started. At 6:15 am I was on the strand in front of the Crown Plaza Hotel with my camera in hand checking out the surf at Surfers' Point in Ventura. It was still dark and a low on the deck fog blotted out the waves, it was too dark to take photos. Through the fog I watched the silhouette of a woman longboarder cruise down a nice four-foot wave. The waves had picked up from yesterday - I had to go out.

Yesterday was wind slop - two to three-foot bumpy, short-ride waves. Friday Scott, the chairman of Surfrider Foundation Marin, and I drove 350 miles to Ventura listening to constant "tap-tap-tap" of the strap of my board bag beating on the roof of my car. After that ordeal, I was determined to put my board in the water.

We came to attend the Surfrider Foundation California Conference, a gathering of all the Surfrider chapters in the state. The conference was held in the Crown Plaza Hotel that is located on the water at the end of California Street, next to Ventura's famed C Street. What a perfect venue for a Surfrider conference. There was nothing special about the hotel; it had all the amenities for a successful conference - a large conference hall, decent rooms with good views, and passable restaurant and bar. The hotel's main attraction was its location - just steps away from Surfers' Point, an excellent point break that receives all swells.

The fog lifted while I suited up, the sun came out and being Sunday so did the crowd. Twenty surfers were bunched around the first peak closest to the hotel, but most of them were attendees of the conference that I had met yesterday. Tony from Huntington Beach was out there. Tony was about my age and has lived in Huntington Beach all his life. We had a great discussion last night at the Surfrider social reminiscing about Tin Can Beach - the deserted stretch of beach between Seal Beach and Huntington Beach where anyone could camp. The state has since cleaned it up and renamed it Bolsa Chica (small bag) State Beach. I paddled out and said hello to Alan from the San Luis Obispo chapter. Alan runs his chapter's website. I quickly caught a long right wave and knew I was in for a good session. In that short hour, besides jockeying around the other surfers I managed to drop into a head-high right and later locked into a good left curl. I pushed it to the limits, waiting to the last minute to get out of the water, get changed, shower and grab some coffee and a bowl of granola before the conference started.

While sitting outside between sets I looked at the far point to see the results of the City of Ventura's beach restoration project. The highlight and main take-away of this conference was Ventura's reclaiming of its beach. In 1989 the city built a bike path and parking lot along the coast using giant boulders and concrete rip-rap. In 1992 the popular bike path was destroyed by a giant storm, extreme high tide and pounding waves. The city fathers were ready to bring in tons of rock to build a two-mile seawall to rebuild the bike path and to block the impact of erosion. In stepped Surfrider Foundation and others civil groups to propose alternatives. The local Surfrider chapter formed over this issue.

Fortunately Paul Jenkins, a young civil engineer, surfer and Surfrider member, took up this cause. He presented a history of the restoration and conducted a tour of the restored areas for the attendees of the conference.

"To me, the answer to this problem is simple." Paul recounted his first conversation with the city fathers in 1993. "All you have to do is tear down that Matillja Dam and let the Ventura River restore the natural sand to the beach." The Matillja Dam, which was build in the 1930's, sits seven miles up the Ojai Valley and prevents the water flow and silt of the Ventura River from running down to the sea. The ocean continuously ate away at the coast and with no new sand moving in, all the beach sand was removed. The seas then began eroding the land. Through the persistent work by Paul, Surfrider and other concerned citizens, a new approach was forged and after seventeen years of effort they completed the first phase last month.

The restoration project took a "managed retreat" approach to move all human structures away from the coast and let the natural forces run their course. They pushed back the bike path and parking lot 65 feet. In the process they removed all the surface asphalt and the underneath rocks and rip-rap, graded the whole area to a depth of eight feet and filled it with small cobblestones and covered them with tons of fresh sand. This created a natural barrier to the ocean. Erosion eats away at the sand and cobblestone instead of sandstone cliffs. The next phase will take down the dam and let the slit return to the beach. Over a three-year period, they will slowly remove pieces of the dam to gradually release the years of silt that had accumulated behind the dam.

The Ventura Beach Restoration has become of model on how to do it. For example, San Francisco has an erosion problem at the south end of Ocean Beach at Sloat Avenue. One lane of the Great Highway has washed away and a nearby sanitary pumping station is threatened. The public works department requested "an emergency" permit from the Coastal Commission to dump several tons of boulders on the affected area. The Commission denied their request and insisted they come up with a long-term solution. Surfrider, other stakeholders and the city have formed a committee to draft a master plan to deal with the erosion situation. Surfrider is proposing a form of managed retreat. We'll have to watch this one closely.