![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/Tam2.jpg\")
<\/p>\nA coastal engineer has been contracted to plan repairs for the erosion damage at Carlsbad\u2019s Tamarack Avenue beach parking lot, a state Parks Department officer said Thursday.<\/p>\n
Bids for the project will be sought within the next month or so and the work should be finished by the end of December, parks Lt. Sean Homer told the Carlsbad Environmental Sustainability Commission.<\/p>\n
The parking lot, popular with surfers and beachgoing families, has been closed to vehicles since the high tides and storm-surge waves of the Labor Day weekend. Chunks of asphalt on the seaside edge of the lot have washed away despite a barrier of boulders placed for protection.<\/p>\n
The state Parks Department owns and maintains about six of Carlsbad\u2019s seven miles of coastline. The exception is the northmost mile near the Oceanside border.<\/p>\n
Carlsbad has an agreement with the state for the city to maintain some sections, primarily the stretch along the concrete seawall between Tamarack and Pine avenues, to a higher level than it would otherwise be kept by the state, with landscaping, benches and restrooms.<\/p>\n
Much of the beach between Tamarack and Pine has been eroded down to cobblestones at the base of the seawall. The beaches are the narrowest they\u2019ve been in years.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat I am seeing now is alarming, powerful waves are stripping away the shoreline,\u201d said Amber Martinez, a fourth-generation Carlsbad resident who addressed the commission. \u201cPeople need to know more about what the state and city are doing about it.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Phil Diehl<\/p>\n
The state Parks Department has hired a consulting engineers to plan repairs for the erosion damage at the Tamarack Avenue beach parking lot in Carlsbad. (Phil Diehl \/ San Diego Union-Tribune)<\/p>\n
Some of the commission members agreed and said the city and state should do a better job of working together to protect the beaches.<\/p>\n
\u201cSomebody\u2019s got to do something about this and get everybody talking along the same lines,\u201d said Commissioner Liam Ferguson.<\/p>\n
Last month, Carlsbad declared a local emergency to address a separate coastal erosion problem. Just south of an intersection with Palomar Airport Road, high tides and waves in recent weeks have eaten away the base of a seaside bluff and threaten to undermine Carlsbad Boulevard, also known as Highway 101.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve already seen significant erosion, and we anticipate more,\u201d said Jason Haber, the city\u2019s intergovernmental affairs director.<\/p>\n
The city plans to bring in a crane and place boulders weighing 4 to 8 tons each on the beach at the foot of the bluff over the next few weeks, city officials said. The additional rock will extend an existing revetment 192 feet to the north.<\/p>\n
![\"Cars](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/emergency.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n
Phil Diehl<\/p>\n
Cars and runners on Carlsbad Boulevard pass an area where Carlsbad has declared an emergency to expedite the extension of a rock revetment. (Union-Tribune)<\/p>\n
The existing revetment consists of heavy boulders along 1,270 feet of the base of the bluff north of the Encinas Creek outlet, city officials said. About 750 feet of that was installed in 2009, and 520 feet more was added in 2015 and 2016.<\/p>\n
Environmentalists say revetments may be a short-term solution, but they bring long-term problems. For one thing, they take up space that otherwise would be available for public recreation. A more serious concern is that over the years the rock walls contribute to the erosion they are intended to prevent.<\/p>\n
Carlsbad\u2019s beaches rely largely on sediment dredged from the Agua Hedionda and Batiquitos lagoons for replenishment every few years. Natural sources of sand have dwindled with coastal development and the placement of barriers such as seawalls and revetments.<\/p>\n
For years, Agua Hedionda was dredged by San Diego Gas and Electric Co. to keep the lagoon open for the Encina power plant\u2019s water-dependent cooling system. Today, that responsibility falls to the owners of the Carlsbad desalination plant, which needs the lagoon kept deep enough for access to the huge volumes of seawater the plant uses.<\/p>\n
Agua Hedionda was last dredged in early 2025, so that is unlikely to happen again for another two or three years.<\/p>\n
Carlsbad also could get sand from a regional replenishment project proposed by the San Diego Association of Governments.<\/p>\n
SANDAG completed regional sand projects in 2001 and 2012, and plans are underway for a third that would be the agency\u2019s largest yet. However, each project takes years to plan and funding is difficult to obtain.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A coastal engineer has been contracted to plan repairs for the erosion damage at Carlsbad\u2019s Tamarack Avenue beach…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":485779,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[24148,58229,99340,189897,25644,74,76,75,189896,189895],"class_list":["post-485778","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-diego","tag-beach-replenishment","tag-carlsbad-boulevard","tag-carlsbad-state-beach","tag-emergency-repairs","tag-highway-101","tag-san-diego","tag-san-diego-headlines","tag-san-diego-news","tag-shoreline-erosion","tag-tamarack-beach-parking"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/485778","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=485778"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/485778\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/485779"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=485778"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=485778"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=485778"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}