{"id":492249,"date":"2026-10-11T04:28:27","date_gmt":"2026-10-11T04:28:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/492249\/"},"modified":"2026-10-11T04:28:27","modified_gmt":"2026-10-11T04:28:27","slug":"why-one-small-stretch-of-long-beach-keeps-getting-pounded-with-damaging-waves","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/492249\/","title":{"rendered":"Why one small stretch of Long Beach keeps getting pounded with damaging waves"},"content":{"rendered":"

Long Beach is famously surrounded by a breakwater<\/a> to protect its harbor, but that massive barrier hasn\u2019t been able to shield homes on the city\u2019s Peninsula from hurricane-charged swells recently.<\/p>\n

Over the last few weeks, strong waves have repeatedly stripped away sand, broken through a boardwalk bulkhead and threatened to collapse beachside homes by clawing away the sand underneath them. All of this keeps happening in a narrow stretch of homes along the Peninsula, mostly between 62nd and 69th places.<\/p>\n

Those few blocks are vulnerable to swells coming from the south because of an opening in the breakwater and jetty that allows boat access to Alamitos Bay.<\/p>\n

In order to protect those homes, Long Beach typically builds a sand berm to block waves. When waves rip it away, the breakwater keeps it from washing out to sea, and it instead piles up to the west<\/a> near downtown (a phenomenon called littoral drift.) The city spends $1 million to $1.5 million a year<\/a> on trucking that sand back to the Peninsula and rebuilding the beach.<\/p>\n

This year, it hasn\u2019t been enough.<\/p>\n

El Ni\u00f1o\u2019s warm waters<\/a> have supercharged high tides. That, combined with hurricane-driven waves coming up from the south, has stripped so much sand away from the Peninsula\u2019s beach that the wooden bulkhead under the coastal boardwalk has been exposed.<\/p>\n

At high tide, breakers now slap directly against the wood, repeatedly splintering it.<\/p>\n

The city is hoping to soon start a $11.4 million dredging project<\/a> to gather enough sand to rebuild the beach and protect the boardwalk, but that can\u2019t happen while it\u2019s getting pounded by the surf.<\/p>\n

There may be some relief soon. Hurricane season in the eastern Pacific runs from mid-May through November. Hurricanes later in the year are much more likely to form in the western Pacific \u2014 as opposed to the southeast \u2014 and the federal breakwater that shields Long Beach\u2019s harbor blunts the swells that originate from the west. That\u2019s why much of California\u2019s western coast may still see dangerous waves through the winter, though Long Beach is usually safe.<\/p>\n

To bolster the Peninsula\u2019s defenses, Long Beach is now considering a $6.8 million plan to build a rock revetment \u2014 a wall of boulders that would sit behind the beach as a backup.<\/p>\n

\"An<\/p>\n

This aerial view of the Peninsula was included in a city report on ways to replenish its sand.<\/p>\n

(<\/p>\n

City of Long Beach<\/p>\n

\/<\/p>\n

via Long Beach Post<\/p>\n

)<\/p>\n

But for a long-term solution, officials say it may cost $150 million to $350 million for a full habitat and shoreline restoration \u2014 funded partly<\/a> by state mitigation credits.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s the kind of project that would take massive amounts of approvals and planning and likely some delays. The city council, for now, has approved $30,000 to look into it further.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Long Beach is famously surrounded by a breakwater to protect its harbor, but that massive barrier hasn\u2019t been…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":492250,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[10648,131,133,132,191784,145142],"class_list":["post-492249","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-long-beach","tag-el-nino","tag-long-beach","tag-long-beach-headlines","tag-long-beach-news","tag-pennisula","tag-waves"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/492249","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=492249"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/492249\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/492250"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=492249"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=492249"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=492249"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}