Against the Grain : Agency Kicks Sand in Faces of Carlsbad Beach-Goers, Who Are Seeing Red

CARLSBAD —  All is not happiness on the red sand beach of Carlsbad.

“It’s terrible,” said Carmen Ralston, who vacations from Las Vegas. “Somebody must have made a boo-boo.”

“I hate it,” said Sheryl Isola, a flight attendant from Vista.

“It’s sad,” said Alice Pendleton, an audiologist from Carlsbad.

“Whose idea was this anyway?” asked Jim Kravitz, a free-lance drywaller and surfer from Escondido.

Answer: the California Coastal Commission, which--in a struggle to stop the annual theft of sand by the forces of Mother Nature--required a developer of an oceanfront condominium project to dump 20,000 cubic yards of the stuff on a 300-yard stretch of beach at the high-water mark.

We say “stuff” because that is where the dispute begins. The Coastal Commission says it is sand and, indeed, it fits the technical grain-size definition of sand, although admittedly it pushes the envelope: sand with a high soil content.

To many beach users, it is still dirt and therefore aesthetically unacceptable as a place to spread out your beach towel and read the latest summer novel. That the sand is the same color and texture as the oceanfront bluffs along much of the coast has not blunted the criticism. The red color comes from the high content of iron oxide.

“It’s ugly,” Ralston said.

Maybe so, but the red sand is a wave of the future as the never-ending Southern California sand battle continues. White sand is expensive and increasingly difficult to obtain. Inland dams block the seaward flow of natural sand, and the rising number of seawalls and jetties along the coast inhibit the natural replenishment of sand.

In the search for sand to replace the sand swept off the beaches by the inexorable power of the ocean, red sand is close at hand and can be obtained by merely slapping on a condition for a builder trying to build in the coastal zone.

There is a good chance that more beaches will soon have sand that has a high soil content and a different hue. Other sand replenishment projects, notably in Santa Cruz and at Guadalupe Dunes in San Luis Obispo County, have brought darker-colored sand to sand-starved beaches, although none was as startling as the red sand of Carlsbad, officials said.

Carlsbad has asked the Coastal Commission for an “opportunistic permit,” so other beaches can get the same treatment without a lengthy process of hearings and environmental reports. And the nearby city of Solana Beach has a plan to dump 200,000 cubic yards of sand/dirt/material on its main beach, Fletcher Cove.

“We knew it had a soil component to it, but we were not expecting it to be as red as it is,” said Ed Navarro, San Diego regional director of the state Department of Parks and Recreation, which has responsibility for the red sand beach of Carlsbad. “Once you put it up against the white, pristine sand, the contrast is staggering.”

Still, Navarro and the Coastal Commission sand experts are confident that, given a few years of bleaching and cleansing by the sun and waves, the red sand will lose its rusty color and be more, well, sand-like in appearance.

Until then, the red sand sits there unloved. On a recent sunny afternoon, the rest of the beach was in heavy use by picnickers, sunbathers and surfers, but the red sand was unused.

“It may be sand to the planners, but it’s dirt to me,” said Bill Withers, a food wholesaler from Chula Vista. He considers this sand, just north of the Carlsbad state campground, the best and most accessible stretch of beach in San Diego County.

The negative public reaction has put Parks and Recreation and the Coastal Commission on the defensive. “If we’ve learned one thing,” said Coastal Commission sand specialist Sherilyn Sarb, “it’s that we underestimated the public reaction.”

Navarro presents a friendly challenge: Close your eyes and see if you can tell the difference between the white and the red. Truth to tell, The Times took up Navarro’s challenge and misidentified the two handfuls during a blind test.

The Carlsbad backlash should not come as a surprise. Beach politics can be explosive along San Diego’s scenic (and affluent) north county. The beach at Del Mar has been called the most litigated beach in Southern California.

“Nobody wants their beach messed up,” said Solana Beach City Manager Robert Semple.

The red sand controversy has made good fodder for talk radio.

“I’ve heard of the turf meeting the surf,” said Ken Leighton, host of Night-Talk on KCEO-1000, paraphrasing the Del Mar racetrack slogan, “but this is preposterous. Maybe we should look on the bright side: Now we can plant roses at our favorite beach.”

Mindful of the Carlsbad experience, Solana Beach is going slow on its sand replenishment plan. The Solana Beach sand will not be as red and will probably bleach out faster because it will be dumped closer to the waves, Semple said.

The Solana Beach sand would come from a railroad right of way project along Pacific Coast Highway, a couple of hundred yards from the beach.

Unlike Carlsbad, where the sand was dumped just before the peak summer season, Solana Beach is thinking of dumping its sand a year from now, at the end of next summer.

For one thing, the Carlsbad furor may have dampened. Although the red sand is winning no popularity contests, there is at least some indication that it is gathering a grudging acceptance.

“It’s not scenically pleasing,” said Kurt Kranz, a San Diego investment broker enjoying a beach romp with his two children, “but if it stops the erosion, then I’m all for it.”

That’s the reaction the sand planners were hoping for.

“We really need the sand, even if it’s red sand,” said Diana Lilly, a planner with the Coastal Commission. “It’s that or cobblestone beaches.”