San Clemente’s ‘sand czar’ looks to turn back the tide of coastal erosion
Before becoming San Clemente’s new coastal administrator last year, the beach has always held a nostalgic place in Leslea Meyerhoff’s heart.
“Some of my earliest memories are walking the beach in Santa Monica with my grandma,” she said. “I also recall fond times boogie boarding, collecting seashells or just enjoying a stroll at the beach.”
On a recent foggy afternoon by San Clemente Pier, Meyerhoff looked on from a picnic bench as a handful of families similarly walked along the beach while others carried boogie boards into the ocean.
In recent years, the city’s eroding beaches have been a far cry from the wide, expansive sands of Meyerhoff’s Santa Monica memories.
But a year into her role as San Clemente’s coastal administrator, stretches of the south Orange County city’s shores are in much better shape, thanks to taking a cue from Santa Monica’s sand pumping past.
“She’s been nothing short of extraordinary,” said San Clemente Mayor Victor Cabral. “We desperately needed someone like her with her qualifications, experience and connections to move the city forward, particularly with the enormous problems we have with sand and protecting our coastal infrastructure.”
The initial phase of a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers sand replenishment project has pumped a fresh batch of beige sand that has stretched the coastline further out toward the ocean. Crews are due back in November to finish the job of bringing 251,000 cubic yards of sand around the pier.
San Clemente also just announced the completion of an emergency project to repair North Beach with 37,000 cubic yards of sand trucked in from Orange County’s Santa Ana River stockpile site.
Dump trucks are set to haul 30,000 cubic yards of sand to San Clemente’s critically eroded stretch of beach this summer to stave off risks associated with its vanishing coastline.
More than beautifying the beach for recreation and tourism, San Clemente’s sand projects are intended to protect infrastructure like the Lossan train tracks that coil by the coast to the picnic table Meyerhoff sat on as she discussed her “sand czar” role.
“We can’t wait for Mother Nature, because she’s not able to do her job, at least for this stretch of coast,” she said. “That’s why we’ve had to restore the beaches ourselves.”
Urban development has choked off natural sand replenishment, whether from river beds or bluffs that are armored by train tracks. In the future, sea level rise prompted by global warming will present a new threat to the integrity of San Clemente’s beaches.
Sensing the task ahead, the San Clemente City Council approved the creation of a coastal administrator position to manage sand replenishment projects, guide coastal resiliency plans and serve as a liaison with different government agencies.
At an Oct. 3, 2023 council meeting, council members awarded Meyerhoff a three-year contract.
She came into the job having started the Summit Environmental Group as a small business in 2004 after earning a master’s degree in urban planning from UCLA.
By 2016, Meyerhoff counted San Clemente as a client when the city hired her to help with its local coastal program, which guides development and resource protection in accordance with state law.
She also worked on San Clemente’s Sea Level Rise Vulnerability Assessment in 2019 and the city’s Coastal Resiliency Plan in 2021.
Prior to taking on the coastal administrator job, Meyerhoff helped manage the Army Corps’ Solana Beach sand replenishment project.
“It was actually an easy transition for me to step into the role in San Clemente,” she said.
Crews overseen by the Army Corps set up on the beach by San Clemente Pier a month into Meyerhoff’s tenure as coastal administrator. And then, the long-awaited Army Corps project that took two decades to secure funding for hit an unexpected snag.
When the borrow site off the coast of Oceanside didn’t damage equipment, piping spewed its unusable cobble-strewn sediment on the beach.
“We had to come up with an alternate plan pretty quickly,” Meyerhoff said. “It required everyone to work together.”
She recalled 100-hour workweeks that spilled into weekends and the holidays.
The project was delayed for several months as all-involved worked to secure permitting to use the Surfside-Sunset Beach borrow site in northern O.C.
When work resumed in April, the beach was widened with 114,000 cubic yards of sand just in time for summer.
As part of a 50-year plan, the Army Corps will assess future sand replenishment efforts every five to six years.
But that’s not the only beach nourishment plan in the works for San Clemente.
The Orange County Transportation Authority is in the planning stages of a project to protect the Lossan tracks in San Clemente with riprap and 541,000 cubic yards of sand. The San Diego Assn. of Governments’ third Regional Beach Sand Project is slated to bring a million cubic yards of sand to San Clemente in the future.
Meyerhoff stays in contact with all involved agencies in trying to integrate and streamline the incoming projects as much as possible.
“We are all trying to solve the same problem,” she said. “My role is to advocate the city’s position, which is [that] sand is the best solution.”
It’s a message Meyerhoff has brought to residents so that they can better understand the city’s efforts against erosion.
“She has taken a strategic approach to doing an assessment of the entire 4.5-mile coastline of San Clemente,” said Cameron Cosgrove, a resident and planning commission chair. “She’s presented that in several public forums where members of the public could come and get educated and also provide their input on potential options moving forward.”
In the Nov. 5 election San Clemente voters will have a say in the future of the city’s beaches in the form of Measure BB, which proposes a half-percent sales tax hike to fund the city’s share of the Army Corps project.
Signs popping up around town in support of the ballot measure, which Cosgrove serves as campaign leader, urge residents to “restore our beaches” with a “yes” vote.
Citing a need for revenue to address beach erosion, San Clemente City Council approved a ballot measure that would increase the sales tax by half a percent.
The scaled-down hike means that even if the initiative passes, San Clemente will still need to track down additional funding for sand projects outside of the Army Corps, a task a coastal administrator would lead.
“You can get the permits, you can get through the environmental studies, but you need money, at the end of the day, to build these projects,” Meyerhoff said.
With more sand planned for San Clemente’s future, efforts against erosion also entail monitoring and retention.
The city is currently working on a study funded by the California Coastal Commission that is assessing breakwaters, artificial reefs and other sand retention strategies.
Every grain of sand goes toward a future that Meyerhoff envisions where a walkable beach from Dana Point Harbor to Trestles isn’t thwarted by erosion at any point along the way.
“The need for the beach is going to increase — not decrease — over time,” Meyerhoff said. “All the things we’re doing now —restoring the beaches, looking at retention solutions, looking at comprehensive beach nourishment from the south end to the north end of the city — are going to promote resiliency in the city now and with sea level rise.”
It’s all in a day’s work for San Clemente’s “sand czar.”
Meyerhoff doesn’t know where the tagline came from but shares a chuckle at its expense.
“I’m fine with it,” she said with a laugh. “My mission is to get sand delivered to the beach. That is my focus for San Clemente.”
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