Rapid coastal erosion threatens coastal homes and economies, and as Super El Niño rounds the corner, a town is reckoning with the reality of climate crisis

San Clemente is one of southern California’s most picture-perfect beach towns – a capital of American surf culture since the 1950s. In two years, 2028 Olympic surfers will compete at Lower Trestles, a world-class surfing beach.

But the town’s longtime cultural and economic driver, its beaches, are now under threat. As pounding waves driven by late-summer storms in the Pacific devour chunks of the California coastline, some of San Clemente’s beaches are growing narrower, the sand increasingly eaten away.

Beach erosion has become a crisis all along the southern California shoreline this year, with towns from Dana Point and Long Beach to Malibu sustaining dramatic damage.

  • savvie@lemmy.zipOP
    4·
    13 days ago

    On a hot October Friday, Kathy Ruiz, of Laguna Niguel, was sunbathing on a mostly-empty Aliso beach, not far from where construction equipment was repairing the Laguna beach parking lot damaged by early September storm surges.

    “As far as people expecting the city to protect their homes, I don’t think that’s reasonable,” she said. “I think maybe they shouldn’t have built so close to the beach.”

    Some residents want the government to build up sand berms to protect homes against the coming storms, Ruiz said, but she was skeptical.

    “Nature is going to take its course,” Ruiz said. “I think all that stuff is in vain.”