By At its March 12 meeting, the Long Beach City Council made a breakthrough in the breakwater reconfiguration effort.
The City Council unanimously voted to authorize additional funding toward a federal study for reconfiguration of the Long Beach breakwater.
The breakwater, a rock formation built in 1949 to harbor and protect a once stationed U.S. naval fleet, stretches from about the Queen Mary to the Alamitos Bay, blocking wave activity from breaking onto the city’s shores.
The Surfrider Foundation, the leading environmental group pushing for reconfiguration, states in its official brochure that there has been increased demand for the breakwater’s removal from thousands of Long Beach residents since the naval base closed in 1997.
Vice Mayor Robert Garcia said a study to determine the possibility of a reconfiguration is the first step. If reconfiguration is possible, he said he believes the result would be cleaner beaches and a restored ecosystem that would attract more tourists and money to the city.
“If we had additional wave activity and clear water and more people on the beach,” Garcia said, “that would lead to a lot of economic development and restoration of the beach and bring a [greater] population to our beaches.”
Long Beach City Councilmember Patrick O’Donnell said many nearby environmentalists and politicians have joined him throughout the past 12 years in requesting a reconfiguration.
“I was very alone at the start of this … I’m not alone now,” O’Donnell said. “You’re standing alone one day, and the next thing you know every ear beside you are now all in front of you.”
O’Donnell was born in Long Beach and grew up sailing off the city’s shores. He graduated from Cal State Long Beach in 1992 before joining the City Council and becoming involved in the breakwater effort nearly a decade later.
Because the breakwater lies off of Long Beach property, putting it in ownership of the federal government, every step toward a reconfiguration has to be approved by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, according to Garcia.
A $100,000 reconnaissance study that essentially requested the federal government’s participation in the reconfiguration project was completed in 2009, O’Donnell said. The study showed that if the city could secure clean water and more recreational opportunity on beaches, it could accumulate up to $52 million annually.
“What I push is not necessarily the solution but the question of whether or not you can alter the breakwater in some form,” O’Donnell said. “We need to protect maritime trade and beachfront property, and that’s what this study is all about.”
The second step, approved last Tuesday, allocates City Manager Pat West to add additional funding to “speed along the process” of studying whether or not a reconfiguration is possible, Lena Gonzalez, field deputy of Garcia’s district, said.
“It will look at whether or not we can do that while still protecting our coastal homes and the port,” Garcia said. “And if we can’t do it, then we’re not going to do much.”
According to the City Council meeting’s staff report, West will add $750,000 to an existing $1.5 million budget to accelerate the study.
Garcia expects a study preparation of six to nine months before the Army Corps can execute the study, which Garcia said will take up to three years.
“We’re not as far as we want to be,” O’Donnell said, “but we’re further than anyone thought we would be.”
