California may destroy its beaches trying to save homes from El Niño

California plans to use seawalls, large walls of boulders called “riprap” and other coastal armouring strategies to protect coastal homes and infrastructure from the incoming El Niño, but experts worry that the strategy will harm the state's beaches. As sea levels rise, more and more of the coastline will slip beneath the shore — sandy beaches can survive by retreating inland, but if blocked by seawalls or other barriers, the sand will simply disappear.

The Los Angeles Times reports:

“Sea walls and revetments and rock riprap can temporarily protect homes and public infrastructure like the train tracks, but they ultimately destroy the beach,” said Chad Nelsen, chief executive of the Surfrider Foundation, a coastal and ocean conservation organization. 

“We’re making a trade-off between protecting the property and infrastructure for the public’s beach.”

Already in Pacifica, a city near San Francisco, “a beach that existed in the 1970s has given way to a mostly armored coastline,” Rong-Gong Lin II writes for the LA Times.