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7_BEACON Tech Report (FINAL)

SECTION 1.0 - INTRODUCTION

1.1 BACKGROUND

Santa Barbara and Ventura County beaches have been eroding for many years

because sand mining, dams, and debris basins have cut off the natural supply of sand

to the coast. This ongoing beach erosion destroys marine habitat, reduces recreational

beach space and threatens coastal property and structures. The proposed project is to

establish a beach enhancement program for south central coast beaches by developing

procedures and obtaining permits to allow beach-compatible sediments that may be

available from debris basins, landslides, dams, wetlands, rivers, and lagoon mouths to

be used for routine beach nourishment purposes. Frequently, opportunities arise to

nourish local beaches with sediments from construction projects such as debris basin

cleanouts, landslide cleanups, construction grading, and dam decommissionings.

However, most opportunities are lost because regulatory permits for coastal sediment

disposal may take many months to receive approval.

BEACON is a joint-powers agency consisting of the Counties of Ventura and Santa

Barbara and the Cities of Santa Barbara, Carpinteria, San BuenaVentura, Oxnard and

Port Hueneme. BEACON proposes to establish a long-term beach enhancement

program so that sediment from opportunistic sources can be used to nourish eroded

beaches. Protocols will be established to prevent adverse environmental impacts to

designated receiver beaches, and criteria will be developed to determine that sediment

is compatible with receiver beaches. Once sand has been placed on a receiver site,

waves will move it down coast, benefiting all beaches east of the receiver site.

This report describes the biological resources in the BEACON project area and

analyzes the potential effects of the proposed project on those resources. Section 1.2

below briefly describes the proposed project. Section 2.0 describes the existing

biological resources. Section 3.0 analyzes the impacts of BEACON's proposed beach

enhancement program. Section 4.0 summarizes monitoring, habitat protection, and

1.2 PROPOSED PROJECT

BEACON proposes to implement a program to pursue opportunities for obtaining

suitable beach sand for placement at selected beach sites for erosion control and

recreational benefits. The six beach enhancement sites are Goleta Beach and Ash

Avenue in Santa Barbara County and Oil Piers, Surfer's Point, Oxnard Shores and

Hueneme Beach in Ventura County (Figure 1-1 and 1-2).

The program is designed to capitalize on opportunities to obtain beach-quality sand

from flood control debris basins, landslides, construction projects, dam removal

activities, wetlands restoration and harbor dredging when it becomes available. The

objective is to streamline the permit process for implementing beach-fill projects for the

overall purposes of:

3208 Bio Report

06/12/02