Executive Summary
No Action Alternative
Under the No Action Alternative, no dredging or beach replenishment activities would occur, and erosion
at the region's beaches would continue without intervention. This would result in failure to enhance
recreational opportunities, enhance tourism value, or achieve property and infrastructure protection at
specific receiver sites. It would also preclude the addition of sand in the three littoral cells which could
thereby indirectly enhance other beach locations. Finally, it would not provide the opportunity to monitor
the post-project condition for purposes of increasing knowledge regarding the state-of-the-art modeling
process. While all these failures would be specific to the proposed specific receiver sites, there is a region-
wide benefit that would also be lost.
ES-5 MONITORING AND MITIGATION FRAMEWORK
Although sand replenishment has occurred along the San Diego region coastline for well over 50 years
(USACOE 1991), the effects of sand transport have not been effectively monitored to date. While there
are coastal engineering models to predict sand transport from beach replenishment, there is little local data
available to verify how the actual conditions compare to the predicted. As part of the permits issued to the
Navy for their beach replenishment project, a Coastal Monitoring Plan was approved by the U.S. Army
Corps of Engineers in 1997. That plan described a monitoring program to be implemented subsequent to
sand placement and for a four-year period following the action. The intent of the monitoring was to verify
that there were no long-term, significant impacts to sensitive biological resources. If impacts were
identified, then mitigation would be required. While sand placement was halted prior to completion, the
required monitoring continued by the Navy as required by the permit until 2001. Since the projects are
substantially the same, except with respect to sand source and less sand volume than the Navy's project,
a similar monitoring program would be implemented for the Regional Beach Sand Project. A mitigation
commitment would also be necessary in case long-term, significant impacts are identified during monitoring.
This section summarizes the framework for monitoring and mitigation for the RegionalBeach Sand Project.
The final details are most appropriately determined upon selection of an alternative and negotiation of
permit conditions with the resource agencies. Items such as exact monitoring locations would depend on
the alternative to be implemented.
Monitoring can be considered in terms of "during construction" and "post-construction." Monitoring during
construction would be required to verify that specified site-specific, resources are not adversely impacted
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