A sand project planned for West Newport has surfers worried about the immediate future of the area’s wave and water quality — both of which, some say, are still recovering from the last attempt to replenish the beaches.
An estimated 70,000 cubic yards of sand will be hauled from the Santa Ana River to between the 50th and 40th street jetties, finger outcroppings that are among the area’s best waves to surf. The county-led project is two-fold: to remove excess sand built up in the river to avoid flooding, and to replenish sand at a stretch of nearby beach.
Work is expected to continue through late November.
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Longtime surfer Lorin Ely-McGregor, who lives near the project site, said the most recent dredging project, in 2017 — which piped the sediment into the water rather than place it on the beach — was detrimental to the wave quality. Until recently, he said, the popular area between the 56th and 32nd street jetties, remained unsurfable.
“They dumped a lot of really disgusting sand straight into the shore,” he said. “It ruined a lot of the surf spots for a year and a half. It’s just now recovering, because of how aggressive they are with the sand.”
Peaky and sometimes barreling waves instead turned to a heavy shorebreak, with an unridable backwash. So instead of surfing his local spot, Ely-McGregor found himself searching for waves elsewhere, such as Huntington Beach and San Clemente.
“It’s been so horrible or inconsistent,” he said. “It’s turned me away from surfing locally more.”
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Project operators are using a different method this time, hauling truckloads of sand and placing it directly on the existing sand.
“We don’t anticipate any impact to surf in the area, as sand will be spread directly on the beach,” Shannon Widor, communications officer for OC Public Works, said in an e-mail. “Lifeguards will be around and will assist in answering public concerns throughout the project duration.”
The beach will remain open, he wrote, and the truck depositing sand will be accompanied by a lifeguard to direct and relocate beach-goers in and around the area.
Widor said the new project is much smaller than the sand management project that took place from 2016 through 2017. It’s part of the county’s regular maintenance at the Santa Ana River outlet, which typically happens before the start of the storm season in October, he said.
The rock jetties — which stick out like fingers to the sea — were put in during the ’60s when the area was slammed by strong surf and storms, eroding the beach and threatening beach-front homes. The groin jetties help capture sand to lessen erosion.
Those jetties also create surf that draws hundreds of wave riders when swells hit. 
Access to the area near the mouth of the Santa Ana River, where sand already is being piled up to be hauled to the jetties, has been more strict in recent weeks.
Dog owners have been warned or cited for being in the area, a longtime unofficial dog beach that the county argues is a flood control area. And at least one person without a dog has been cited for trespassing.
The recent enforcement makes local dog beach advocate Jon Pedersen question the timing of the dredging project.
“There’s clearly a new mandate now,” he said. “Apparently, they are just telling people to leave … they’re impacting users of what we call a beach today, with people who have historically gone there with their families.”
The beach has been debated for years, with concerns ranging from unruly dogs to the impacts on rare bird species.
“They can call it whatever they want,” Pedersen said. “People have used it as a beach, and they’ve come to expect to use it.”
Typically with the first big rain, stormwater flushes sand in the Santa Ana River out to sea, creating a sand bar which improves the surf. Given that history, Pedersen said, using funds to remove the sand manually seems like a waste of taxpayers dollars.
“One good storm would take that sand bar out and away into the ocean,” he said.
Some residents also worry about the quality of the unfiltered sand being put on the beach and reaching the ocean. The Santa Ana River is often littered with debris from inland storm drains which settles into the channel before storms send the trash to the ocean.
“The sand is being pulled from the river — it’s disgusting,” Ely-McGregor said. “There’s needles and condoms and horrible stuff coming out of that river. They are going to take that sand and put it straight onto the beaches. That’s just stuff that is visible, there’s also the toxins you can’t see. I have small kids that surf there, my wife surfs. They will all be in that water.”
Steve Rosanski, president of the Newport Beach Chamber of Commerce, said the dredging project is important to minimize flood hazard in the river, with the added perk of sandy beaches.
Rosanski said he visited Laguna Beach recently and saw only 20 feet of sand in front of where he was sitting. It’s a problem many south Orange County beaches are grappling with as erosion chips away at the coastline, in some areas water blanketing entire beaches during high tides.
“There’s not a lot of stretch of beach there to protect the homes,” he said. “If we didn’t do (replenishment), we wouldn’t have the beaches we have today.”
Surfer Tom Cozad, who has watched local sand projects through the years, said the sand should be placed on the north side of each jetty and shaped in the form of a wedge to avoid ruining the surf breaks.
“If this does not happen we are probably looking at nothing but shore pound and backwash for a long time,” he said.
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