The message hit like cold water on a hot pan..LBREPORT.com provides extended VIDEO coverage below.

[Scroll down for further.]

Eduardo T. De Mesa, Chief, Planning Division in the Los Angeles District of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, indicated COE modeling of various options is complete but didn't share the findings. Mr. De Mesa said COE staff will now apply the findings, analyze and select two among three to five options to advance...and the two it selects may or may not include breakwater matters (depending on their effectiveness in "ecosystem restoration"). That COE choice, in which City staff will have input, is now expected by year end.

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City of LB Gov't Affairs Mgr. Diana Tang stressed that the process is ongoing and the City has been and will continue to advocate the inclusion of breakwater reconfiguration in the Study with the City's interests including improved water quality.

Among those present at the Surfrider Foundation's meeting (held at MADE by Millworks in downtown Long Beach) was retired PressTelegram reporter/columnist Bill Hillburg, credited by Surfrider LB Chapter President Seamus Innes with having first raised the breakwater issue in 1996.

Also present was Assemblyman (and former Councilman) Patrick O'Donnell (D, LB) [who conducts an annual "paddle out in memory of the waves."] He voiced displeasure on learning that only two options [at most] might advance for breakwater modifications.

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Proposals to change the breakwater have encountered resistance from Peninsula homeowners [fear of flooding] and from maritime (Port) interests [who want calm waters for loading/unloading cargo.] One individual attending the meeting provided LBREPORT.com with a three page letter reciting grounds why removing the breakwater would harm habitats. Another individual asked rhetorically if any public officials would acknowledge that modifiying the breakwater to bring back waves would harm the Ports...and received a round of audience "boos."

The Surfrider Foundation's LB branch advocates protecting Peninsula homeowners by creating a wider Beach [similar to Newport Beach] with protective jetties, and proposes to modify only the eastern [beach area] portion of the breakwater, not the western area near the Ports.

However, efforts to directly study modifying the breakwater have undergone political and bureaucratic erosion. In 2010, the Corps of Engineers (with City of LB approval) indicated its "federal interest" in evaluating ways to restore the area's "ecosystems" and various habitats, impacted by poor water quality (in part from lack of wave action.) That isn't completely inconsistent with modifying the breakwater, but it changed the focus to considering such modifications in the context of ecosystem restorations, not recreational waves.

As part of his 2014 Mayoral election campaign, then-candidate Robert Garcia strongly advocated reconfiguring the breakwater to restore wave action (at one point in his campaign showing a photo of 1930's surfing in Long Beach.) But two years later in June 2016, the City of Long Beach -- with Mayor Garcia and Congressman Alan Lowenthal participating in a photo op -- approved a Corps of Engineers feasibility study that would do much less. The officially adopted COE document states:

"The purpose of this study is to evaluate ecosystem restoration measures within East San Pedro Bay. To design a restoration project, reconfigurations of the Long Beach Breakwater, as it affects the water quality and hydrodynamics of the area, may be analyzed as part of an array alternatives. Potential reconfiguration could provide an opportunity for rocky materials from the breakwater reconfiguration to be used for ecosystem restoration measures." [Source: Corps of Engineers East San Pedro Bay Ecosystem Feasibility Study, June 21, 2016, p. 2.

While mindful of these limitiations, the Surfrider Foundation's LB branch remains consistent in pressing for reconfiguration of the breakwater on its merits, and to include breakwater reconfiguration as part of the current COE study.

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