Monday, February 1, 2010

Coastal flooding - Sanjon

Recent high tides and large surf have built up the berm along the beach in Ventura. What was a sandy beach is now a cobble berm... cobble originating from the Ventura River. Wave overtopping of this berm has filled the Sanjon estuary, backing up all the way onto the street. The road has been closed since the weekend. Several years ago, State Parks ended the practice of artificially breaching the lagoon in order to allow natural restoration of the area. This has been successful in allowing the wetland to regenerate, and often forms a longer meandering flow path before discharging to the ocean. As we have documented in "Solving the Urban Runoff Problem," restoring this wetland would help solve water quality problems as well as the ongoing flooding of lower Sanjon road.