Orange County officials are looking for answers on how to solve beach erosion that threatens Amtrak’s coastal rail routes.
Not only are the beach sands vanishing in places like San Clemente, the erosion is so close to Amtrak’s Pacific Surfliner route — the second-busiest intercity passenger rail in the country — that it had to close for six months.
“If you head out there, you’ll see that the waves are really right at the boulders, the riprap, which is right next to the railroad tracks,” said O.C. Supervisor Katrina Foley.
Foley said the band-aid fix of putting more boulders on the shoreline is actually accelerating the coastal erosion.
“When the waves hit the boulders, the retreat of the waves digs into the existing sand and pulls sand back into the ocean, which is what’s causing the coast to erode,” Foley said.
A $7 million study headed by University of California, Irvine researchers will try to answer whether the erosion can be halted, or if Amtrak will be forced to relocate the coastal rail route at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars.
The study should provide answers within 18 months to five years.
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