High tides and a fresh swell recently shoved ocean water over the sand berms that guard the Long Beach Peninsula, sending waves across the boardwalk and splashing up onto front porches. It was an unnerving preview of what higher seas could make routine. City crews hustled to rebuild the berms and truck sand back onto the narrow strip while residents quietly kept tally of how many times their porches had flooded this year. The photos and firsthand accounts echo the same point: the beach is thinner now than it was decades ago.
King tides offer a glimpse of tomorrow
“What is happening rarely now will happen almost at every high tide when we get to the end of the century,” Scripps oceanographer Mark Merrifield told LAist. Tide charts maintained by the city show recent high tides topping seven feet, pushing water farther across the sand than in recent years. Satellite and tide data from NASA underline that global sea level rise is accelerating, which makes those king-tide overtop events more likely to repeat.
Sand berms, roaring trucks and a dredge on deck
Long Beach has been building sand berms year-round on the peninsula for the last decade and now runs trucks six days a week to move sand from the wider western beach back to the peninsula, officials say. “We're running out of space to build the berms because we're not able to keep up with the sand movement,” Marine Bureau manager Todd Leland told LAist. Coastal Commission staff documents for the project estimate the city could dredge up to 415,000 cubic yards from the Alamitos Bay entrance channel and place it roughly 200 feet offshore as beach nourishment, according to a California Coastal Commission staff report.
A neighborhood watching its beach shrink
Longtime residents say the peninsula is markedly narrower than it was when they first moved there. Charles Thomas, who has lived on the strip for 50 years, recalled beaches broad enough for large tents. Renters like Siobhan Gadallah say their porches have been repeatedly splashed and sometimes flooded during the highest tides, turning a waterfront view into a front-row seat on erosion.
Short-term fixes, tougher calls ahead
Those berms and trucks are stopgaps. A climate action plan from the City of Long Beach warns sea levels could rise roughly 2 feet by 2050 and nearly 7 feet by 2100, forcing the city to weigh whether to harden, retreat or heavily engineer its shoreline. Permits and staff reports that allow beach nourishment and dredging include environmental conditions and monitoring, and officials say funding, habitat mitigation and upcoming storm seasons will ultimately determine how long the current fixes can keep peninsula homes dry.
