The California Coastal Commission voted eleven to zero Thursday in San Francisco to approve an Orange County Transportation Authority plan aimed at protecting the South Orange County rail corridor from ongoing beach erosion. The ten-year permit authorizes the transportation agency to maintain forty-eight thousand four hundred sixty-three tons of existing riprap, add two thousand one hundred tons of heavy rocks, build a twelve hundred twenty-three-foot seawall, and deposit six hundred ninety thousand cubic yards of sand onto the beach.
Commuter and freight rail lines through the area have experienced repeated shutdowns since twenty twenty-one because of shoreline erosion. Commission staff noted that the beach at Cyprus Shore has shrunk from approximately two hundred feet down to less than eighty feet over the past decade. Orange County Board of Supervisors Vice Chair Katrina Foley told the commission that postponing the hearing could push back sand dredging by three years. Commission Executive Director Kate Huckelbridge called the local conditions dire, and Commissioner Ray Jackson stated that inaction was not a viable path forward. The approval includes a mandatory project review after five years.
