By Jeff Johnson
Recent news has been full of disastrous floods and debris flows. Reading farther down the page, you may have noticed less drastic local news and videos about high water threatening coastal Long Beach.
Our most recent Long Beach beach walk on August 26 took us through the Peninsula neighborhood close to the peak of a particularly high tide. Some of the most expensive houses in Long Beach look right down onto the beach there at its narrowest point, and there wasn’t much beach left between the houses and the ocean. City trucks and scrapers were working away on the beach and in the water to maintain a sand berm to deflect the rising surf. The City had put up a plywood barrier along the beach side of the boardwalk but seawater was starting to seep under it and splash over it.
Many neighbors were standing on the boardwalk to take in the scene. One neighbor, when spray from the breaking waves started blowing into her living room, walked back inside and closed a sliding glass door. That was a scene that will stick in my mind: outside, pounding surf and roaring machinery; inside, bright and tidy living room; between them, a sliding door.
Though many news items about the surf threatening the Peninsula a few weeks earlier than our walk tied in issues of climate change and sea level rise, GLS has been walking here for many years and we have seen higher water here before. On August 17, 2005, we were actually wading in spots on the streets behind the boardwalk.
Though this bi-monthly GLS beach walk is usually uneventful, you never know what you might see if you join us there in October.
