By Jeff Johnson
Recent news has been full of disastrous floods and debris flows. Reading the local news farther down the page, you may have noticed articles and videos about less drastic 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 we didn’t see much beach left between the houses and the ocean that evening. On the beach and in the water, City trucks and scrapers were working 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 there but seawater was starting to seep under it and splash over it.
Neighbors were standing on the boardwalk to take in the action. One neighbor, when spray from the breaking waves started blowing into her living room, walked back inside and closed the sliding glass door. That scene that will stick in my mind: outside, pounding surf and roaring machinery; inside, bright and tidy living room; between them, a sliding door.
Seeing this happening now, we may speculate what climate change and sea level rise will bring to this neighborhood in the future. However, GLS has been walking here for many years and we have seen even higher water here before. On August 17, 2005, we were actually wading in spots on the streets behind the boardwalk.
GLS walks on the beach here the last Wednesday evening of every other month and it is usually a pleasant and peaceful walk. But with the super El Niño predicted, you never know what excitement may be happening here in October.
