It’s all hands on deck in San Clemente as city officials, residents and coastal organizations scramble to save the Spanish Village by the Sea from sinking into the waves.
City officials have been working to find partnerships, secure funding and acquire permits needed to add the millions of cubic yards necessary to restore the South Orange County town’s iconic coastline.
At the same time, local residents are working to gather enough signatures needed to get a measure on the 2026 ballot that would establish a 1% sales tax increase to fund projects aimed at beach restoration and wildfire prevention.
Meanwhile, county officials are eyeing mid- to long-term solutions to protect the train tracks that run along San Clemente’s coastline, as academics at UC Irvine have found signs that the beaches are showing some signs of recovery through ongoing replenishment efforts.
San Clemente Leaders Gearing Up for New Sand Projects
San Clemente officials recently announced two “significant milestones” for restoring coastal resiliency.
In November, the city received final approval needed to restart its Sand Compatibility and Opportunistic Use Program (SCOUP), which permits the city to bring up to 300,000 cubic yards of “opportunistically available beach quality sand” to four beaches each year.
The city’s previous SCOUP program expired in 2016, but after securing new approval from the California Coastal Commission, the Regional Water Quality Control Board, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the California State Lands Commission, the city is now permitted to restart the program for another 10-year period.
The city is now working to identify funding sources in order to restart this program and bring compatible sand to city beaches.
The city also recently announced that the Final Nature-Based Adaptation Project Feasibility Study is now complete and available for public review. The study looked at solutions that replicate natural features, like breakwaters, to protect beach sand.
The study analyzed three breakwater concepts at North Beach, Capistrano Shores and San Clemente State Beach.
According to the plan, the proposal that’s most likely to be implemented is an emergent rocky reef breakwater at North Beach. It would be constructed of armored stone material in a barbell shape, in water about 15 feet deep and 900 feet offshore.
Breakwaters help disperse wave energy from hitting and washing away sand that’s already onshore.
The second concept proposed a submerged breakwater at Capistrano Shores, and the third proposal depicts an emergent breakwater between San Clemente State Beach and Cyprus Shore at the south end of the city.
[Read: What’s the Best Way to Save San Clemente’s Disappearing Beaches?]
The updates come after several other efforts from the city over the past few years to add more sand to the beaches and make sure it stays there.
Last year, the city placed about 20,000 cubic yards of sand from the Santa Ana River on North Beach, one of the more critically eroded areas of San Clemente.
The city is also working with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and California State Parks to place two million cubic yards of sand over the next 50 years. So far, over 200,000 cubic yards of sand have been placed on San Clemente beaches through this partnership.
The city is also partnered with the Orange County Transportation Authority and the San Diego Association of Governments; both are working to place sand on beaches up the Southern California coast, including San Clemente.
[Read: Bringing Sand Back to San Clemente’s Beaches]
But while city leaders make plans to add sand, that won’t be possible without funding.
In last year’s election, city voters narrowly rejected a sales tax increase that would’ve created a new fund exclusively for sand replenishment efforts. The measure secured approximately 64% “yes” votes, but it wasn’t enough to pass because a specific sales tax requires a supermajority vote, or at least 66.7% of the vote.
[Read: San Clemente Officials Seek Money For Sand Replenishment]
Now, residents are taking another shot at a tax increase to create funding for beach projects.
San Clemente Residents Working to Secure Funding
A group of locals is working to get a 1% sales tax increase back on the ballot for the November 2026 election. Since it would be created by the residents and not the city itself, it would only need a simple majority to pass — at least 50% “yes” votes.
Cameron Cosgrove, a San Clemente planning commissioner and resident who wrote the new ballot initiative, is currently working to collect the signatures needed to get it on the ballot.
He said they’ve collected about 4,000 of the 7,000 signatures needed by the end of February.
“We’re picking up speed every day,” Cosgrove said in a phone interview. “Momentum is building. People are hearing about it and supporting it, and it’s exciting to see the community get behind this.”
While last year’s ballot initiative focused exclusively on sand replenishment and coastal projects, the new initiative would also fund projects aimed at wildfire prevention.
“We have two very large natural hazard risks in our town. One is the beach erosion, which does impact our local coastal economy. Our small businesses depend on being a beach town for visitors and business,” Cosgrove said. “San Clemente has been and should always remain a beach town, but in order for that to remain, we’ve got to keep our beach.”
“The other hazard is the wildfire hazard,” he continued. “We know that when the Santa Ana winds blow, that’s when we’re most at risk, city-wide, for a wildfire. We’re all painfully aware of all the recent devastating wildfires in Los Angeles, so it’s acutely at the front of our agenda to put a wildfire prevention program in the city of San Clemente.”
Cosgrove explained that half the funding from the 1% sales tax increase would be earmarked for sand replenishment and coastal projects, while the other half would be used for wildfire prevention efforts in town.
“It’s really the two biggest challenges that San Clemente faces, all packaged in one solution that is easy for people to understand and support,” he said.
Cosgrove also explained that the sales tax increase, if approved by voters, would sunset after 10 years.
South OC Beaches Showing Signs of Recovery
Brett Sanders, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at UC Irvine, said he’s been analyzing beach loss alongside graduate students who have found the shoreline is showing positive signs of recovery after sand nourishment projects from last year and a few key wet winters.
He explained that South Orange County beaches are suffering more than other OC coastal towns due to drought conditions and a lack of sand nourishment.
“The beaches, seemingly suddenly, seemed to really thin out starting around 2018 or so,” Sanders said in a phone interview. “There was significant beach loss near Doheny and Capo Beach, and then down in south San Clemente, the beaches really thinned out down there in 2020. This stretch of the coastline just did not receive a whole lot of sand input.”
While North Orange County beaches have had more nourishment efforts over the past 50 years, San Clemente hasn’t had many substantial sand deposits since the 1960s and ‘70s, Sanders said.
“Since that time, up until 2024 when the Army Corps project came along and added 200,000 cubic yards, there just hadn’t been much sand added to the system,” Sanders said. “If you looked at north Orange County over the same period of time, there were numerous, significant nourishment projects.”
Now, he says the beaches are starting to look fuller after some wet winters in 2023 and 2024 and after the city started working to place sand in critical zones last year. Sanders has been using satellite data with his students to track changes along the shoreline.
“My graduate student Tess Hachey — she’s been studying satellite data which monitors the week-by-week changes to the position of shorelines,” Sanders said. “She can analyze that data from the 1980s through 2025 and see how the beaches evolve and see how the sand redistributes along the coast.”
“That data shows the benefits of the nourishment,” he continued. “That data shows that adding sand near the pier has benefited beaches there at their pier but also down coast.”
Country Transportation Officials Narrow Ideas to Protect Train Tracks
At the same time, leaders from Orange County’s transportation agency are also working to protect the Pacific Surfliner rail line that runs alongside the San Clemente coast.
[Read: State Grants Orange County Emergency Permit For Surfliner Rail Stabilization]
Leaders from the Orange County Transportation Authority hosted another set of Coastal Rail Resiliency Study public meetings at the end of October to discuss mid- to long-term solution concepts to protect the train tracks over the next 30 years.
Proposed rail concepts include changing materials to be less erosive to the marine environment and making ground improvements to address drainage issues.
Proposed bluffside concepts include creating catchment walls and other improvements to prevent landslides from damaging the tracks.
Beachside concepts include sand nourishment, as well as riprap placement and seawall shoreline protection structures.
San Clemente residents have largely favored sand placement over placing rocks and boulders known as riprap to protect the coast.
During a public meeting on Oct. 28, transportation leaders said adding sand alone would not create a sufficient line of defense for the railroad.
Angelina Hicks is the Voice of OC Collegiate News Service Editor. Contact her at ahicks@voiceofoc.org or on Twitter @angelinahicks13.