Thursday, March 28

Man-Made Harbor in Oceanside, California, Filling in, Hurting Local Boaters

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The entrance to the harbor at Oceanside, California, just north of San Diego, is starting to fill in and local boating businesses are worried. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which usually dredges the channel every spring, missed this year and now won’t be able to dredge until the fall or early next year. Meanwhile, navigating the entrance is more difficult, particularly at low tides.

Donna Kalez, the owner of Oceanside Adventures, runs whale-watching cruises on a 50-foot cat, and she worries about sand filling in the harbor entrance. “The harbor mouth is supposed to have a clearance of 26 feet, and it’s at 20 feet clearance now,” she told the San Diego Union-Tribune. “Last month it was at 22 feet, so it’s filling in rapidly.”

And John Ratcliff, the manager of Boat Rentals of America, says that when ocean swells hit shallow water at the harbor entrance the waves are too dangerous for small boats. “We just don’t send them outside the harbor,” he said. “It definitely hurts our business.”

The man-made harbor needs dredging to stay open. Some years the entrance has been as shallow as 10 feet at low tide. The Army Corps said it measured the center of the channel in April and it had a depth of 20 feet then. But local boaters are as worried about sand filling in the edges of the channel as they are about the depth of the channel itself. Read more:

http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/communities/north-county/sd-no-harbor-dredging-20180621-story.html

 

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