Residents of the wealthy coastal city whose crumbling bluffs are endangering the only rail line from San Diego to the rest of the nation are balking at measures being taken to shore up the vital transportation corridor.
It’s not the first time Del Mar has argued that efforts to preserve the coastline should not compromise beach access and sand retention. But those demands clash with regional efforts to forestall the inevitable collapse of the bluff from erosion and rising seas.
The tensions highlight the continuing push and pull between those trying to preserve a disappearing way of life and those trying to protect a critical national asset until it can be moved inland.
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The seawalls are the latest phase in a series of projects that the San Diego Association of Governments started more than 20 years ago to protect the train tracks atop the bluffs.
Each phase involved consultation with and approvals from multiple government agencies, including Del Mar. Still, residents say the new seawalls are taking up more beach space, removing more of the bluff material, and making shoreline access more difficult than people expected.
“Instead of stabilizing the bluff, they are scraping away from the bluff,” said resident Camilla Rang at a recent Del Mar City Council meeting. In other places, the contractor is filling in space behind the seawall, at one spot eliminating a small cove loved by beachgoers.
“It looks like the construction zone from hell,” Rang said.
Drew Cady, a Stratford Court resident, said he was “horrified” to see the seawall going up along his beloved beach.
“It now appears there will be a continuous seawall that will cut off all access to the beach from the bluff between 9th and 7th streets,” he said.
He suggested the city take legal action to stop the construction, as it did when North County Transit District proposed building a safety fence along the railroad right-of-way.
A state court decision in the case is expected sometime this year, but for now the fence plan remains on hold, even though most of the rest of San Diego County’s 60-mile rail corridor has been fenced.
So far, no one on the Del Mar City Council has publicly discussed any legal action to stop the seawalls.
Bruce Smith, a principal design engineer at SANDAG, said the construction that began in March is actually a series of six closely-spaced seawalls being added to the ones already in place below the railroad.
Landslides have occurred along the bluffs as recently as April. They show “there is a very real and present danger,” Smith said. “It is imperative that these walls go up as soon as possible.”
To build the walls, loose sand on the beach at the base of the bluffs must be excavated down to the harder foundation material, he said. Also, in some places, parts of the face of the bluffs are sheared away.
The material removed is being temporarily stockpiled nearby for a possible return to the beach.
Residents also expressed concerns that some of the sand removed during construction might not be returned to the beach. Smith confirmed that may be the case.
“We haven’t taken any material off site yet,” he said. “It’s all stored on the southern bluff. We hope to use it all on site, but some might not be up to quality.”
Organic material and silt-like clay taken from the bluff may not be suitable for use on the beach, even though it would eventually end up there naturally if nature were allowed to take its course.
Sand placed on the beach as part of a construction project must meet standards for cleanliness and grain size set by agencies such as the California Coastal Commission and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
“We recognize there is going to be some sand loss and beach loss with the project,” Smith said. However, the mitigation work included in the plan is intended to compensate for that.
The mitigation proposed for the project is a beach access trail with either a switchback ramp or a concrete stairway over the bluffs and down to the beach between 7th and 8th streets. Construction of the access project is scheduled to start in 2026, but some residents also are unhappy about SANDAG’s apparent preferred alternative of a ramp.
State and federal grant money is only available for the ramp because it would provide the handicapped access required by the Americans with Disabilities Act, Smith said. If Del Mar wants stairs, which some people prefer, the city would have to pay for the construction.
A train crosses the bluffs in Del Mar.
(Union-Tribune file photo by John Gibbins)
The bluffs where trail will be created is where a train went off the tracks and fell to the beach in 1940, Smith said. The area remains unsafe and people on the beach near the steep slope could be hit by falling rocks at any time, he said, and the switchback ramp will help stabilize the slope.
The budget for the entire phase of stabilization work is about $80 million, with almost all the money coming from state and federal grants.
Councilmember Dan Quirk said the ramp and stairs are both bad choices. Quirk, who has twice been censured by the City Council for misrepresenting the city’s position on the railroad and other issues, has called for abandoning the rail route and turning it into a bicycle and pedestrian trail from San Diego to San Clemente.
“This is just going to be another assault on our coastline,” Quirk said. “This is all for a train that is obsolete and has minimal ridership. We need to go in a completely different direction.”
Mayor Dave Druker has said repeatedly that the train tracks are not going way and that the route on the bluff must be protected until an alternate route is completed. Plans are in progress for an inland tunnel that could be built as soon as 2035. The most recent construction estimate for the tunnel is at least $4 billion.
SANDAG, NCTD and other agencies expect rail traffic to increase in the years ahead.
Federal, state and regional officials promote trains as an energy-efficient, environmentally friendly way to take vehicles off over-crowded freeways. NCTD’s Coaster commuter train is a relatively new addition to the 150-year-old coastal rail route, making its first run in 1995.
Del Mar’s 1.7-mile section of the tracks is San Diego’s only rail link to Los Angeles and the rest of the United States. It carries 10 round-trip Amtrak passenger trains daily from Los Angeles, 15 round-trip Coaster trips between Oceanside and San Diego most weekdays, and six to eight BNSF freight trains most nights. It’s also part of the Defense Department’s strategic rail corridor network that connects military bases across the country.
Still, efforts to promote or protect rail traffic have long hit a sore spot in Del Mar. Most residents there believe they can cross the tracks at will, despite trespassing laws, to surf, watch the sunset, or reach their favorite spot on the shrinking stretch of sand.
Average home prices in Del Mar ranged from $2.5 million to $4 million in March 2024, depending on the real estate website. Single-family homes atop the bluffs near the tracks can be worth much more, and homeowners consider beach access and ocean views to be a significant part of their value.
Del Mar also has spent years fighting the Coastal Commission’s policy of “managed retreat,” which is the idea of long-term planning to eventually remove shoreline homes, roads and other structures from areas threatened by sea-level rise. The commission requires coastal cities to consider managed retreat as part of their efforts to adapt to sea-level rise.
Residents and the City Council have said there’s no room for retreat in their small city. Also, to acknowledge that homes could have to be moved would slash their property values.
As for the seawalls, little could stop them at this point. Years of studies have been completed, piles of permits obtained, millions of dollars allocated, contracts signed, bulldozers are moving and pilings are being sunk.
One thing in the project that could change is the beach access trail proposed as mitigation, which still needs final design work and can only be built after the seawalls are finished.
Councilmember Terry Gaasterland said she was disappointed that the trail could not be built before the seawalls.
If the city must accept a ramp instead of stairs, maybe it should “step back” from the proposal and try to get sand replenishment as mitigation instead, she said.
“Everybody in Del Mar is feeling a lot of pain right now, myself included,” Gaasterland said. “The craziness of taking material off the beach and not being able to put it back ... it’s difficult to comprehend the logic, because it’s not logical.”
Councilmember Dwight Worden agreed with others that any loss of the beach is difficult and said it’s “very distressing” to see the construction underway. He tried to stay optimistic.
“It’s a little like if you interrupted a heart surgeon in the middle of heart surgery,” he said, when, obviously, the work in progress would appear to be a bit of a mess.
The best solution now is to “hold SANDAG’s feet to the fire” and make sure the agency follows all of the specifications for the project, Worden said.
