January 5, 2019

Report Details

Upon arriving here on the 28th of December, I first went down to the beach to take a quick look. It was raining so I chose not to do a full inspection. What caught my attention was the amount of foredune that has been lost since my last inspection. I took some pictures for a later report. In late afternoon I observed a trackhoe being unloaded from a lowboy where it proceeded to drive to the Wakonda Beach access. It started to work the access to fix the four foot high dropoff. It eventually got onto th ebeach then a dump truck showed up and dumped it's load of large boulders that rolled down onto the beach. The hoe proceeded to prepare to base of the bank and start laying in courses of the boulders along the face of the bank adjacent to the first house north of the access. More rock was brought and dumped then the track hoe continued to place them using its work lights as it got dark. Then the machine was driven up off of the beach and parked. The following morning (January 4th), the operator arrived to find the waves coming all of the way up to the rocks laid the previous evening. He decided not to put his machine back onto the beach. As high tide approached, at 10 am the waves were aggressively crashing against the rocks eventually reaching above the highest laid course. By early afternoon, the waves were not reaching within 20' of the bank so the operator returned his machine to the beach as more loads of rock were being delivered. By late afternoon, the height of the courses of rock was doubled reaching 2/3 of the way up and from the access to just about the property line of the north second house. The houses north of these two have lost close to as much bank as these first two houses. The owners may not be aware of the conditions of the bank in front of their properties. The operator brought his machine back up on top and waited for a truckload of crushed rock that he worked down the approach and packed with his wide bucket to restore the access. It is actually much better than the way he found it. As it was getting dark, he proceeded to load his machine back onto the lowboy trailer that had just arrived and then left the site. An inspection of the rock work Saturday morning (Jan 5th), the rock appears to be well placed for temporary protection of the two properties except for a curious gap between the wall and the access road.  (Added Jan 6th) Further inspection helped me realize that the gap between the wall and the access point must relate to the operator placing rock only up to the southern private property line - not on State road right-of-way. The access road is not as wide as the State's right-of-way. Legally the rock could not overlap onto that ROW. The ocean was approaching high tide but the waves reached just to the rock, not near as aggressive as the day before. As another strong storm approaches, and with the upcomong King Tides, it will be interesting how this temporary work will fare. Oregon Parks and Recreation Department has issued emergency permits for these two properties. Applications are being prepared for the installations of permanent armoring of these two properties.