Harbor breakwater repair next summer – first in 25 years
by Garth Meyer With high waves now crashing the coastline, plans are underway to repair the north King Harbor breakwater next summer. Two men from the Army Corps of Engineers spoke to the Redondo Beach city council Dec. 5, one of whom worked on the last repair in 1999, and the expansion after the 1988 storm. “We’re still here,” said Chuck Mesa, chief of coastal engineering, Army Corps of Engineers Los Angeles. He gave a report on plans for next year’s three-month project to reset old boulders and add new ones. City Councilman Todd Loewenstein asked what the city is to do this winter. “We’re kind of at the mercy of nature right now,” Loewenstein said. “We think the structure has resilience built in… We don’t anticipate a catastrophic failure like in 1988,” Mesa said. “It literally was the Storm of the Century. It’s so unique, it’s off the charts. We’ve never seen it before and haven’t seen it since.” The federal Tidelands fund will pay for the repair, estimated to cost $10 million. The work is to follow a separate dredging of the harbor next spring. “What the breakwater structure needs is to get back to its designed intention,” said Mesa, who worked on the plans for the expanded…
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