California Sea Grant College Program

Coastal erosion threatens to damage nearly 87,000 homes along the shoreline of the United States in the next 60 years, according to a report released in 2000 by FEMA. Population growth, rising sea levels, hurricanes, dams (that block the resupply of sand to beaches) and severe storms associated with El Niño events are escalating concerns that damage from shoreline erosion could cost hundreds of millions in coming decades. In California, these concerns are intensified by demo-graphics and geography: about 80 percent of the state’s 34 million residents live within 50 kilometers of the ocean and about 86 percent of the state’s shoreline is classified as actively eroding. Coastal bluff erosion is of particular concern in counties such as San Diego and Santa Cruz, where homes have been built on landslide-prone bluffs and where heavy surf scours the shore.