L.A. County Begins Rebuilding Point Dume Beach Washout Play

L.A. County has begun rebuilding the beach at the Point Dume washout zone. A large construction crane and a front-end loader began moving rocks and sand just east of the Sunset Restaurant.

The idea is to shore up the road and its water pipe. The problem is huge.

At the Sunset Restaurant, the beach is much narrower than it's been in decades. The distance from the pavement to the water seems to be about half of what it used to be.

But a half mile west — starting just about at the Zuma Beach lifeguard headquarters — the beach is very wide. Two years ago there were sandbags protecting the headquarters building. Today there is more than 50 feet of sand, by our estimate, between the building and the high tide line.

We are not coastal engineers. But it appears to us that the littoral coastal current has apparently been very strong this year, carrying sand from Point Dume beach west and dumping it on Zuma Beach from the lifeguard tower up to the center of Zuma.

Closer to Trancas, and at Broad Beach, the beaches remain very narrow. Beaches do that.

Now, the county bulldozers are at work — and we'll see if that works, or if it is just a folly.