Now local, federal and state officials are working on returning the city's beach of old – minus the boardwalk and bathhouse – with a $13 million sand replenishment project.

The project is much more than a cosmetic upgrade. It will help curtail the city's severe beach erosion by supplying the shore with nearly 20 times the sand it received from a countywide effort last year, said Rob Blasberg, a senior coastal planner for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the agency in charge of the project.

Blasberg said the project is significant because it includes replenishing the sand and because it is the largest of its kind for one city along the West Coast.

"We're looking at protection efforts in San Clemente, Oceanside, Encinitas, Solana Beach and also in Ventura and Santa Barbara but we haven't formulated alternatives for those cities," he said. "Imperial Beach is at the forefront."

The city hired Washington, D.C.-based Howard Marlowe, a sand lobbyist familiar with East Coast replenishment efforts, said Greg Wade, Imperial Beach director of community development. Wade said the consultant services have been invaluable in requesting federal funding and keeping the project moving.

The plan includes maintaining an 82-foot-wide, 7,100-foot-long protected beach until about the mid-2050s. At first, approximately 2.2 million cubic yards of clean sand will be deposited to create a beach 148 feet wider than the existing beach. The beach is expected to erode every 10 years. At those intervals, a new deposit of 1 million cubic yards will be made, widening it once again. The process will be repeated four more times over the next 50 years.

Historically, the East Coast has dealt with storm damage from hurricanes and other severe storms with sand replenishment. Last year, the San Diego Association of Governments implemented its own replenishment project, modeled after East Coast programs. About 2 million cubic yards of sand were deposited on beaches from Imperial Beach to Oceanside.

As part of that project, Imperial Beach received about 120,000 cubic yards, most of which was removed naturally over the winter months by large seasonal waves and storms. As expected, some of it ended up along the Silver Strand State Beach and Coronado, and some of it returned to the city's shores.

The new project has been approved by the California Coastal Commission. Public comments have been received on preliminary environmental studies and may be incorporated into a final report to be released in mid-September. The public comment period on the final report will open near the end of the month and last 30 days.

Before any sand is dredged, however, the city must await word on funding for its $4.2 million share, which will come from the California Department of Boating and Waterways. However, the money won't be available until the state budget is approved.

The federal government will contribute the balance, $8.8 million, and may approve the funds before the end of the year, Blasberg said. The source of funding for the 10-year replenishments has not been determined.

"The most optimistic thinking will have construction begin in fall 2003," Wade said. "More realistically, we're looking at 2004."

Plans for the sand project, discussed at a public meeting in July in Imperial Beach, involve using barges to dredge slushy sand from the coastal floor off Imperial Beach and distributing it along the shore.

Greg Abbott, a state Parks and Recreation assistant resource ecologist, said he fears the "borrow" site north of Border Field State Park, where the dredging is planned, may disrupt the critical habitat of some endangered species, such as the western snowy plover, in the Tijuana Estuary.

Blasberg said no significant impacts to the estuary and surrounding ecosystems were found after an initial environmental review was conducted. The Coastal Commission agreed, saying the dredging impacts are temporary and considered insignificant when it signed off on the project.

If engineers are not able to find enough sand or it does not match closely enough with what is onshore, there are two other sites available for dredging – one along Silver Strand State Beach and one off Mission Beach, he said.

The Tijuana River has, for perhaps centuries, brought sediment down from the nearby hills through the Tijuana River Valley, eventually making its way to the shore as sand. It has been at times dry and at times so full it required ferry crossings, depending on weather conditions.

The dams and reservoirs – built in the early 1900s mainly to control flooding and protect crops – dramatically reduced the sediment, creating an imbalance that caused the shoreline to erode.

Efforts over the past 50 years to prevent further erosion, including the occasional placement of dredged sand by the Navy, the construction of two jetties by the corps and private sea walls, haven't worked.

The city continues to lose an estimated 6.6 feet of beach each year to storm damage. Cobblestones and boulders too large to be taken away by waves cover the shore in the city's southern reaches.

The sand replenishment project, considered monumental for the small, financially struggling city, may have economic implications. The project's recreational benefits to the city will outweigh the construction costs, Blasberg said. The project also should stave off considerable storm damage and provide a postcard-worthy beach.

"It's going to look like the Imperial Beach of years past, one that had a wide sandy beach," said Steve Aceti, executive director of the California Coastal Coalition. "As long as the project doesn't have any adverse impacts to the environment, there's no reason why the beach shouldn't look better."