OC Parks Receives Grant to Combat Coastal Erosion

ORANGE COUNTY一 On Feb. 9 the Orange County Board of Supervisors approved a grant from the Ocean Protection Council to move forward with the South Orange County Regional Coastal Resilience Strategic Plan.

The plan would focus on coastal resilience and prioritize strategies to protect residents from flooding and infrastructure damage along the coast.

“The plan’s main objective for coastal resilience is to comprehensively assess, prioritize, and advance resilience opportunities to reduce the risk to thousands of residents across the region from flooding and infrastructure damage and increase the viability of south Orange County beaches,” said Marisa O’Neil, a public information officer for OC Parks in a March 25 email.

The project will also link to the Orange Coastal Regional Sediment Management Plan, to move coastal sediment management needs towards implementation, according to the grant authorization form from the Feb. 9 meeting.

The project is going to target the area south of Dana Point Harbor to the county line. O’Neil said that they will be looking to coordinate with other projects in the littoral cell, a natural coastal compartment that is roughly seven miles of beach shoreline from Dana Point Harbor to San Clemente.

OC Parks is also planning to work with landowners, cities, utility agencies, railroad managers, non-governmental agencies, and community groups. Part of the plan will involve developing a model of participation for stakeholders.

The grant comes from Proposition 68, California Drought, Water, Parks, Climate, Coastal Protection, and Outdoor Access for All Act of 2018. Prop 68 passed in June 2018 and allocated $204.8 million to fund outdoor access, lower cost coastal accommodations, and climate adaptation, according to the California State Coastal Conservancy website.

The Ocean Protection Council adopted the grant guidelines in their May 23, 2019 meeting and approved OC Parks for the grant on Jan. 15, 2021. The application approval went to the Orange County Board of Supervisors where it was approved on Feb. 9.

OC Parks submitted their application through the Ocean Protection Council and was approved after a competitive process with other projects.

“OC Parks applied for the grant through the Ocean Protection Council,” said O’Neil. “We submitted a letter of intent (LOI), then submitted a full proposal and were ultimately selected through a competitive process along with several other projects.”

OC Parks is expecting to have a draft of the Regional Strategic Plan in May 2022, after extensive research and stakeholder meetings, which are expected to start in Dec. 2021, according to a March 8 article on Patch.