LET'S MAKE SURE OUR BEACHES LIVE LONGER SELECTED DAMS SHOULD BE REMOVED SO PRECIOUS SAND REACH OUR SHORES.

Byline: Robert Caughlan and Chip Post

California's fabulous beaches are starving for sand and shrinking. Surfers and other beach lovers have the muscle to bring them back. We know why they're endangered, and we know how to rescue them.

Beaches are disappearing mostly because of dams and sea walls. It's hardly a surprise. For 30 years scholars like professors Doug Inman at Scripps Institution of Oceanography and Gary Griggs at UC Santa Cruz have been documenting sand loss warning us about the problem of sand starvation on California's beaches. Ask anyone in Oceanside or Del Mar if they are right.

What most people don't know is that 70 to 90 percent of the sand on California beaches comes from rivers. Our beaches are starving because millions of tons of sand-laden sediments are now trapped behind the 1,400 dams that were built in California between l850 and l970.

For 30 years, environmental groups like Friends of the River and the Sierra Club and fishing organizations have been calling for the removal of dams and the restoration of riverbanks and fisheries.

Now, the surfers are weighing in on the issue beside the river lovers and fishermen. The state is trustee of a public trust to protect the people's common heritage of tidelands, lakes, streams and marshlands. All beaches seaward of the mean high tide line are part of this trust. Damming and diverting rivers damage the trust by preventing the natural flow of sand to the beaches.

The state cannot ignore this damage according to the landmark Mono Lake case. Thinking of sand as a slow-moving liquid makes its application clear. When the lake was threatened by the diversion of water from its tributary streams, the state was required to restore the lake-replenishing stream flows.

Friends of the River recently published a report on dam removal titled Rivers Reborn. The report outlines the growing body of scientific evidence that restoration is feasible and economically beneficial. Many of the dams are completely silted up, some are dangerous, and it is less expensive to remove them than try to prop them up.

Friends of the River's report includes a Top 10 List of dams that could be removed. Most of dams are in Northern California, but two in Southern California are of special interest to surfers.

Just upstream from Malibu, one of California's most famous surfing beaches, is the l00-foot-high Rindge Dam. It was built in 1926 to irrigate the lima bean farms. In the canyon. It has been completely filled with sediment for 25 years, and it traps between 800,000 and 1.6 million cubic yards of sand and sediment. It could be notched and drained over several years.

In Ventura County, the Matijilla Dam is 15 miles upstream from the beach and is backing up 6 million cubic yards of sand, enough to fill dump trucks stretching from Malibu to Virginia Beach and widen every beach in Ventura County by 30 feet.

Surfers are actively involved in the effort to remove this structure. Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer and Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt are supporting the effort.

They could start tearing it down as early as this fall.

In addition to dams, sea walls are a growing threat to the health of our beaches, especially as we persist in driving gas-guzzlers and accelerating the sea level rise associated with global warming.

Twenty to 30 percent of the sand on our beaches comes from the natural erosion of coastal bluffs. Building sea walls stops this erosion and instead accelerates the loss of sand on beaches. We already have 140 miles of these beach-killers, and we shouldn't build more.

We need a long-range retreat strategy, so that bluffs can erode the way they are supposed to and add their contribution to the beaches. We won't solve the problems created by yesterday's unwise coastal development decisions by foolishly wasting millions today on sea walls. And the taxpayers shouldn't get stuck with paying for sea walls to protect buildings that shouldn't have been built in the first place.

State Sen. Byron Sher, D-Redwood City, has introduced Senate Bill 1540. His bill, ``The California Dam Decommission. River Restoration and Public Safety Act of 2000,'' requires the secretary of resources to prepare an inventory and evaluation of dams suitable for removal or modification to improve fish passage and beach replenishment. The secretary would also be required to develop cost estimates for the work needed to remove or modify dams as recommended in the report.

SB 1540 also establishes a Dam Decommissioning Fund in the state budget to fund dam removal and modification. Every beach lover should immediately write or call his or her state legislators supporting SB 1540.

Eighty percent of California's 33 million people live within 30 miles of the coast. The state's beach parks represent only 3 percent of its park land but attract 72 percent of park visitors. The state of California reaps huge economic benefits from beach lovers. Beaches produce $15 billion a year for the state's economy. But just ask any surfer - mere bucks cannot measure the value of the great waves.