Sand deficit: Coastal erosion is so bad in California that the residents of this mostly Republican city may tax themselves to restore the beach

For years, residents of this Southern California beach town could walk a mile along a stretch of cream-colored sand and dip their toes in the waves lapping ashore.

That trip has been cut short.

Coastal erosion has been eating away at the beach in San Clemente, known for nearly a century as a “Spanish village by the sea.” The rising sea and crashing waves have pushed the shoreline landward, splitting the city’s picturesque North Beach. Crumbling seaside bluffs have damaged oceanfront homes and forced the repeated closure of a passenger rail line considered the second busiest in the country.

It’s one of many California coastal communities grappling with the effects of sea level rise. Nearly a decade ago, scientists forecast that more than half of Southern California’s beaches could significantly erode by 2100, radically altering how people live and recreate along the state’s famed coast.

“The constant pressure is sea level rise,” said Sean Vitousek, research oceanographer with the U.S. Geological Survey. “It is going to keep rising, and rising, and the beaches will retreat landward.”

After years of erosion, California is bracing for flooding and landslides ahead of this year’s expected super El Niño, a temporary warming in parts of the equatorial Pacific known to warp weather worldwide. Already this year, the town of Pacifica south of San........

© Fortune