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Solana Beach has a weak spot in its armor, and the California Coastal Commission is refusing to let homeowners fix it.
Most of the city’s seaside abodes sit nearly 90 feet above the beach behind a carefully crafted, faux-rock sea wall that protects the base of the cliffs from the erosion of the surf.
At high tide, Solana Beach has no beach. The waves crash against the concrete walls almost everywhere except Fletcher Cove, which the town fathers carved out from the bluffs with fire hoses during a development boom in the early 1920s.
But on the northern end of town, there’s a 50-foot gap where one house has no sea wall and, on Sept. 10, 2020, the Coastal Commission board again denied property owners permission to build one. Only houses in place before the state passed its Coastal Act in 1972 are allowed to build or replace sea walls.