Ocean Beach
THREATENED (MID-TERM)
NEXT MILESTONE
Prop G vote, Nov 3, 2026
Ocean Beach is a test-case to see how much the city can let a shoreline move. Managed retreat. What gets decided here about dunes, sand and access may set the template the Bay's other beaches are measured against.
What's under the beach. Ocean Beach is also the roof of San Francisco's westside sewer system. Under the Upper Great Highway, from Lincoln to Sloat, runs the Westside Transport Box, a 20 to 30 foot tall concrete tube that stores combined sewage and stormwater during heavy rain. South of Sloat, the Lake Merced Tunnel and the Westside Pump Station carry that flow to the Oceanside treatment plant by the zoo, and erosion at the south end now threatens the tunnel. The SFPUC puts the cost of moving that system inland at about $1.6 billion. So the city chose to protect it in place: a $175 million project built around a 3,200-foot wall buried 55 feet into the beach south of Sloat, covered by reshaped dunes and kept buried with regular sand management. In short, the plan for sea level rise at OB is driven by the protection of a critical piece of infrastructure that should have been built elsewhere. Protection of the Westside Transport Box may cost the city its iconic beach.
The trade-off. A buried wall protects the beach only while it stays buried. Each sand placement costs at least $1 million. In 2021 a $3.8 million placement was largely gone within months. Once storms expose the wall, waves reflect off it and scour the sand in front--just take a look at the eroding cliffs and exposed sandbags and riprap at Sloat. Critics, including Surfrider, warn that the beach south of Sloat could narrow until it disappears at high tide, leaving the city paying for sand indefinitely to protect a wastewater plant at the expense of a public beach. The Coastal Commission approved the wall as the only practical way to avoid a sewer failure. Ocean Beach now has both approaches side by side: dunes to the north, armor to the south.
Where to launch. SFBA recommends launching from the north end of Ocean Beach, at the parking lots near Kelly's Cove. SFBA does not recommend Sloat. The beach there narrows or disappears at high tide, riprap and old military concrete line the shore, and the wind turns gusty where the cliffs begin. Few kiters launch there, so no one is around to help a rider in trouble. SFBA's interest in South Ocean Beach is in how the plans there shape the whole beach, its sand and the main launch at Kelly's Cove.
The plans in play:
- Ocean Beach Master Plan (SPUR, 2012). In 2018 the city wrote managed retreat into its Local Coastal Program. Policy 12.1 adopts managed retreat between Sloat and Skyline, rerouting the Great Highway Extension behind the zoo via Sloat and moving beach parking and restrooms out of harm's way. The plan has not been updated since 2012.
- SFPUC adaptation project. The Coastal Commission approved a 25-year permit in November 2024 for 3,200-foot buried wall protecting the Lake Merced Tunnel and wastewater plant, removal of rubble and old revetments, a reshaped bluff, a multi-use trail, beach stairs, restrooms and continued sand replenishment. . Major construction now starts in late 2029 and runs about four years, and South Ocean Beach will likely close about six months of each year during that time. The 35-space lot at Sloat will be removed and replaced with about 60 spaces near Skyline.
- SFEI dune management (December 2023). Funded by the Coastal Conservancy, the plan recommends rebuilding native dunes from Point Lobos to Sloat, where the SFPUC project takes over, removal of iceplant and marram grass, planting beach wildrye, stop grading the backshore at the north end, and placing sand cleared from the Great Highway on the beach, where waves can move it, instead of piling it behind the beach.
- On the ground. Rec & Park, NPS, SFEI, Surfrider and others began replanting dunes near Judah in February 2025 with a $1 million Coastal Conservancy grant. Surfrider reports more than 1,200 native plants installed and more than 200 volunteers.
- Sunset Dunes. Voters closed the Upper Great Highway with Prop K in 2024, and it is now Sunset Dunes park. A court upheld the closure in January 2026 and an appeal is pending. Prop G, on the November 3 ballot, would close the park on weekdays to reopen the Upper Great Highway to cars. An SFEI report (October 2024) found that closing the Great Highway to cars has "the greatest and most immediate ecological benefits."
Why it matters beyond Ocean Beach. Three things decided here will carry over to other sites.
Resilience vs armor. Ocean Beach is the region's clearest commitment to letting beach and dunes do the work a seawall would otherwise do, with hard structures only where critical infrastructure needs them. That is the approach SFBA wants at Crown Beach, where emergency rock is replacing sand, and in every subregional plan under SB 272.
Sand is a regional supply, and most of it is being sold. USGS researchers found that the mouth of the Bay lost more than 90 million cubic meters of sediment between 1956 and 2005, and that erosion from Ocean Beach to Point San Pedro has sped up by about 50% since the 1980s. They tie the loss to a shrinking supply of sediment from the Bay. In February 2026 the State Lands Commission renewed Central Bay sand mining leases for ten years, with a lower cap of 1.395 million cubic yards a year. Its environmental review found mining is not significantly reducing sand reaching the coast. Baykeeper sued in March. Meanwhile:
- The Army Corps places about 350,000 cubic yards of shipping-channel sand a year offshore of Ocean Beach. An earlier USGS study found the effect of that placement on the beach "largely negligible."
- Alameda's application to put 80,000 cubic yards of sand on its South Shore went unfunded.
- Coastal engineer Bob Battalio, a co-author of the SFEI dune report, notes at an August 26 public forum that coarse sand from Bay shoals stays on a beach better than fine windblown sand.
Where the Bay's sand goes, to construction or to our local beaches, decides how much beach our region keeps.
2026–27 priorities:
- Support the dune-first approach and SFEI's beach sand placement, and ask that both extend along the whole beach.
- Ask the city and NPS to designate gear-friendly access points with parking a short carry away, including the north parking lots near Kelly's Cove, where kiters launch.
- Ask that the South Ocean Beach project protect sand and access along the whole beach, including the north-end launches at Kelly's Cove.
- Ask State Lands, BCDC and the Army Corps to treat recreational beaches, including Ocean Beach and Crown Beach, as a priority use for suitable Bay and channel sand, and to put dredged sand on beaches where it will stay.
- Ask SPUR and the city to update the 2012 Master Plan with water recreation access as an explicit objective.
Plans and documents: SPUR, Ocean Beach Master Plan · SFPUC, Ocean Beach Climate Change Adaptation Project · SFEI, Growing Resilience (dune management), 2023 · SFEI, Future Opportunities for the Great Highway, 2024 · Coastal Commission, Western Shoreline Area Plan amendment, 2018