On behalf of Save Oceanside Sand, I’d like to express a heartfelt thank you to the Oceanside Community for the continued engagement and support of our combined efforts to restore our beaches and protect our coastal way of life. In 2024, by working together and influencing our city leadership, we have achieved some remarkable milestones towards beach restoration. Your support is critical in advancing our goals of restored beaches and resilience for the entire O’side shoreline!
Save Oceanside Sand 2024 Impact Report
Attached is the first Save Oceanside Sand Impact Report, which summarizes SOS and city milestones and achievements of 2024.
A few highlights this past year were the unanimous vote of approval of the RE:BEACH pilot project design and siting of the project at Tyson St. to Wisconsin Ave. RE:BEACH is moving through final design and then permitting. Stand by for updates via our website and social media feeds. Additionally, through SOS efforts, we were able to secure ~$900k in recurring funding for beach restoration in the City budget, as well as getting Measure X extended with funding uses that include beach and habitat restoration!
Another reason for our success in 2024 is our remarkable SOS team of volunteers, board of directors and a small, but growing staff. Due to their dedication and tireless work, we were able to continue our education and outreach at our summertime weekly pop-ups, successfully complete our 2nd summer intern project for 6 local high school students and continue extensive shoreline measurements with our community science program.
SOS priorities for 2025 are full support of the implementation of the RE:BEACH pilot project, which will be a remarkable achievement of an innovative nourishment and retention system that can be implemented along the rest of our shoreline as well as other regional locations. This project is years away in construction and we must do more to restore our shoreline near-term. SOS is advocating with the city of Oceanside for near-term beach nourishment projects as a bridge to RE:BEACH and beyond. These nourishment projects are crucial to buying us time to implement the pilot project and maintain shoreline resilience as the pilot project performance is monitored, validated, and adapted for a whole Oceanside shoreline solution. You will be hearing and seeing more about this as we work with the City of Oceanside to make near term nourishment a reality. Our position is the City needs both RE:BEACH and near-term nourishment working together to restore our beaches.
Save the date!
Our next SOS meeting is April 3, 2025 at Ryes and Grind “The Vault” from 5-8pm. We’ll have a guest speaker and our focus will be to provide you with updates on beach restoration progress, volunteer recognition, and short briefs from our volunteer committee chairs with opportunities to connect and volunteer. Hope to see you there!
2024 was a great year!
Again, we are eternally grateful for your support and the trust you place in us as advocates for the community to restore our beaches. Looking forward to a successful 2025 and beyond. See you at the beach!
Sincerely,
Bob Ashton
President/CEO, Save Oceanside Sand
bashton@sosoceanside.com
