Tiburon eyes $1.4M grant for shoreline project

Tiburon is closing in on a $1.4 million state grant to fund the final phase of a beach restoration project.

The Town Council unanimously voted on Wednesday to apply for the funding from the California Coastal Commission. The funds are expected to be awarded this winter and would cover the remaining costs of restoring Greenwood Beach and Brunini Beach at Blackie’s Pasture.

The restoration plan includes creating a “living” shoreline instead of a rock wall to protect against erosion. Living shorelines use sand, rocks, plants and other natural materials to create and stabilize a shoreline. They also establish habitat for wildlife, protect against flooding and reduce erosion.

A common alternative is a riprap, a permanent layer of large rocks placed along a shoreline. David Eshoo, a town public works official, said the problem with such barriers is that waves compromise the material under it.

“The wave action pulls the material out, leaving big old ridges and voids below the riprap, which also then goes down and creates an erosioned area around where the riprap is and it never corrects itself,” Eshoo said.

The materials in a living shoreline move with the waves, curtailing erosion.

A grant from the Marin Community Foundation funded the concept phase of the project in 2017. A second foundation grant in 2019 paid for the design phase. The final design began in 2021 and was funded by a grant from the San Francisco Bay Restoration Authority.

The funds from the California Coastal Commission grant are expected to cover the construction phase of the project. Town staff do not anticipate any other impact on the town’s budget.

The design team previously applied for two grants — through the San Francisco Bay Restoration Authority and the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation — for construction funding, but was rejected. In July, after presenting the project at conferences, the team got a call from the California Coastal Commission and was offered full construction funding, according to Eshoo.

The design team includes Roger Leventhal, an engineer with the Marin County Department of Public Works; Peter Baye, a bay restoration ecologist; and Dan Gillenwater, an estuarine habitat restoration design specialist.

“They are doing a lot of natural work here as far as bringing in sand, gravel, some cobblestones, some natural features to create kind of a beach entry but also create some type of sea-level rise and erosion control mitigation spots along both of these areas along Blackie’s Pasture,” Eshoo said.

Eshoo said he hopes the project will break ground in September 2025 and be finished the following month.

“This is low cost, it’s returning it to its natural state, and it’s solving for wave energy and other things like that,” Councilmember Isaac Nikfar said. “It’s very exciting to see that it’s here now and that we’re very close to having that big improvement for the town.”