A few people have asked why the berms on Venice Beach are put in place every year, blocking the view of the water. Venice and Santa Monica are sammiched between a bunch of islands. The water rarely comes at our area from exactly a straight direction. The tides and swells come at the coast at an angle… and they hit those different island chains first which also breaks the force of the water that gets to us. Every once in a while, every ten years or so, we get a crazy combo of a huge storm surge that also happens to hit us straight on… so the storm surge isn’t buffered by the island chains. When that happens, the water surge is so strong, if the sand berms weren’t there, the water would push and flood all the way up past Ocean Ave / Admiralty where there is also a lot of ground water from the Marina. The berms bust up the view, but when we get wholloped it saves a lot of costly and extremely damaging cleanup. Ocean water is awesome. When it is in your house, its yucky.
Below is a video I shot just *after* the wave that went over the pier, and ripped the bathrooms off and sent them into the ocean. Pier was closed for a long time, and the decision was made not to rebuild the bathrooms.
Andrew says
Your logic doesn’t add up, though, Alex. They ONLY put berms in front of the City owned parking lots and city structures like the police station. Not in front of the majority of houses or plenty of places where storm surge can potentially flood into the low-lying parts of Venice.
Well, it isn’t MY logic, it is what the fine folks at Beaches & Harbors told me. I do believe there is a City lot at Rose Ave, and there is no berm. Oddly illogical Andrew! Berms are based on Washington Blvd & Venice Bl. water runoff per info I was given.