North Cove: A Coastal Community vs the Pacific Ocean

North Cove is a coastal community located on the outer coast of Washington State near the mouth of Willapa Bay, along State Route 105. The community was established in 1884 and was the early site of a US Coast Guard station and the  Willapa Bay Lighthouse  (one of the first in Washington). Throughout the early 20th century the community continued to grow and develop with the addition of Hotel Norwood, a popular pit stop for sailors traveling between Portland to Seattle, and  a cannery that opened in 1909 .

By 1962, North Cove consisted of approximately 766 private parcels located in two different subdivisions, with an additional 340 parcels being added across three subdivisions  in the years following . However, much of this development occurred as a looming threat began to grow that would put the entire community at risk.

The first signs that North Cove might some day be facing off against the forces of nature came in the 1920s when the Coast Guard was forced to relocate its launching site to Tokeland due to the erosion and channel shallowing at the existing site.

Another symbolic blow came in 1939 when the Willapa Bay Lighthouse had to be abandoned due to the erosion of the bluff it had been built on, which threatened to topple the structure down the bank. In December 1940, the Coast Guard determined that the structure was a threat to public safety (members of the public often walked the shore beneath at low tide to catch a glimpse) and  demolished it with dynamite .

Over the following decades, the shoreline south of North Cove continued to recede at an increasingly alarming rate, likely a result of the extensive network of dams on the Columbia River. A 1971 study by the US Army Corps of Engineers found that the Pacific Ocean had claimed ~3,000 acres of public and private land in the preceding years, and by 1990 erosion reached to the edge of the community's first substantial residential development. The ocean did not stop there.  As of 2015 , approximately 640 of those original 766 parcels have been lost to erosion with an average loss rate of 12 parcels per year.

The fully illustrate the destructive power of coastal erosion, below is an interactive aerial imagery viewer showing the change in North Cove's coastline from 1990 to 2019. Please click on it to move the time slider from side to side and navigate around the area.

In 2013 the Washington Department of Ecology received funding from NOAA's  Office for Coastal Management  to conduct a comprehensive study of coastal hazard vulnerability in Southwest Washington, and to explore potential ways that local communities could improve their resilience to coastal changes. A number of communities were considered, with North Cove ultimately being chosen as a study site given the unique and pressing challenges it faces.

Once the site was selected, the Department's  Coastal Monitoring and Analysis Program  (CMAP) partnered with Oregon State University and began the first phase of the project: to accurately assess the historical erosion rate along the coast and to generate predictions of future erosion losses.

With a clear baseline of historical erosion rates established - and a compelling mandate to save North Cove and State Route 105 from total destruction - work continued to come up with a strategy to mitigate the damage erosion was wreaking on the community.

The Department of Ecology wasn't alone in this fight. After watching the Pacific Ocean for years claim neighbors' properties, move closer to SR 105 and the multi-million dollar cranberry farms on the other side, and threaten to wipe out the community they call home, the residents of North Cove decided to take matters into their own hands.

Inspired by  research conducted by the Oregon Department of Geology and Mineral Industries  in the early 2000s, members of the community began pushing for the construction of a "dynamic revetment," a form of adaptive shoreline protection. Among them was David Cottrell, a cranberry farmer and Pacific County Drainage District No. 1 commissioner, Connie Allen, Cottrell's partner and creator of the "Wash Away No More" fundraising campaign, and Charlene Nelson, chairwoman of the Shoalwater Bay Tribe (which is confronting its own erosion woes). Together they founded the Willapa Erosion Control Alliance Now (WECAN) and began seeking funding for their project.

A  dynamic revetment  is meant to mirror the function of a cobble berm or rubble beach in resisting erosion. In contrast to a riprap or seawall that absorbs the brunt of a wave's energy and redirects it either down or outward, the smaller cobble is able to absorb and dissipate wave energy thereby greatly reducing the impact to the shoreline.

From a practical standpoint, they are also far  cheaper to build and maintain than seawalls , as the rock supply required to construct them are easier to transport and their design is much simpler.

The initial efforts of WECAN paid off, and they were able to obtain grants from the Pacific County Conservation District, the Pacific County Drainage District No. 1, and the Pacific County to build a pilot revetment in 2016 and 2017. The preliminary results were promising, and when work conducted by CMAP (including the above report) and a renowned engineering firm Mott MacDonald corroborated that a dynamic revetment was the clear choice in terms of cost and effectiveness, the state granted $600,000 for the construction of the project. A 2km stretch of dynamic revetment was constructed in December 2018, representing a significant and long-awaited victory to the community of North Cove.

See the Seattle Times article below for a more complete retelling of this journey by Marguerite Garth, a resident of North Cove:

The construction of the dynamic revetment at North Cove is not a permanent solution to the erosion problem there, but is the first of many significant steps. The Department of Ecology is now tasked with  monitoring the revetment  to see how it and the surrounding beach evolve over time, and to then use the lessons learned to inform management practices in the future. Initial results are promising, and there was a significant decrease in upland loss during the 2018-19 winter storm season. However continued long term monitoring will be needed to fully understand the forces that shape the the coast at North Cove and to effectively protect it for decades to come.

Please flip through the slides below to see some of the ways CMAP is monitoring the coast (possibly as you're reading this).

For more information about this project, as well as other projects CMAP works on around the state of Washington, please interact with the map below. Each point links to a page on the Dept. of Ecology website or an official report with additional details on the analyses that were conducted.