With more than 1 million visitors each year, Goleta Beach Park is easily one of the South Coast’s favorite attractions. Its lawn, picnic tables and barbecue pits, accessible restrooms and a restaurant attract all sorts of beachgoers from miles around.

But the beach is subject to erosion. Located at the mouth of Goleta Slough and partially man-made, wave-fueled destruction has necessitated importing massive amounts of sand to replenish the shore. The sand eventually wears away and winds up at locations to the south. In some places the sand is a welcome part of the habitat. In others, like Santa Barbara Harbor, it is unwanted and must be dredged out. Over the decades, Santa Barbara County has had rock walls installed, removed and reinstalled in various portions of the beach.

After El Niño in the early 2000s, during which storm waves ate away at the shore, putting the park in danger, the county decided more protection was required. Under emergency circumstances, the Board of Supervisors ordered that a rock wall be installed at the east end of the beach. The state Coastal Commission has since granted year-by-year extensions to the emergency permit as the county sought to develop a better solution to the beach erosion.

But the decision was slow in coming. For months the argument about what to do with the beach was split between those who wanted to protect the park and its amenities by putting in a rock wall, and those who preferred a managed retreat — to let the ocean do what it would — while relocating structures and utilities farther back.

Eventually another solution arose, a grouping of piles jutting out into the water from the existing pier that would trap the sand and eventually build up and create a barrier to prevent the sand from being so easily carried out on the tide. That permeable pile proposal eventually became the solution the county utilized as it started the Coastal Commission application process in January 2008. This permit will be the subject of the commission’s July hearing.

However, Surfrider Foundation and the Environmental Defense Center, which were once on the side of the managed-retreat plan, later came up with a compromise between the natural widening and narrowing of the shore and the hard, permanent structures meant to capture the sand or keep the waves out. They call it a reconfiguration of the beach park, which allows for what they say is a natural cycle of buildup and erosion of the shore, while moving the amenities and utility lines out of harm’s way.

“The beach has been shown now by leading experts on sand supply on the West Coast that the beach narrows and widens over time,” said the EDC’s Brain Trautwein. The plan includes extending the existing rock revetment along the middle of the park and relocating utility lines, parking and restrooms back while letting nature have its way with the shore.

“A structure that traps sand on the beach in one area prevents other beaches from getting sand,” explained Trautwein, referring to the permeable pile solution before the Coastal Commission.

Trautwein said that if the piles trap the sand, areas down the coast, such as the More Mesa bluffs and Santa Barbara beaches, could undergo their own erosion, and loss of habitat.

That’s an idea disputed by Ed de la Torre, a member of Friends of Goleta Beach, however.

“The nearshore sand will accumulate, drop by the pier and accrete along the beach,” he said at a recent presentation to the Goleta Valley Chamber of Commerce.

According to Trautwein, the county has been less than receptive to the reconfiguration proposal, which Surfrider presented to the supervisors last November. So bent is the county on processing the permit for the permeable piles, he said, that it has refused to consider the reconfiguration alternative.

“County staff just says ‘no,’” said Trautwein, who added that the projected cost of the reconfiguration project would come out to about $1 million less than the projected cost of the permeable piles project.

For Mary O’Gorman, an aide to 2nd District Supervisor Janet Wolf, in whose territory the park lies, it is at least partially a timing situation.

“Applying for a permit from the Coastal Commission is a long process,” she said. It has been 18 months since the county began the application last year — staff furloughs and state budget cuts have affected its ability to process applications, according to the county — and the hearing has already been postponed at least once.

According to O’Gorman, the only action the board took on this matter was to direct staff to file a permit application on the permeable pile project by Jan. 31, 2008.

“It was through (the Coastal Commission’s) communications that we learned that they would not grant any further extensions on the emergency permit on the rock revetment,” said Dave Ward of the county Planning & Development Department. It’s been his job to see the application for the permeable pile project’s coastal development permit through to the commission. The county’s next best option at the time was to file for the permit, he said. The Surfrider/EDC solution was not presented to the board until last fall, he said.

It’s likely, however, that the Coastal Commission will be considering the reconfiguration along with the permeable pile proposal in its upcoming July meeting, even if it isn’t part of the county’s proposal. According to Trautwein, the environmental groups forwarded their proposal to the commission, which will have to assess the environmental impact of the permeable pile project against any alternative that might present less damage to the environment.

As for the county, its next action depends on what the Coastal Commission decides at its July hearing in San Luis Obispo. According to O’Gorman, the supervisors will once again weigh in when the project — permeable pilings or not — returns to them.

— Noozhawk staff writer Sonia Fernandez can be reached at sfernandez@noozhawk.com.