Walk out to the tip of the Balboa Peninsula this month and you'll find yellow caution tape wrapped around a cliff that wasn't there before this summer's swells. Old railroad ties are poking out of the sand. So are pipes and wires that haven't seen daylight in decades. If you ask anyone who's spent real time out there, they'll tell you the same thing: this is the worst they've seen the beach look in years.
The strange part is what's sitting less than a football field away. There's plenty of sand piled up on the harbor side of the same jetty that's eroding on the ocean side. Newport Beach City Councilman Erik Weigand has said as much publicly. And yet nobody's moved it. The reason has less to do with city budgets and more to do with the fact that the jetty holding this whole system together falls under federal jurisdiction, not the city's.
That's the part of this story most people scrolling past the drone footage never hear. Here's how the summer actually unfolded, and what it means if you're planning to walk out there before the season winds down.
The Swell That Started It
On Tuesday, June 9, a south swell rolled in that longtime regulars called the biggest in a decade. Sets stacked up to 20 and 25 feet at the jetty, close enough to shore that one local surfer described getting caught inside one and simply taking it on the head. The National Weather Service issued a beach hazard statement that stayed in effect through Thursday. Nearly a thousand people showed up just to watch.
The mechanics of why The Wedge does this at all trace back over a century. The Army Corps of Engineers began building the west jetty in 1916 to protect the harbor entrance. It got extended from 1,000 feet to 1,900 feet in 1936 after a local named George Rogers pushed for safer conditions. That extension is what turned an ordinary shore break into the geometry trick it is today: south swell energy bounces off the rock wall, doubles back, and slams into the next incoming set. The result is a wave that breaks in waist deep water close enough to the sand that spectators can feel it.
Newport Beach lifeguards were out managing the crowds that week, and Lifeguard Battalion Chief Adam Yacenda spent a fair amount of time reminding people that standing at the edge of the sand isn't as safe as it looks. Whitewash alone can take your feet out from under you at that spot, swell or no swell.
Where That Water Went
A big swell at The Wedge has always been a spectacle. What's newer is what several of them back to back did to the beach itself.
By late August, photographer Brent Weldon was telling reporters he'd never seen the erosion this bad. Sand that would normally get replenished over the winter months just hadn't come back, and one summer swell after another kept carving more of it away. What surfaced underneath was decades of buried infrastructure: PVC pipes, wiring, and remnants of an old railway tie system built into the jetty itself. The city has since roped off a section of unstable cliff near the water that used to be a popular spot to watch the sets roll in.
One beachgoer, Jordan Raymond, put it plainly when a local news crew asked him about it: he'd like to see the city bring in sand before the erosion gets worse, both for the surfers and for the coastline generally.
The Fix That's Sitting Right There
Here's the detail that changes how you read all of this. Weigand has pointed out that there's already ample sand available on the harbor side of the jetty, the calmer side, just a short distance from where the damage is happening. In a lot of towns, that would mean a work order and a bulldozer.
Not here. The jetty is Army Corps of Engineers infrastructure, built under federal authority back in 1916 and extended under the same authority twenty years later. Moving sand across it, even a few hundred feet, requires permitting from the Corps before the city can act. That's not red tape for its own sake. It's the same reason the jetty has held its shape for over a hundred years in the first place: nobody gets to modify it unilaterally, including the city that benefits from it every summer.
So the sand sits there, visible and unused, while the erosion keeps exposing more of what's underneath. It's the kind of contradiction that only makes sense once you know who actually owns the rock wall causing all of it.
What This Means If You're Headed Out There This Fall
The blackball flag is still flying. From May 1 through October 31, Newport Beach prohibits surfboards, bodyboards, and skimboards at The Wedge between 10 a.m. and 5 p.m., in the stretch between Tower 40 and Tower 44. Bodysurfing only during those hours. That rule hasn't changed and won't until November, so if you're bringing a board down expecting an open lineup at noon, you'll be watching from the sand instead.
A few things worth knowing before you go, especially with the roped-off section still in place:
- There are no restrooms at The Wedge and no dedicated parking lot. It's street parking only in a residential stretch of the peninsula, so plan to walk a bit.
- Hoag Hospital sits about four miles away with a full emergency room, which tells you something about how seriously lifeguards treat this stretch of coast even on a calm day.
- If you want to check conditions before making the walk, Surfline runs a live cam and daily forecast for The Wedge, and the city's own surf and weather line updates twice a day.
- Stay off the roped area near the cliff. The exposed material underneath isn't just unsightly, lifeguards have flagged it as a genuine injury risk on top of the wave itself.
A Coastline That's Always Been Fought Over
None of this is really new territory for The Wedge. It's been a contested piece of coastline since long before this summer:
- 1963: A San Bernardino Superior Court judge named Roger Gardner, himself an avid Wedge bodysurfer, argued publicly against neighbors who wanted the spot shut down entirely.
- 1964: The break landed a cameo in the surf film Endless Summer, cementing its reputation well beyond Orange County.
- 1982: A bodysurfer named Fred Simpson invented the Viper fin specifically to help riders catch The Wedge's bigger sets.
- 1993: The Wedge Preservation Society successfully lobbied the city council for the blackball rule that's still enforced today.
Every era has had its own version of the fight over who gets to use this wave and how. This summer's version just happens to be about sand and jurisdiction instead of surfboards and bodysurfers.
If you live nearby, you already knew The Wedge had a wild June. What's worth knowing now is that the mess it left behind isn't a simple fix, and it isn't going away before the blackball flag comes down in November. The next big south swell will find the same exposed jetty and the same sand sitting untouched on the other side, at least until the permitting catches up with the coastline.
If you're thinking about what any of this means for property near the water, whether it's how a stretch of coastline like this affects home values on the peninsula or just want a second set of eyes on a piece of real estate in the neighborhood, the Stephanie Young Group knows this stretch of Newport Beach as well as anyone. Let's Connect.