If you’ve been to Carlsbad’s central beaches lately, you might have noticed there’s a lot more room to spread out and enjoy yourself.

That’s because a recent project added more than 320,000 cubic yards of sand to beaches in the area. That’s enough to cover more than 150 football fields, endzone to endzone, with a foot of sand. It would take about 32,000 standard dump truck loads to bring that much sand to the beach.

Instead of using dump trucks, however, the sand was pumped directly onto the shore thanks to the recent Agua Hedionda Lagoon maintenance dredging project. 

• Every few years, crews from Channelside Water Resources, which operates the Carlsbad desalination plant, are brought in to clear out sand that has built up in the outer lagoon.
• This is an important project to keep water flowing for the nearby desalination plant and for the overall health of the coastal ecosystem within the lagoon.
• Crews pump the dredged sand onto nearby beaches so the community can make the most of our coast.

To get as much sand on these beaches as feasible, the city approved extended days and work hours until the project wrapped up in mid-May. The additional hours and dates paid off, with 17% more sand making it to our central coastline.

If you’ve got a beach day in store, here’s where you’ll find the wider, sandy beaches:

• North of the Agua Hedionda Lagoon, from Pine Avenue to the south end of the Tamarack Avenue Parking lot
• South of the Agua Hedionda Lagoon, from the warm water jetty to the Terramar development, north of the intersection of Cannon Road and Carlsbad Boulevard

Remember to bring plenty of sunscreen, even with the June gloom, and catch up on beach safety tips on our website.