Staking a Claim to Stone Steps Beach : Coastal Life: Beach lover resents bluff-top dwellers’ attempt to put boulders on narrow strip of sand, in an effort to halt erosion.

We’re going to take a stroll over to the Stone Steps beach. It won’t take long to get there; it’s just a little stroll after you leave my back gate. We’ll walk down a dirt alley behind my house that’s nice--sort of like a country lane with songbirds in the trees and across a vacant lot and then wind up the street and cross Neptune Avenue and we’re there.

Now we’ve got to go down about 150 steps. Going down is the easy part. There’s a lifeguard down there on the landing right before the last flight of steps to the sand and he’s always nice and smiles and you get to know him, you know, over the season.

Let’s walk across the sand to the water. You’ve got to keep your eye on the tide if you go to Stone Steps beach because at high tide there isn’t much beach down here any more. Sand erosion. But at low tide there’s no better beach in California. Let’s wade in the water and look back at the Stone Steps beach in its friendly magnificence--the way it should be looked at, from the Pacific Ocean.

Look at those steps winding down from the top of the bluff. The steps were one of Roosevelt’s WPA projects during the Depression.

I met an older woman from the neighborhood who told me there were sentries posted at the steps every night during World War II. She used to walk through the blacked-out neighborhood and bring the sentries Thermoses of hot coffee while they kept a watchful eye out for looming Japanese aircraft carriers on the horizon foaming toward the Stone Steps beach.

Stand with me out here in the Pacific Ocean and look toward shore and contemplate the serene perfection of the Stone Steps beach. Look at the afternoon sun glowing on those bluffs. This is the best-kept secret in California. No one knows it’s down here. Off to the south is Moonlight Beach, choked with tourists and inlanders because they can see the water as soon as they get off the freeway. But the Stone Steps is hidden down here below the bluff and only the neighborhood knows of its existence. You’ve got to want to go to the Stone Steps beach. You can’t be equivocal about it because, you see, to leave you have got to climb those 150 blood-pumping, aerobic steps, and a lot of strangers figure it’s not worth the trouble.

Smile and say hello to your neighbors. Watch the kids grow up. There’s no designated swimming area at the Stone Steps beach. It doesn’t fit in with the laissez-faire, cooperative nature of the place. A sign saying “SWIMMING AREA--STAY WITHIN FLAGS” would be much too authoritarian. Take your surfboard down there and surf anywhere you want to. Take your fins down there and swim anywhere you feel like. We can get along.

OK, now listen to this. There isn’t much beach left at the Stone Steps. I already told you that. That storm in January a few years back, the one that knocked down piers all along California, hurt our little beach. That was a mean storm. It was sad to go down to the Steps after that. There was nothing but cobblestones left, piles of uncomfortable cobblestones that hurt your feet and not exactly inviting to spread a beach towel over. All the sand had been sucked out to sea. I’ve got pictures of my daughter, Angela, when she was little, jumping off sand cliffs like dunes at Stone Steps in the days before that storm.

Now slowly, slowly the sand has been coming back. Slowly, slowly we’ve got our beach back too. We don’t have to remember what it was like anymore; we can enjoy it now.

But wealthy folks with mansions along Neptune Avenue on top of the bluff have gotten together and want to fill our beach with piles of boulders to protect their property from the big north swells. They’re afraid their property will slide into the sea. Those boulders would take 20 feet of my beach, and that’s almost the entire beach. They want to build a boulder wall 10 feet tall. Those north swells will take those boulders and furiously toss them around and use them like tools to grind away at that bluff and, in the end, the wealthy folks’ property will fall into the sea anyway.

But the city of Encinitas didn’t see it that way. The wealthy folks who live in the mansions are picking up the entire tab. It won’t cost the city of Encinitas one dime to fill the Stone Steps beach with boulders and take it away from the rest of us. First, the City Council gave this project emergency status and granted its approval without a public hearing. Then, when the council members were chastised and startled by the outcry they said, well, maybe you’re right, maybe we should have a public hearing. But all they did was pass the decision over to the state Lands Commission and the Coastal Commission.

The mansion dwellers haven’t given up; they still want to steal the Stone Steps beach.

Stand with me in the cold magnificence of the Pacific Ocean and look toward the Stone Steps beach. Up there, right against the bluffs they want to fill our beach with a mess of boulders 10 feet high. Think about that and answer me this: Wouldn’t that be a shame?