GLENEDEN BEACH — Shortly before Thanksgiving, Jeremy Oldfield of San Francisco was in the Northwest visiting relatives, so he took a side trip to go sightseeing on the Oregon Coast.

Oldfield wasn’t looking for seashells or going whale watching, however. He came to see houses teetering on oceanside cliffs.

“Things are just hanging over the edge now,” he said. “I’m walking down the beach pretty much like an erosion tourist.”

Heavy waves from storms in early November scoured away about 10 yards of cliffs in Gleneden Beach, south of Lincoln City. That left some houses precariously close to falling.

“Brand new home. They just built it a couple of years ago,” said Ken Bader of Gleneden Beach, as he looked at a neighbor’s house a few feet from the cliff side.

Three property owners at Gleneden Beach applied for emergency riprap permits, to put down a stretch of boulders to deflect the waves.

Oregonians should get ready to see more riprap on the coast, and that could cause the loss of public beaches that are unique to Oregon, said Paul Komar, an expert in beach erosion and Oregon State University professor emeritus of oceanography.

Erosion will get worse because waves and the sea level are getting higher, he said.

“We now see the storms getting stronger and stronger, the waves getting bigger and bigger as we go through the decades,” Komar added.

It isn’t understood what’s causing those increases, but a theory is that it’s due to global warming, he said. Regardless of the reason, more homes will be put at risk.

Protecting houses with riprap, however, may mean that “we’ll progressively lose our beaches,” Komar said.

“This is ultimately my big fear,” he said, during a recent lecture on campus, showing the audience photos of waves breaking against riprap and storm walls.

On much of the beach, including Gleneden Beach, the main supply of sand is coastal erosion.

Structures such as sea walls and riprap “block the sand that could be taken off the bluff. Basically, it’s locked up, and it reduces the total amount of sand available,” said Tony Stein, coastal land-use coordinator for the Oregon Parks and Recreation Department, which oversees the placement of shore protection structures.

Riprap also can cause worse erosion in front of a now-armored beach, Stein said.

“What it will do is during huge storm events, when you have wave run up, waves bounce off and take sand away with it,” Stein said. “It’s somewhat site specific,” he added.

Erosion and riprap aren’t new on Oregon beaches, of course. Stein said people started putting in material to save oceanfront properties in Oregon in the late 1950s and early 1960s.

Nearly every year, the state receives applications for permanent and emergency permits to put down a line of boulders to save homes somewhere along the state’s 362-mile coastline.

In the last 10 years, there have been 74 permanent permits issued for riprap by the state. The worst recent year for beach erosion was 1999, when 27 permanent permits were issued.

To get such a permit, homes have to be in imminent danger of being destroyed. Properties where development hadn’t started before Jan. 1, 1977, aren’t eligible to apply for riprap permits, Stein said.

This year, there have been six emergency permits, he added. Three were for Neskowin due to storms last winter.

Gleneden Beach might not be the last beach erosion this winter, however, Komar and Stein said.

Sand typically builds up on Oregon beaches during the summer, then washes away as the weather gets colder. By January, much of the sand that has built up is gone and waves can reach the properties.

“This year, it was very unusual,” Stein said.

“We’re starting much earlier than normal. If we go through a series of bad storms this winter, it could be a very bad year,” Komar said.

The Gazette-Times strives to provide local news coverage to its entire circulation area, including portions of Lincoln County. Newport and other areas of Lincoln County will be featured the first Thursday of every month. Reporter Kyle Odegard can be contacted at kyle.odegard@lee.net or 758-9523.