Ediz Hook seawall

Ediz Hook was built over thousands of years by gravel washing east from the Elwha River and the bluffs west of town. In the 1900s, the Elwha dams and armoring at the foot of the bluffs cut that supply to a fraction of what it had been, and the Hook began to erode.^[1] In 1977 and 1978 the Army Corps of Engineers built a project combining rock revetment and beach nourishment, and further work in 1985 essentially stabilized the spit.^[1] The Corps still repairs the revetment and places fresh gravel on the beach.^[2]

The Hook is also exposed to the region's largest hazard. Port Angeles lies above the Cascadia Subduction Zone.^[4] The Washington Geological Survey's 2022 modeling shows the first rising wave of a Cascadia tsunami reaching Port Angeles in about an hour, with an amplitude of about 20 feet.^[3]

The Coast Guard's Air Station Port Angeles sits near the tip,^[6] and the Navy opened a pier for submarine escort vessels on the Hook in 2018.^[5]

ConceptA vegetated, gently sloped seawall along the north shore, built in front of or over the existing Corps rock, with a walk and bike deck on top. It stays low and green, so the Strait stays in view. It runs the full length of the Hook, through the Coast Guard Air Station and the Navy's pier to the tip: the wall protects the bases, and carrying it to the end makes the whole Hook stronger. The harbor side keeps small gravel coves and beaches for people and wildlife.

The height, width and toe of the wall would come from site-specific tsunami and storm modeling and from working with the Corps, which maintains the Hook today. FEMA's P-646 guidance covers structures people can climb onto to escape a tsunami,^[11] a role a raised, walkable berm could be designed to serve if engineers found it safe.

• Katwijk, the Netherlands. The town widened its dunes and hid a new dike inside them, with an underground garage for about 670 cars, about 1,640 feet long, between the dike and the boulevard. The wider dunes made more room for nature and recreation.^{[7, 8]}
• Scheveningen, the Netherlands. The water board built a sea wall about 0.6 mile long under a new boulevard designed by the architect Manuel de Solà-Morales, keeping the defense underground and invisible under a seaside promenade.^[9]
• Elliott Bay, Seattle. The city's rebuilt seawall has a textured face, rock beds and a light-passing sidewalk for young salmon. Its 2018 monitoring report counted 10,000 juvenile salmon in a single day in May.^[10]

Each shows the same idea: a sea defense can be a place people choose to spend time, and it can give habitat back rather than take it.

The Hook connects at its base to the former McKinley mill site, where Third Harvest proposes a green waterfront district and a working yard. See Mill site and the Port Angeles tunnel page.

Nobody has been contacted, and nothing here implies the involvement or endorsement of any agency, tribe or company.