The storm tore out pieces of a fiberglass composite material intended to be the original face of the seawall and loosened timber planking put in to reinforce the wall. A hole also opened at the bottom, eroding backfill behind it.

"Once that opens up, it goes out like water," Goode said.

A winter storm last January caused similar damage. East Road Services made temporary repairs to the seawall that day, working late into the night, Goode said. Phukan Inc., the Anchorage firm that designed and built the seawall, contracts with Troy Jones of East Road Services to repair the seawall during its 5-year warranty period. Goode said Phukan had been aware of earlier damage to the wall and planned to fix it, but said the storm beat them to it.

Last week, Jones and his sons Buck and Phillip bolted in new horizontal wood planking. Earlier, they had put in rock boulders at the base of the wall to break up waves hitting it. Fill was placed behind the wall to replace fill lost in the latest storm.

Last July, Phukan sued Lee Composites and Creative Pultrusions, the manufacturers of the composite material, alleging it did not hold up as the companies claimed. Phukan seeks actual, incidental and compensatory damages, including the cost of reinforcing the fiberglass with wood planking.

"That was supposed to stand up," Homer City Manager Walt Wrede said of the fiberglass. "We now know that was wildly inaccurate."

Citing his lawsuit, Arvind Phukan declined to comment on the latest damage to the seawall.

The Kachemak Bay Research Reserve and the U.S. Geological Survey have been studying erosion patterns along Kachemak Bay from Bishop's Beach to the Homer Spit. In February 2003, with the city of Homer, KBRR and USGS set up the Argus Beach Monitoring System, a set of cameras on a tower at Munson Point near Beluga Slough to take periodic photographs of the changing beach.

Scott Pegau, an oceanographer with KBRR, said in general a series of waves migrating down the coast littoral cells, he called them move sand and gravel toward the end of the Homer Spit. Other storms move sand back in, a constant cycle of eroding and replenishing sand.

"This time of year, storms are going to move sand off the beach," Pegau said. "In summer, they pump it back."

This week, KBRR will release to the city a study done from historic aerial photographs showing the changing beach and identifying areas most vulnerable. Pegau said those areas tend to be beaches which face southwest the direction of the biggest storms. Some areas have lost as much as 120 feet in seven years.

An example of the changing coast can be seen at the mouth of Mariner Park Slough. Several years ago, the mouth ran perpendicular to the coast. A sandbar 60 feet wide has built up across the mouth and parallels the city campground at the base of the Spit, with only a narrow channel from the slough near where the Homer Spit Road armor rock meets the beach.

Human-built structures like seawalls and jetties change the normal coastal dynamics, Pegau said. When a wave hits a beach, the energy gets lost as it travels up the beach. When a wave hits a hard object like a jetty or a seawall, that energy is reflected back out, he said. The Ocean Drive Loop Seawall affects how waves hit the shore.

"If a wave hits at an angle, it runs down the seawall, hits the end of the seawall," Pegau said. "All that energy gets focused."

That's what happens at his stretch of the seawall, Goode said. The seawall comes down to a point and makes a dramatic curve.

"It almost takes a double whammy," he said. "The wave hits the point, backs out and hits again."

Most of the storms aren't so rough, Goode said, and usually bring sand back in, rebuilding the beach below Ocean Drive Loop. Boulder fields along the coast retain sand and gravel, he noted.

Pegau said armor rock can dissipate energy from waves. The wave rolls onto the rocks and squeezes down into the holes and cracks. Wrede said putting in armor rock is one solution Phukan is looking into in reinforcing those vulnerable sections. He's also looking into replacing the fiberglass seawall at those vulnerable points with metal sheathing and corrugated metal. Metal plates have been bolted across sections of the wooden planks to hold them together.

Under the city's contract with Phukan, the seawall has a 5-year warranty during which Phukan has to make repairs to any damage.

"The strategy is still to try to fix this and to strengthen this wall," Wrede said. "As long as the engineer is willing to fix things under the warranty, we're encouraging him to do that."

Wrede said Phukan takes pride in his work and is convinced the wall can be made to work.

Wrede said the city is trying to work out an agreement with Phukan and the property owners of the Ocean Drive Loop Erosion Control Improvement and Assessment District to answer questions like who monitors the seawall for damage and who does routine maintenance. Goode said all the homeowners keep an eye on the seawall.

"I try to really watch it, especially after storms," he said.

Last December, the Homer City Council passed a resolution establishing the erosion control district and creating an assessment roll. The city assessed the landowners at $1,014,032 for the project, or $585.13 per bluff foot. Because of issues regarding the performance of the seawall and the assessment charges, the Ocean Drive Loop property owners appealed that assessment, Goode said.

When the seawall was first proposed, property owners were told the cost would be lower, about $450 a foot plus a 15 percent contingency cost. The assessment roll included other property owners who claimed they weren't benefited by the seawall, and their names were dropped from the roll, he said.

Goode referred questions regarding that appeal to the homeowners' lawyer, James Reeves of the Anchorage law firm of Dorsey and Whitney. Reeves had not returned a message by press time.

An unanswered question is what happens if the seawall fails after the 5-year warranty period. Wrede said insurance would cover the seawall in the event of a major disaster like a tsunami or earthquake. Who pays for the seawall if it fails because of a major storm? Goode said property owners were told the seawall would last 50 years.

"It they could claim it failed because of some error in design, they'd have some redress," Wrede said. "If it continues to fail, the owners can say, 'You know, Dr. Phukan, this isn't going to work.' Right now, our focus is 'Can it still be made to work?' We want to give Phukan every opportunity to do that."

Wrede said he understood the frustration of the landowners as they go through the process of Phukan making frequent repairs.

"It is much stronger than originally designed," he said. "That's one of the ironies."

Michael Armstrong can be reached at michael.armstrong@homernews.com.