rock barrier

Cruising around 7 knots, we turned past sea lions barking on the breakwater, a rock barrier that guards Seattle’s Shilshole Bay Marina from the waters of Puget Sound.

Planners and farmers are coming at the problem of saltwater intrusion with a desalination plant, an artificial rock barrier and groundwater pumps.

That included cracked and sunken runways undermined by melting ice, damaged hangers and roads, and a collapsed rock barrier that had been piled up to hold back floodwater from a river swollen by glacial melting, at Thule in Greenland.

Building the rock barrier, known as riprap, was an “exhausting project,” since the raw material could be unloaded only during low tide, said Metrolink spokesman Paul Gonzales.

The Trump Organization has applied to build a rock barrier below the dunes to prevent further erosion and is waiting for a national planning board to decide the matter.