The beach on the northwest side of Clam Bay was once a spit with a lagoon tucked in behind. But the lagoon made a convenient dumping ground and became a cleanup site. It is ironic that it is also now the site of an EPA and Department of Ecology Laboratory and that there is a NOAA Fisheries lab at the head of the bay.
The site of the old lagoon was capped with clean fill, but instead of armoring the shoreline (which consisted of various nasty things corroding out of the gravel), they built a beach. The beach has adaptively managed itself a little since it was constructed, with some erosion occurring at the southeastern (updrift) end and a new berm forming farther bayward at the western end, but all in all its done quite nicely (or so it appears to this casual observer) and sure beats a foreshore covered with basalt boulders and quarry spalls.
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