Jessica Côté ’89, owner of Blue Coast Engineering, which provides coastal engineering and restoration services in Washington state
Jessica Côté’s ’89 work restoring the beaches and pocket estuaries of the Puget Sound sometimes requires her to get outdoors at odd hours. She recently spent a winter evening surveying a beach at low tide—and loving every minute.
“Yes, it’s winter, and yes, it’s cold, but it was beautiful,” Côté recalls. “The stars were out, and I just find magic in these places that I visit.”
Côté’s Seattle-area coastal engineering business, Blue Coast Engineering LLC, partners with nonprofits, parks, and other landowners to remove old coastal infrastructure, such as seawalls and tide gates, and replace it with natural materials that prevent erosion and flooding while providing a haven for fish and other wildlife.
“We design things that are working with nature, as opposed to working against it,” Côté says.
Côté grew up near Lake George, in upstate New York, and has always enjoyed being in and around water. She graduated from Tufts with a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering. She had a general idea that she wanted an engineering job that involved the ocean.
“I quickly realized that I wasn’t going to be able to sit at a desk all the time,” Côté says. “I’ve always loved being outside.”
She didn’t yet know that coastal and ocean engineering was a profession. But after doing some research at a local library, she realized the specialty would be a great fit.
Using high resolution GPS, Côté measures the elevation at a project site in a channel, which is full during high tides, but is dry during low tides. The project involves many private homes, which experience extensive coastal flooding during extreme high tides and weather events.
Côté went on to earn a master’s degree in coastal and ocean engineering from Oregon State University. She worked for the U.S. Geological Survey and then for a series of engineering consulting firms.
“I did very exciting, very cool work,” Côté says of her work at one large firm. “I worked in the Arctic, I worked in Peru, I worked in Tanzania—all these amazing places.”
But she eventually realized she’d rather restore coastal areas near Seattle, where she lives with her husband and teenage daughter. “I was feeling kind of disconnected from my community,” she says.
Côté teaches property owners about coastal processes and how they interact with beach sediments seasonally and annually to change the shoreline. Hard armoring of shorelines disrupts these processes and causes an increase in erosion, as opposed to decreasing erosion rates.
Côté founded Blue Coast Engineering seven years ago and now has a business partner and eight employees. Her team’s work ranges from small beach restoration projects to restoring salt marshes converted to farm land decades ago.
Team members begin by studying an area, analyzing everything from wave patterns to sediment movement. Then they draw up plans to restore the area using materials such as boulders, wood, sand, and plants, as well as carefully positioned channels.
Côté says the most challenging part of her job is winning over skeptical local residents.
Pushback to coastal restoration projects can get political and ugly, she says, as people resist changes to beloved beaches and parks. “We try to do, early and often, outreach to get ahead of it before people start making up their own narratives and stories.”
Her team ultimately aims to improve coastal areas for people, plants, and wildlife. That’s what makes the work rewarding, Côté says. “There’s a lot of gratification in the fact that I’m really trying to do good for this Earth.”