There are many attractions that draw tourists to Long Beach, Calif, whether it's the TED Conference in February, the Toyota Grand Prix in April, or weddings on the Queen Mary in the summer. The diverse city has something to offer just about anyone.

Anyone, that is, except for surfers.

Long Beach was once a surf city like neighboring cities Huntington Beach and Manhattan Beach, but the city hasn't seen much good surf -- or beachfront tourism -- in nearly 60 years. There are no waves and the waters are notoriously polluted. For years, Long Beach has earned failing grades from environmental group Heal the Bay's annual beach report cards.

Gone are the days that the city held surf competitions. Hit the sand in Long Beach on a typical afternoon and the beach may be empty.

The Long Beach shore changed in the 1940s when the Army Corps of Engineers installed an eight-mile, 50-foot-high wall a mile and a half off the coast. The wall was designed to create a safe harbor for the U.S. Navy's Pacific Fleet and to protect the shoreline from storm damage.

But the Navy left in the mid-'90s. Now, wall detractors say the only thing the wall is harboring is bacteria and pollution from the San Gabriel and Los Angeles Rivers, which filter into Long Beach waters.

Without the surf, Long Beach is also missing out on a major economic grab.

The city of Long Beach is funding a study it hopes will change that.

For the first time, the city is investigating whether removing or reconfiguring the wall would help restore the city's beaches or cause more damage.

While a removal has been talked about for years, the current $100,000 preliminary study by Long Beach firm Moffatt & Nichol is the city's first major effort to investigate the effects of altering the wall. The Army Corps denied the city's previous request to conduct the study, so the city is conducting its own study using the Army Corps standards. The city hopes the study will prove a federal interest in reconfiguring wall, and that it would ultimately lead to a plan that would help restore its beaches and boost the local economy.

But the idea of a reconfiguration has many detractors. Stakeholders like the Port of Long Beach; Seal Beach Naval Weapons Station; and THUMS, the owner of Long Beach's four oil islands, all rely on Long Beach's now-calm waters to conduct operations. Others say that removing the breakwater wouldn't solve the problem of the pollution seeping into Long Beach's ocean waters from upriver towns. And residents of the city's peninsula and Naples Island areas fear the removal would lead to flooding and erosion. Without the shielding effects of the breakwater, say critics of the project, sixty years of shoreline development and oceanic operations could be at risk.

The current study is designed to simply answer questions, but for some Long Beach politicians, there's a clear proposal in mind: altering the breakwater to help create clean surf, and ultimately, a better economy for the city.

Councilmember Patrick O'Donnell has helped to lead efforts to study the breakwater.

"The political climate has changed such that people are willing to go forward now and ask if the breakwater is relevant, or a relic, in Long Beach," O'Donnell said. "We don't have a complete understanding of what the breakwater does to wave activity and water circulation in Long Beach. It's our hope that this study will give us the answer to those questions."

The wall is federally owned and operated, so the findings would have to convince Congress of a positive cost-benefit ratio in taking on such a venture. If it does, the next phase of the study would involve a large-scale simulation by the Army Corp of Engineers to determine cost and feasibility. Any reconfiguration would be a 50-50 cost-share between the city and the federal government.

"This is about cleaning our waters and increasing the economic value of our beaches," O'Donnell said. "The more people come down to our beaches, the more they visit our restaurants, our stores, and enjoy this fine city."

But that's in the city's interest. Proving a federal interest is no easy task.

The Army Corps of Engineers has four main missions: flood control, navigation, storm damage reduction, and ecosystem restoration. Critics say the first three missions would be in jeopardy should the breakwater be reconfigured. Moffatt & Nichol's study will address the fourth argument, determining if a reconfiguration would lead to significant environmental improvement.

The environmental group Surfrider Foundation has taken that angle for years. The Foundation has been campaigning to "sink the breakwater" for over a decade. It argues that its efforts are about more than bringing back surf for recreational purposes: a dynamic surf serves a vital function in cleansing and circulating shoreline waters.

"We need to clean up the trash, we need to clean up the toxic soup coming down the rivers, but we need to bring the waves back," says Robert Palmer, chairman of the Long Beach chapter of the Surfrider Foundation.

"The fear is that this study that Moffatt & Nichol is doing comes back and is going to be so compromised that there's no way the Army Corps is going to look at it and see a federal interest in reconfiguring the breakwater. Having said that, if it dies, we're not giving up," said Palmer. "We're making plans for what we're going to do if the study goes flat."

Opponents of a reconfiguration are equally invested.

Peninsula resident Preston Smith is a retired dentist by trade and oceanographer by hobby. In studying the breakwater, he has created an entire multimedia presentation that he shows to local community groups, educating residents on the present-day function of the breakwater.

Smith argues that the breakwater was built, in part, to protect the peninsula. If the peninsula is flooded or eroded, he said, it would have a devastating ripple effect.

"To have surf would be nice -- I'm a surfer, I'm a member of Surfrider -- but it's going to cause more harm than good," said Smith. "The peninsula actually protects a much wider area, which is Belmont Shore, Belmont Park, and Naples. There's billions of dollars worth of property that could be damaged.

"No one knows what's going to happen, but if you reintroduce the big waves, historically they wreck the beach," he said. "And there's no reason to think that they wouldn't do that again."

But representatives of the study say nothing will be done with the breakwater until they do know what would happen.

"All we're asking for at this time is a study and the information provided by that study. We're not seeking to take down the breakwater until we know what taking down the breakwater would do," O'Donnell said.

Results of the study are set to come out in May, after which the Moffatt & Nichol team will present its results to the City Council. The next phase will depend on the findings of the current study.

"As a community we need to look at the results and see what they tell us," O'Donnell said. "You don't hear me saying, 'Take down the breakwater.' What you hear me saying is, 'Study the breakwater.'"