Carlsbad asks for ‘emergency’ repairs to Highway 101
Take a look at Ventura County last Friday:
http://ktla.com/2015/12/11/ventura-pier-damaged-closed-due-to-high-surf-neighborhood-streets-flooded/
CARLSBAD — Astronomical high tides have washed away large sections of the beach and eroded chunks from the shoulder of Carlsbad Boulevard, also known has Highway 101.
Carlsbad’s City Council is expected to declare a local emergency at its meeting Tuesday night to authorize repairs that would prevent further damage in a low spot along the boulevard near the Encinas Creek bridge south of Palomar Airport Road.
“We just want to protect the roadway before we start losing pieces of it into the ocean,” said John Maashoff of the Public Works Department.
About 300 feet of the western southbound lane of Carlsbad Boulevard was closed to traffic Tuesday morning “out of an abundance of caution” to protect drivers and especially the bicyclists, joggers and pedestrians who use the shoulder, Maashoff said.
The solution probably will be to build a rock revetment along the highway shoulder prevent further erosion, he said, though a plan is still being developed.
“The goal is to start as early as next week,” Maashoff said. “But we do have a lot of high tides next week, so that’s probably going to prohibit us from getting in there and doing a lot of substantial work.”
The highest tide of the season, expected to be 7.2 feet above mean sea level, will occur Dec. 24. Public works officials are concerned that if there’s also another storm, there could be additional damage.
“In 2010 we had a very similar situation,” Maashoff said. “The shoulder was eroded, a sewer main was exposed, and we did some emergency repairs. We put in about 300 feet of riprap revetment to protect the boulevard from wave action.”
Sand has eroded all along the Carlsbad coast in recent weeks, he said, though so far the only significant damage has been at Encinas Creek. The unusually high tides, also known as ‘king tides,’ have swept away the sand from many North County beaches, leaving only cobblestones where there was sand.
Estimates of the Carlsbad Boulevard repair costs are pending, Maashoff said. Other agencies involved in the work include the California Coastal Commission, the state Department of Parks and Recreation, the Regional Water Quality Control Board, and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
Carlsbad real estate agent David Dion shot dramatic video Saturday morning of waves crashing against the seawall west of Agua Hedionda Lagoon.
“I run along that beach every Saturday morning,” Dion said. “It’s 95 percent gone from the beach that used to be there.”
He said his video of the crashing surf has had 600,000 views on Facebook, with the number still climbing by 5,000 views an hour. He recently posted it on YouTube, where by Tuesday morning it had 50,000 viewers.
“It’s crazy,” he said. “I’ve never had that happen before.”
A little farther north in Carlsbad, the state beach parking lot at Tamarack Avenue was closed Tuesday morning to sweep out the sand that blew in over the weekend.
“We started at 6:45 a.m. and hope to open by 1 p.m.” said supervising state parks Ranger Lisa Urbach. “We don’t want to have the lots closed like this any longer than possible.”
A bulldozer was brought in from the Anza Borrego Desert and work crews from Orange county to help with the clean-up, Urbach said, and that delayed the work a day. To prevent another such delay, the Parks Department will have heavy equipment staged in the area in preparation for the high tides of Dec. 23-25.
Beach erosion and sandy parking lots are not unusual in Southern California winters, but it could be worse this winter.
The National Weather Service has said unusually warm sea temperatures this winter will bring Southern California some of the strongest storms in years, a condition widely known as El Nino.
“Some people shovel snow in the winter; we shovel sand,” said Marcus Robert, a state parks maintenance worker.
Earlier this month the extreme tides ate away part of a sandy bluff supporting Coast Highway 101 in Cardiff, forcing Encinitas to launch emergency repairs there. That work was expected to cost about $60,000.
Video courtesy of David Dion / Solutions Real Estate