Carlsbad to spend $841,000 on Highway 101 repairs
CARLSBAD — One lane of southbound Highway 101 remains closed in Carlsbad, where the city agreed this week to spend $841,000 on a permanent solution to the damage left by December’s high tides and big waves.
The erosion, a quarter mile south of Palomar Airport Road, initially threatened to undermine the iconic seaside highway, which in the city is known as Carlsbad Boulevard.
The expenditures approved by the City Council on Tuesday include about $125,000 for work already done on a temporary fix made soon after the council declared a local emergency on Dec. 15.
“We ended up putting about 1,200 tons of rock in there along the embankment,” said Public Works Director Pat Thomas. “We feel like we have it pretty well stabilized.”
A filter fabric was placed beneath the rock revetment to help hold back the soil, he said.
The temporary repairs were completed by the Carlsbad company Planes, Boats and Automobiles, LTD. before an early January series of storms pummeled the county. Thomas said the work held up well through the rains, but the western traffic lane will remain closed for the foreseeable future to keep cars off the shoulder until the permanent repairs are completed.
A permanent fix probably will require more rock to improve the highway shoulder to its original condition and perhaps to extend the rock riprap further to the north. That work will require a permit from the California Coastal Commission that may take as long as six months to get, Thomas said.
The eroded area is a low spot in the highway, just north of the small Encinas Creek bridge, that has long been subject to erosion. Another area just south of the bridge was badly eroded about five years ago, and the final repairs there were only completed earlier this winter.
Money for the work will be taken from the city’s gas tax fund, and the city is investigating whether reimbursement may be available from the state Office of Emergency Services.
Carlsbad also recently completed repairs to a storm drain along the coast highway at La Costa Avenue, where storm drain carried water from nearby Encinitas, Thomas said. That problem created a sinkhole that was difficult to see because of the roadside vegetation.
The seasonal high tides — often called “king tides” because of their size — began in November and were blamed for damage along Highway 101 in Cardiff in early December. Two large sections of the bluff collapsed on the eastern side of an inlet channel to the San Elijo Lagoon.
Emergency repairs authorized there by Encinitas cost about $60,000.
The high tides and waves also left rocks and sand on beach parking lots at Tamarack Avenue in Carlsbad and at Cardiff in Encinitas. The lots were briefly closed until they could be cleared by state parks workers.
Caution tape remains posted at the northern end of the sea wall across from the Agua Hedionda Lagoon, where high tides and waves have washed away much of the sand from the beach down to bare cobblestones.