Broad Beach Sand District Rejects Request For Another $631K For Another Sand Study, Needs New Coastal Permits In October

Broad Beach homeowners are tapping the brakes on the expensive and controversial 16 year long project to bring in millions of tons of sand. 

Meeting Sunday morning .. the board of directors unanimously turned down a request by executive director Ken Ehrlich to spend 630 thousand dollars this fall … on yet more engineering studies. 

Ehrlich could not get one member of the Broad Beach Geologic Hazard Assessment District to support spending the 630 thousand dollars … this fall.

Commission chairman Norton Kano said yesterday he has been watching this for 15 years … and he is not sure that the Coastal Commission will approve the application … to cover the temporary rock wall with tons and tons of sand. 

But Ehrlich is still working to begin hauling in the sand … starting next year. 

The project’s Coastal Commission permit expires this fall .. and Ehrlich is hoping to submit a new application to coastal staff in the next few days to conduct the gigantic sad transfer. 

But Ehrlich told the board yesterday that trucking in the sand from Moorpark … a controversial and very expensive proposition … may be on hold. 

That came after Ehrlich was unable to give the board even a 50-50 chance that the Commission will approve the new permit. 

Commission chairman Norton Kano said he hoped the project could still be made cheaper … by abandoning the trucking scheme and instead getting the sand from the seabed somehow.

The Broad Beach chair said … that even if they get new Coastal Commission permits in October … there is a less than 50-50 chance that the 15 year effort to get sand from the ocean will succeed. 

BBEACH KANO

“Even if we get a positive response from Coastal in the week of August, the chair opposes the expenditure $631,000 … based on the uncertainty of the timing of when we will finish our studies as to the appropriate source of sand and implementation of contracts to end up accomplishing that.”

Board members said they could not understand why they are being asked to spend the money just a few weeks before the Coastal Commission staff gets the request for the new permit … and responds. 

The board members said they were particularly interested to see if sand from offshore is still possible … but that discussion was held behind closed doors. Sunday morning.

Executive director Ken Ehrlich said he is still potentially able to swing a deal with the City of Los Angeles for sand near LAX …

But board members politely said … they have heard that for 15 years.

Yesterday … the board approved legal settlements with four Broad beach homeowners who were gumming up the required unanimous consent from nearly 100 homeowners … who all have to sign off on the project.

The board paid 340 thousand dollars to the homeowners … and agreed to charge them less in property taxes in coming years.

The sand district executive director also said they have paid another 330 thousand dollars to the state of California … which owns the beach that the district accidentally covered with rocks to protect houses a decade ago.

The emergency rock wall was slammed into place to protect houses as the beach was eaten away by wave action.   

But the homeowners accidentally placed the rock wall too far out to sea … on state property. 

Oops.   That mistake could have moved the property lines out to sea … but it backfired in a spectacular fashion. 

Moving the rock revetment back towards the houses … back on private property to fix that mistake … would cost between 8 to 15 million dollars. 

So the state is charging rent.

The sand district has paid out about 3 million dollars to the state for rent for the rock mistake. 

The idea still is to bury the mistake under mountains of sand .. bring sand dunes 

The settlement with the four property owners leaves on major lawsuit still out there.

That would be the lawsuit filed by the Malibu West homeowners … who are refusing to pay for beach replenishment in front of their swim club. 

They point out that they will not get any real benefit …. Not much sand and no rocks down at their end of the beach.

Yesterday … the Broad Beach sand district approved another increase in the yearly property tax it charges on Broad Beach landowners. 

It’s an inflation-matching tax increase … about 4 percent.

Some landowners along Broad Beach Road already pay more than 100 thousand dollar per year in special taxes to the sand district. 

LA Times: Both City And County Of LA Fail To Meet State Law On Fire Evacuation Routes

Remember the bulldozers that were shoving gridlocked cars out of the way on Sunset Boulevard … to allow fire trucks to get into the Palisades???

The Los Angeles Times has printed an investigation into the lack of evacuation plans … for the County of Los Angeles … and for the City of Los Angeles.

It turns out …the City of Los Angeles does not have detailed evacuation plans drawn up for fire prone areas … like Pacific Palisades.

And neither does the County of Los Angeles … for the Malibu mountains.

And over the hill … the City of Calabasas is being asked to approve dense multifamily housing in the area of the Kanan Road interchange at the 101 freeway … a critical evacuation route from Malibu … without conducting an accurate evacuation study.

This weekend’s Los Angeles Times investigative report says neither the City of LA nor the County of LA have run studies to examine how quickly any given geographic area can be evacuated.

Such studies are required by a six-year-old state law … which requires cities and counties to evaluate whether quick and safe evacuations are feasible.

The Times reports that the city of L.A. has failed to publicly report such an analysis.

L.A. County listed evacuation routes for unincorporated areas by simply listing every road that is paved, public and not a dead end.

Up in Northern California .. the fire-ravaged city of Paradise installed new signs all over town… marking when people enter and exit different evacuation zones.

The town is also looking into using a different color sign for private or dead-end roads that warn drivers to avoid them.

The LA Times reports that “Malibu is adding reflective markers to roadways to reduce the chances of crashes amid thick smoke.”

But six years after Woolsey … no such reflective markers have been added to city streets.

And motorist confusion … an inability to see …. nearly killed people in cars during the Palisades Fire in Malibu.

The LA Times does note … correctly … that Malibu encourages evacuating whenever the National Weather Service warns of dangerous fire weather — well before a possible ignition.

One fire expert told the LA Times that evaluating routes for safety and viability is situational, context‐specific, and subject to change.

Potential evacuation locations are activated depending on the location, nature, and scale of the emergency and are announced on the Los Angeles County Emergency Response web site.

But during the Palisades Fire … power was out … and many Internet services were blacked out.

KBUU was on the air … but our evacuation information was critically restricted …

The Palisades Fire came to us from the east … and all of the LA TV station reporters that we rely on were stuck on the east side of the fire.

No TV helicopters were allowed to launch because the president was staying in a hotel in Beverly Hills.

And no live broadcast reports were coming out of the western side of the fire … as it chewed into Malibu.

The LA Times report quotes fore experts … who say the county of LA is “missing actual detailed, road-by-roadway capacity analysis of the time that it’s going to take for people to safely evacuate the area.”

Chopper Ops Start Wed On PCH Near Moonshadows Site

Signs are up .. the big rolls of steel netting are shipped out here … and the state is warning motorists about helicopter operations this week above Pacific Coast Highway in the eastern part of Malibu. 

On Wednesday and Thursday … crews will be using at least one helicopter at very low altitude to lay rock mesh on the cliff just above the old Moonshadows site.

They say this is needed as part of a slope restoration project resulting from winter storm damage two years ago.

That would be one year before fire swept the slope. 

Once the mesh is bolted down … it will help catch rocks and debris before it lands on the highway. 

No lane closures will be scheduled on PCH for this particular part of the project.

But the state warns that the helicopter will draw attention from those in the area as it has it ferries material back and forth … on multiple trips… as it picks up the mesh nearby and then a places it on the cliff. 

The work will start as early as seven in the morning this Wednesday and Thursday.

And this will be in addition to all the other lane closures for debris removal, digging by Edison and other stuff that’s going on along Pacific Coast Highway.

Between SCE, the state and the continuing fire ash removal … PCH will only have one lane in each direction all day … seven days per week … for the next two months or so.

PCH Warns Public Against Trespassing, But Just Where Is The Line In The Sand?

Los Angeles sheriff’s deputies today warned the public not to trespass on private beachfront property at burned-down lots in eastern malibu.

The police agency is warning on social media that burned properties in Malibu are still private property. 

The deputies say .. and we quote … civilians are not allowed to trespass or use someone’s land to access the beach, even if it has been damaged by fire. 

The problem with that is that wet sand in California is viewed as public property … and the property lines can only be surveyed by the State Lands Commission. 

No one can declare where the boundary is … and it moves every day with the tide. 

Apparently … some visitors have been observed wandering around amongst fire wreckage … including old cement columns and abandoned septic tanks.

Last weekend … high tides were observed washing up nearly all the way to the highway … across some burned out lots … splashing up to the right of way.

Before the fire … that land was open to the public … as there is no such thing as private wet sand in California. 

That public land is closed now … due to fire debris danger. 

But the closure cannot last forever … and the stage is set for more squabbles over public access to Malibu beaches. 

Two Grant Programs Avail For LA Businesses

Two grant programs totaling $10,000 each are open right now to help Los Angeles County businesses recover from January’s devastating wildfires.

The “Back to Business L.A. Wildfire Relief Grant” offers $10,000 grants to small businesses impacted by wind and wildfire events.

Eligible businesses must be located in fire-impacted areas of Los Angeles County and expect to remain operational within six to 12 months. 

At least 80 percent of grant funds must go toward replacing lost or damaged equipment, while remaining funds can cover employee wages, rent, utilities and other expenses.

That application window closes tonight at 11:59 p.m. 

Businesses can apply at http://bit.ly/46duwze.

A second program, the “Malibu-Topanga Business Interruption Fund,” opens tomorrow at 9 a.m. 

The county-operated program also provides $10,000 grants to affected businesses in the Malibu and Topanga areas.

There’s an application workshop for the Malibu-Topanga fund is scheduled for Thursday at noon at the Malibu Library.

Businesses can apply for the Malibu-Topanga grant at http://bit.ly/SD3BIF.