Sand concerns pile up
Beachfront residents cry foul over management plan
By Bill Lascher 02/28/2008
A plan to manage mounting piles of sand on Ventura beaches has enraged dozens of beachfront property owners.
Homeowners in the Pierpont neighborhood are setting the stage for a showdown with city officials that could be the latest in a series of battles between city and state officials.
As a March 4 public workshop on the Pierpont Beach Sand Management Plan approaches both sides still appear at odds. The central question is whether the city or the homeowners are responsible for maintaining a 40-foot-wide stretch of beach between Marina Park and San Pedro Street. Homeowners say the city is responsible for clearing sand that has piled up and spilled over into streets and yards while limiting beach access. The city, in turn, wants to manage the growing dunes according to California Coastal Commission guidelines with the homeowners footing the bill for maintenance.
The history of this dispute stretches back to the 1930s, when the city built Shore Drive along the length of the beach at the end of Pierpont’s characteristic “lanes.” Originally a city street that might possibly have had houses even closer to the beach, over the years layers and layers of sand buried the road and the utility lines beneath. The city owns the 40-foot area closest to the homes. The remaining beach is operated and maintained by California state officials.
For decades city crews routinely cleared sand that built up along the strip and on staircases to the beach at the end of each lane. Then, in 1999, faced with a requirement from the California Coastal Commission that it obtain permits to continue the maintenance, the city stopped its work. In the ensuing years storms and wind delivered more and more sand to the beach, bringing dunes at some points to the height of neighboring home rooftops and causing retaining walls and foundations to buckle at other points.
Now at least one resident has taken the city to court over the problem. Ron Wilson, who purchased his beachfront home in 1968, has sued the city because he had to hire heavy equipment to clear away the sand building up against his home and grade the nearby dune.
“My feeling is I have a pretty bad neighbor,” Wilson said. “They don’t want to take care of it.”
But City Engineer Rick Raives says the city can’t go back to the way it used to manage the beach. When it stopped clearing sand in 1999, he said, the coastal commission made it known that changing understanding about the ecology of beach dunes meant traditional beach management couldn’t be permitted. Raives said the development of the new management plan — which was written by an environmental scientist from the San Buenaventura State Park and a coastal commission ecologist — gives the city guidelines it can provide beachside residents about how the sand can be managed without harming the coastal environment. That plan, he said, “includes the science of what would be most effective in regards to the interface between the existing homes out there and the existing dune ecology.”
Multiple property owners, however, believe the area is too far gone from its original ecology to require such rigid environmental standards.
“You can’t talk about that beach as being a natural environment,” said Carolyn Hiller, a Los Angeles resident who has owned a weekend home at the end of Bangor Lane since 1973. “That is a man-made beach, with the corps of engineer putting in all the groins, the damning of the rivers and all the landfills. That beach has been so mucked around with that it is not like it was 100 years ago. There’s not much left of the natural environment on that particular stretch of beach. Everything that they did changed the beach. Now they need to maintain it.”
Kate Neiswender, a Pierpont resident and a lawyer representing Wilson, said residents are frustrated because they have been trying to communicate with the city about the problem since July 2007, yet the sand management plan was written without their consultation. However, the plan does require individual homeowners to get city encroachment permits, remove non-native plants from dunes near their homes and plant and maintain plants during a five-year demonstration period. Residents would have to get individual coastal permits for each project unless a master permit could be secured. Sensitive plant areas will also be cordoned off.
“We’re not biologists, we’re not in the business of creating habitat,” Neiswender said.
Some of the 48 homeowners along the beach have said they’ll move if the sand management plan takes effect as written, Neiswender said. She also said an argument could be made that damage caused by sand on the city-owned portions of the beach could be seen as trespass in court, and that a dozen houses have already been severely impacted by the encroachment.
Raives said the city disagrees with the position that the city would be responsible for those damages. The space where Shore Drive used to be is an easement, he said. He also said there are some legal immunities for public property that a private landowner in a similar dispute would not have. City Attorney Ariel Collonne could not be reached by deadline for the city’s legal position.
Although property owners could be responsible for maintaining dunes in front of their homes, Raives said the city will be clearing sand at the end of each lane to make sure staircases there are better maintained and access to the beach is safe. He said the city council has provided $40,000 to obtain a master coastal permit for the area, but more funding is unlikely during this time of tight municipal pursestrings.
Adjacent property owners, he said, “don’t want to pay for it and they don’t think they should pay for it, and I think we have a difference of opinion.”
Dek// (Put in box) Get involved
Residents and other concerned individuals plan to attend a monthly open public comment session during the March 3 city council meeting. The public is also invited to attend a public workshop on the sand management plan the following day at 6 p.m. in the community meeting room of Ventura’s City Hall. Involved state agencies will also attend the session, which will be moderated by city councilman Brian Brennan. The Ventura City Council will then address the issue at its March 10 meeting at 7 p.m.
For more information about the meeting or to read the Sand Management Plan visit # www.cityofventura.net/newsmanager/templates/?a=3789&z=10#.
For information about the Pierpont Community Council and the sand accumulation issue, visit www.pierpont.com.
Homeowners in the Pierpont neighborhood are setting the stage for a showdown with city officials that could be the latest in a series of battles between city and state officials.
As a March 4 public workshop on the Pierpont Beach Sand Management Plan approaches both sides still appear at odds. The central question is whether the city or the homeowners are responsible for maintaining a 40-foot-wide stretch of beach between Marina Park and San Pedro Street. Homeowners say the city is responsible for clearing sand that has piled up and spilled over into streets and yards while limiting beach access. The city, in turn, wants to manage the growing dunes according to California Coastal Commission guidelines with the homeowners footing the bill for maintenance.
The history of this dispute stretches back to the 1930s, when the city built Shore Drive along the length of the beach at the end of Pierpont’s characteristic “lanes.” Originally a city street that might possibly have had houses even closer to the beach, over the years layers and layers of sand buried the road and the utility lines beneath. The city owns the 40-foot area closest to the homes. The remaining beach is operated and maintained by California state officials.
For decades city crews routinely cleared sand that built up along the strip and on staircases to the beach at the end of each lane. Then, in 1999, faced with a requirement from the California Coastal Commission that it obtain permits to continue the maintenance, the city stopped its work. In the ensuing years storms and wind delivered more and more sand to the beach, bringing dunes at some points to the height of neighboring home rooftops and causing retaining walls and foundations to buckle at other points.
Now at least one resident has taken the city to court over the problem. Ron Wilson, who purchased his beachfront home in 1968, has sued the city because he had to hire heavy equipment to clear away the sand building up against his home and grade the nearby dune.
“My feeling is I have a pretty bad neighbor,” Wilson said. “They don’t want to take care of it.”
But City Engineer Rick Raives says the city can’t go back to the way it used to manage the beach. When it stopped clearing sand in 1999, he said, the coastal commission made it known that changing understanding about the ecology of beach dunes meant traditional beach management couldn’t be permitted. Raives said the development of the new management plan — which was written by an environmental scientist from the San Buenaventura State Park and a coastal commission ecologist — gives the city guidelines it can provide beachside residents about how the sand can be managed without harming the coastal environment. That plan, he said, “includes the science of what would be most effective in regards to the interface between the existing homes out there and the existing dune ecology.”
Multiple property owners, however, believe the area is too far gone from its original ecology to require such rigid environmental standards.
“You can’t talk about that beach as being a natural environment,” said Carolyn Hiller, a Los Angeles resident who has owned a weekend home at the end of Bangor Lane since 1973. “That is a man-made beach, with the corps of engineer putting in all the groins, the damning of the rivers and all the landfills. That beach has been so mucked around with that it is not like it was 100 years ago. There’s not much left of the natural environment on that particular stretch of beach. Everything that they did changed the beach. Now they need to maintain it.”
Kate Neiswender, a Pierpont resident and a lawyer representing Wilson, said residents are frustrated because they have been trying to communicate with the city about the problem since July 2007, yet the sand management plan was written without their consultation. However, the plan does require individual homeowners to get city encroachment permits, remove non-native plants from dunes near their homes and plant and maintain plants during a five-year demonstration period. Residents would have to get individual coastal permits for each project unless a master permit could be secured. Sensitive plant areas will also be cordoned off.
“We’re not biologists, we’re not in the business of creating habitat,” Neiswender said.
Some of the 48 homeowners along the beach have said they’ll move if the sand management plan takes effect as written, Neiswender said. She also said an argument could be made that damage caused by sand on the city-owned portions of the beach could be seen as trespass in court, and that a dozen houses have already been severely impacted by the encroachment.
Raives said the city disagrees with the position that the city would be responsible for those damages. The space where Shore Drive used to be is an easement, he said. He also said there are some legal immunities for public property that a private landowner in a similar dispute would not have. City Attorney Ariel Collonne could not be reached by deadline for the city’s legal position.
Although property owners could be responsible for maintaining dunes in front of their homes, Raives said the city will be clearing sand at the end of each lane to make sure staircases there are better maintained and access to the beach is safe. He said the city council has provided $40,000 to obtain a master coastal permit for the area, but more funding is unlikely during this time of tight municipal pursestrings.
Adjacent property owners, he said, “don’t want to pay for it and they don’t think they should pay for it, and I think we have a difference of opinion.”
Dek// (Put in box) Get involved
Residents and other concerned individuals plan to attend a monthly open public comment session during the March 3 city council meeting. The public is also invited to attend a public workshop on the sand management plan the following day at 6 p.m. in the community meeting room of Ventura’s City Hall. Involved state agencies will also attend the session, which will be moderated by city councilman Brian Brennan. The Ventura City Council will then address the issue at its March 10 meeting at 7 p.m.
For more information about the meeting or to read the Sand Management Plan visit # www.cityofventura.net/newsmanager/templates/?a=3789&z=10#.
For information about the Pierpont Community Council and the sand accumulation issue, visit www.pierpont.com.
DIGG | del.icio.us | REDDIT