The council’s vote means a project by Broad Beach homeowners to widen the heavily eroded beach to 100 feet is closer to reality.
By Knowles Adkisson / The Malibu Times
The effort by Broad Beach homeowners to begin a project to widen the heavily eroded beach moved a step closer Monday when the Malibu City Council approved a funding mechanism to pay for the project.
The council approved in a 3-1 vote the formation of a Geologic Hazard Abatement District (GHAD). GHADs are special districts, in this case made up of private property owners, formed to address geologic problems.
The project would widen the heavily eroded beach to 100 feet in width and raise the dunes using sand dredged from offshore and onshore sources, as well as bury an existing rock revetment. It is expected to cost approximately $12 million to $13 million, and will be privately funded by the Trancas Property Owner’s Association (TPOA), a group representing most of the 109 homeowners who live on the beach between Lechuza Point and Trancas Creek.
Broad Beach has experienced ongoing erosion for many years due to a combination of recurring weather patterns and rising sea levels. Rapid exacerbation of the erosion in 2009 caused the city to issue emergency permits that allowed beachfront residents to place sandbags in front of their homes upward of the mean high tide line. Last year, the homeowners installed an at-grade revetment, or barricade, made of boulders of different sizes, at an estimated cost of $15 million to $20 million.
That project later incited a public uproar when the two gates that grant public beach access to Broad Beach remained closed for months after the revetment was completed in April 2010. While homeowners had access to the beach, local visitors were forced to make a two-mile detour to Zuma Beach.
Broad Beach homeowners have also incited anger from the public in the past, and the Coastal Commission, by hiring private guards on ATVs who would shoo people off the beach, as well as by digging up sand in 2005 with skiploaders and piling sand berms as high as eight feet in front of homes, without the necessary permits. The Coastal Commission at one point issued a cease and desist order to stop the bulldozing. Many believe the bulldozing was done to keep the public away from the multimillion-dollar homes that line the beach.
In the meantime, erosion has not only threatened public access but also the homes, especially during storms.
The GHAD has unanimous support among Broad Beach homeowners, but it did encounter some resistance from the Malibu West Homeowner’s Association. Approximately 105 feet of the property included in the project runs in front of the Malibu West Beach Club, which is owned by the 237-member Malibu West HOA.
Ben Benumof, a land-use attorney representing Malibu West, said the TPOA had informed him that Malibu West would have to pay between roughly $25,000 and $34,000, depending on the eventual cost of the project. Benumof and Malibu West residents said for this reason the Malibu West HOA should be given a seat on the five-member board of directors for the GHAD. The board of directors oversees financing the beach restoration and associated future maintenance, and will determine how much each property owner benefits proportionally from the proposed beach restoration, and then charge accordingly.
But Mayor John Sibert noted that the Malibu West HOA would only be responsible for 105 feet out of an approximately 4,000 feet of coastline slated to undergo beach restoration, and that to award it one of the five spaces on the board of directors would be disproportionate to the amount it would be paying.
Instead, the council voted to add a nonvoting advisory member to the board of the GHAD, who will sit in on the board’s meetings for Malibu West. The Broad Beach homeowners appointed by the council are Steven Levitan, Zan Marquis, Norton Karno, Marshall Grossman and Jeff Lotmam.
The Malibu West HOA and the TPOA issued a joint statement Tuesday, stating, “Despite the decision at last night’s City Council meeting to deny Malibu West’s request to have a designated Malibu West member on the GHAD Board, the Malibu West board and the TPOA want our neighbors to know that we have a strong working relationship and a mutual trust in our ability to work within the GHAD to benefit the beach.”
When asked earlier this year if the beach would be open to the public during construction, TPOA attorney Ken Ehrlich replied, “My understanding is the sand will be laid down in sectors, and that the sectors [of the beach] not being worked on will be open.”
Ehrlich said he anticipated the restoration project to be less intrusive than the installation of the revetment last year, since most of the sand will be shipped in from the ocean. He said it had not been determined whether the Zuma Beach parking lot would be used as a staging area for earth movers and other heavy equipment.