problems on Malibu
A community meeting will take place Oct. 6 at Fire Camp 8
at Las Flores Canyon Road and Rambla Pacifico Drive, to
discuss road repair projects in the area.
By Troy Dove / Special to The Malibu Times
As the next storm season rapidly approaches, workers are still trying to repair the damages caused by last winter’s record rainfall. While some of Malibu’s storm battered roads have already been repaired there are still many more that need attention, but to complete all the repairs will take time.
“We have 400 projects county-wide that we’re working on, or that we want to work on,” said Ken Pellman, spokesperson for the Los Angeles County Public Works Department.
“The frustrating thing is that because there are so many factors involved in all of these [repairs], the time tables change,” he said. “We would provide a definitive list if we could, but at this point there’s just so many things going on.”
Pellman said obtaining permits and environmental clearances, working with property owners, coordinating efforts with other agencies and utility companies, and continued land movements in the area slow the progress of many projects.
The LAPWD is conducting a community meeting on Oct. 6 at Fire Camp 8 (at Las Flores Canyon Road and Rambla Pacifico Drive), along with Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky’s office, which will inform residents of storm recovery projects taking place in the Las Flores area, which suffered much damage during winter rains.
The projects that will be discussed at the Oct. 6 meeting involve construction of four retaining walls on Las Flores Canyon Road, as well as debris removal and drainage work in the vicinity of Hume Road between Briarbluff and Castlewood drives. The tentative start schedule for work on the retaining walls is January, and will take approximately four months to complete. The Hume Road debris removal project is scheduled to begin mid-October and will be completed mid-December.
In addition to repairing and reinforcing the damaged roads, preventative measures are also being implemented to help prevent further damages or erosion from future storms.
“Part of what we’re doing now is geotechnical investigations,” said Pellman, which he explained is boring into the soil to see what can be done to control movement in that area. “We’re also checking into past movement of the soil and current movement so that we can figure out what could possibly happen in the future.”
Pellman said that before they begin testing in a specific area, signs would be placed along the road to alert motorists of upcoming road closures in advance.
At an August meeting of the Rotary Club of Malibu, Dean Lehman, Los Angeles County District engineer for the Road Maintenance Division, and Assistant Engineer Lance Grindle presented attendees with information on current and upcoming road repairs and explained the conditions that led to last winter’s record rainfall.
According to the Official Newsletter of the Rotary Club of Malibu, Lehman said the Santa Monica Mountains received about 70 inches of rain, the record for that area.
He said three meteorological events occurred simultaneously last winter to produce heavy rainfall: El Niño, an arctic blast and a moist tropical blast.
But weather experts are not predicting it to be as wet this year, Pellman said. They expect a drier season.
Although damage from last winter’s storms was seen in areas throughout the county, some areas were hit harder than others.
“The Malibu/Topanga [areas] were particularly hard hit,” Pellman said, “as well as the Antelope Valley area and anything going into the San Gabriel Mountains.”
The estimated cost countywide to repair all roads damaged by last winter’s storms is around $72 million, Pellman said.
Although he was unable to isolate the costs associated with the Malibu repairs alone, Pellman said “a significant amount of that [total] is for the Malibu/Topanga area.”
Lehman estimated the costs to be a little higher in his report. He estimated the costs to be around “$84 million to fix damaged unincorporated roads,” with about $34 million needed for the road repairs in the Santa Monica Mountains alone.
While FEMA did make the areas affected by last winter’s storms eligible for federal aid, Pellman said only a portion of the total repair costs will be covered.
“Our total storm damage from the storms that fall under the FEMA emergency is up around $92 million,” Pellman said. “That’s the roads plus everything else. And we are estimating a reimbursement of nearly $54 million, so there’s still a significant amount that is not [covered].”
Pellman said some of the projected repairs may begin as early as the end of the year, but others may be further off. Repairs to Las Flores Canyon Road are scheduled to begin before the year’s end, but that may change he said. Other roads such as Latigo Canyon and Kanan Dume Road probably won’t see repairs until early next year.
Pellman said the LAPWD is currently working on a Web page that will list the upcoming road repairs, like the one that currently lists road closures.
A complete list of road closures or delays can be obtained from the following Web sites: LAPWD at www.ladpw.org/mpm/roadclosure/; Caltrans at www.dot.ca.gov; and the City of Malibu at www.ci.malibu.ca.us