Rebuilding after recent fires brings challenges, opportunities, and a vision for a stronger, more sustainable future
You can’t write a story about how long it’s gonna take to rebuild from the Palisades Fire without comparing it to the Woolsey Fire. Affluent communities, high education, high household income: Malibu and Palisades are gonna be very similar except the Palisades is going to be 10 times harder. The rebuild stats after the Woolsey Fire are sobering: I believe the total rebuild after six years is 38 percent. That’s for 700 homes in the City of Malibu and unincorporated areas. The Palisades Fire is 7000 structures, so we’re looking at a minimum of 10 years.
— Anonymous and concerned
First of all, thanks to Elon Musk for making Starlink Mini affordable and available, and Haylynn Conrad for letting me use one when all systems weren’t go. Think what you will of Musk’s politics, he makes a good product. I wrote some of this running Starlink Mini off my car battery. Took it out of the box, put it on the roof of the (borrowed) car, pointed it wherever, and it worked perfectly sitting 60 feet away — although it did drain the (borrowed) car battery tout de suite. So thanks to Chris and Bearded Bro of Broad Street Oyster for the jump.
Starlink Mini is exactly what Malibu needs in times of need. Impenetrable, high-speed satellite internet you can run off your car, or a solar battery.
Also thanks to the people at LA County Recover for their Palisades Fire Damage Maps. You did a quick, and detailed job accounting for — and photographing — thousands of houses from Carbon Beach to Pacific Palisades: recovery.lacounty.gov/
And to whoever programs Chat GPT.
There is opportunity in disaster. The Nov. 20, 1992, Windsor Castle blaze that started in the Queen’s Private Chapel spread to Saint George’s Hall (1841- ) and did tremendous damage to ceilings and interiors, but most of the art was rescued and saved.
The blaze probably put a few grey hairs on Her Majesty’s royal head — but she kept calm, carried on, and invested £36.5 million to restore the damage. Five years later, they opened that wrecked part of Saint George’s Hall to show the Queen had apparently cornered the market on gold leaf. It was spectacular. The Queen was able to leave her mark on Windsor Castle in a way she might not have been able to had the fire not done its damage.
Same deal with Santa Cruz. The Loma Prieta earthquake hit on Oct. 17, 1989, and rattled a good part of the town to dust. My mom saw opportunity in disaster and suggested rebuilding structures downtown to have housing above and businesses below.
And that’s kind of what Santa Cruz did.
And recently, Pepperdine grad Hannah Montalban was in Paris and sent photos from the freshly-reopened Notre Dame de Paris (1163- ), which also had been partially destroyed by a fire on April 15, 2019, and which also needed five years to be repaired —- with some or all of the whopping 840 million euros ($985 million) donated from around the world, high and low: “Out of this world,” Hannah said.
So: From disaster, opportunity and that’s the lens one might use to find a silver lining in what is a whopping hugedisastrous mess after the Palisades Fire.
At recovery.lacounty.gov/palisades-fire/, there is a remarkably fast-rendered, detailed, and photographed Palisades Fire Damage Map of all the homes affected by the Palisades Fire. A red icon means Destroyed (>50 percent damage). Orange means Major (26 – 50 percent). Yellow signifies Minor (10 – 25 percent). Green is Affected (1-9 percent) and a Black icon means, yahoo, Untouched!!!!
Follow this map icon by icon from the Geffen/East Carbon Access and 4.5 miles to Topanga, guess what the predominant color is? I gave up making notches on paper for Red, Yellow, Green, and Black, but just by eyeballing it, two-thirds — or more — of the homes along Pacific Coast Highway are Damaged or just gone.
There are drone views and news camera angles, and people making YouTube videos as they drive along PCH, but as of Sunday, Jan. 19, PCH was still closed at Colony House Liquor on this end and Chautauqua/PCH at the east end, so the majority of Malibu residents — and Los Angeles citizens — haven’t seen this carnage with their own eyes, and it’sgoing to be truly shocking when they do.
Malibu resident Steve Woods swings the “sense” pendulum from non- to perfect, but in this instance on NextDoor, he nailed what a lot of citizens are about to see and feel: “I just drove the entire stretch of PCH down to Santa Monica and back yesterday (Saturday Jan. 18) with an infrastructure contractor who waved us by the barricades. And aside from the mind-boggling, surreal devastation, I was lost. I literally did not know where I was because all the recognizable landmark houses were gone. But for the first time, I saw an incredible ocean view that I had never seen before: the actual Big Rock Point is a beautiful geologic marine feature that has been visually obstructed by homes with antiquated septic systems leaching into the ocean.”
As then Vice President Biden said to then President Barack Obama when he was announcing ObamaCare way back in January of 2017: “This is a BFD.” The Palisades Fire is Windsor Castle x Notre Dame x the Loma Prieta earthquake and maybe closer to Hurricane Katrina. Or Lahaina. Or 9/11.
This is destruction on an almost unimaginable scale but it’s also an opportunity — perhaps — to pay respect to the 21 Miles of Scenic Beauty and Bu Back Better: Reconstruct that stretch of PCH to make it less toxic, more scenic, safer, and saner.
PCH sewer pipeline
Let’s start with a sewer line. Usually those dirty, fighting words are toxic to the people of Malibu, who spent many decades fighting off repeated attempts by Los Angeles County to shove a sewage system through the Malibu. If that had happened, Malibu could have been developed to a Pacific Palisades kind of density: the projected population would have been as many as 40,000 people.
But the good citizens of Malibu had vision and repeatedly voted the sewage system down — preferring a fouled water table to population density — and then in 1990 voted for cityhood to fight off yet another sewer line attempt, and let Malibu decide its own fate.
So instead you have dozens and scores of homes all on septic systems — a double-edged sword, because they prevent population density from turning Malibu into Everywhere Else, but they also are, in the Words of Woods, “antiquated septic systems leaching into the ocean.”
But this fantasy sewer line could connect to wherever the sewage line begins/ends to the east: According to a cursory, uneducated glance at the LA County Sanitary Sewer Network-Consolidated Sewer Maintenance District, that might be in grid N-1275, a pumping station at Topanga Beach operated by Beaches and Harbors.
Just as the Civic Center Water Treatment Facility serves only central Malibu — and allowed Cross Creek Ranch and the Park at Cross Creek Ranch — a sewage line from Carbon Beach to Topanga would service only existing structures, and whatever manages to be rebuilt along PCH — and the who, what, when, where, how long, and how much of that is in the front or back of everyone’s minds.
Running that by Chat GPT for a rough and possibly inaccurate estimate, the condensed answer goes like this:
Typical pipeline installation costs for installing sewer pipelines range from $100 to $300 per linear foot for standard gravity-fed systems. For pressurized or complex systems, costs can increase to $300 to $600 per linear foot. For a stretch of 10 miles, this could range between $5.3 million and $31.7 million, depending on the complexity.
Engineering and environmental studies can add 10 to 20 percent to the project cost, roughly $1 million to $5 million.
Pump stations can cost $500,000 to $1.5 million, depending on size and capacity. Malibu’s topography may require several stations. (And who wants those in their front yard? Although there might be a lot less front yards, and room for this sort of thing.)
Connection to LA County System costs can vary but might range from $1 million to $3 million.
There are also these possible costs: Land acquisition or easements; traffic control on PCH and special materials.
According to Chat GPT, the rough estimate for a 10-mile stretch of sewer line connecting to LA County might be between $20 million and $50 million.
One local attorney who has rebuilt a fire-torched house said, “An upgraded septic system for each one of those houses is over a quarter million dollars so it might not be much more to tap into a sewer. They can easily trench out that area now, and the same thing with the power lines. And what do they do with Carbon Beach?”
And another local resident who has undergrounded lines coming into his house (see below) and also hooked up to the sewage system made possible by the Civic Center Water Treatment Facility had this caveat: “Our house was in the Stage Two of the Civic Center Sewer project. We were given a cost estimate at that time: $196,000 to hook up and a $600-a-month fee for use. Our house would have also required a holding tank and a submersible pump to pump up to the street as we were on the lower side of the line, that would add at least another $5,000-$6,000. My point being, it is always more involved than it appears.”
Just as Los Angeles County hounded Malibu for years to put a sewer line through — and might now be welcomed — Malibu citizens have been hounding the county and utilities to underground the power, telephone, fiber optic and other lines that ruin sight lines and sometimes start fires.
Undergrounding lines and wires
What would have been too disruptive and expensive is now maybe more possible that PCH along the beach has been completely disrupted, and needs to be rebuilt.
Bothering Chat GPT again, what would it cost to underground 10 miles of telephone, fiber optic, and power lines along PCH in Malibu?
Undergrounding 10 miles of telephone and high-voltage lines along Pacific Coast Highway (PCH) in Malibu involves significant costs due to the complexity of the project. Here’s a detailed breakdown:
- The cost of undergrounding telephone lines typically ranges from $500,000 to $1 million per mile, depending on the density of connections and the type of cable. For 10 miles: $5 million to $10 million.
- Undergrounding high-voltage transmission lines is significantly more expensive, ranging from $2 million to $10 million per mile depending on the voltage, soil conditions, and required equipment. For 10 miles: $20 million to $100 million.
- Additional costs include trenching and excavation, and coastal areas range from $1 million to $3 million per mile. For 10 miles: $10 million to $30 million.
- Conduits and vaults to house the utility lines and access vaults for maintenance adds $500,000 to $2 million per mile. For 10 miles: $5 million to $20 million.
- Traffic management on PCH during construction requires planning, detours, and safety measures can add $500,000 to $1 million per mile. For 10 miles: $5 million to $10 million.
- Environmental and regulatory costs for California Coastal Commission permits, and other regulatory requirements could add 10 to 20 percent to the total project cost. Estimated range: $5 million to $20 million.
- Utility conversion costs converting individual properties and businesses to underground utilities ranges from $5,000 to $20,000 per property. For 1,000 properties: $5 million to $20 million.
- Low-end estimate of total cost: $50 million. High-end estimate: $200 million
So adding together the low-end estimate and high-end estimate for laying a sewer line and undergrounding the power and telephone lines, it’s $70 million to $250 million.
One former Malibu resident who dealt with several fires and several homes has his doubts: “The one thing I do disagree with is the cost, it would be way more than that, more than double, and it will be mainly because of all the bureaucracy involved.
“I ran our utilities underground at the Malibu Knolls house: 200 feet and over $20K. The city was the stumbling block. Maybe someone like the new Musk DOGE group could change that, but I fear there are too many lunatics in the Coastal Commission and the City of Malibu.
“I can not remember how long it took exactly, but it was a long, drawn-out process. I do remember just to hook up the electricity after running the underground was just over $4K.
“To put it mildly it was outrageous and frustrating, when it did not need to be. Now the process may have changed since then, 2015, I think, but I doubt it.
“Just as an example of how it can be done, my neighbor and I in Costa Rica (another earthquake-prone location) ran all our services underground: Electric, water, and internet to six houses over 1,000 feet, did it all ourselves. The price including all the No. 2 copper wire (run through two-inch ABS) water line, and internet cable, under $1,000. That was over a decade ago, but still.
“In Malibu, we only ran the electric, they would not let us run the water in the same trench, even though code says you can if it is buried 36 inches lower than the electric. Our street had the cables put underground, so we HAD too. Because our driveway was private we footed the bill, with our neighbor.
“Get this, when the official [a woman] came out from Edison to oversee the project, I said I can go totally solar for way less than this — I had just done our house in Baja. So I knew what was needed to do it and the house had the perfect exposure to the Southern sky.
“Her reply: ‘If you do that we will fine you $100,000 and a possible jail sentence of six months!’ Liberal madness. She said if you are under 5/8 of a mile from a power pole you MUST hook up to a provider, by law.
“I am afraid the liberal mindset in California is too deep rooted, but that may change now as some of the most whacky Democrats who lost their homes are now calling a different tune.”
Outrageous and frustrating. If the City of Malibu permitting and planning process was logjammed before, what’scoming up?
Heck, LA County and the Army Corps of Engineers are fixing to spend an estimated $300 million to remove 787,000 cubic yards of sediment behind Rindge Dam, and the dam and restore the steelhead run (which probably won’t happen). Wouldn’t that money be better spent making PCH through Malibu safer and saner?
Bike lane
And compared to the above two costs, a bicycle lane is a bargain. When asked what it would cost to lay down an 11-mile bicycle path between the Malibu Pier and Will Rogers State Park, Chat GPT offered two options: A Class I (separate path) or Class II (painted bike lane on roadway). A Class I path is more expensive due to land acquisition, grading, and paving requirements, but the only way to go because riding a bicycle in traffic along PCH is just plumb loco.
Typical Costs for a Class I (separate path) is $500,000 to $5 million per mile, depending on terrain and complexity.
Class II (on-road lane) is $100,000 to $500,000 per mile for striping, signage, and minor roadway adjustments.
For 11 miles: Class I Path: $5.5M–$55M Class II Lane: $1.1M–$5.5M
Specific challenges along PCH include right-of-way acquisition, terrain and construction needs, traffic impact mitigation, environmental permits design and engineering can be 10 to 15 percent of the total project cost. Utility relocation, maintenance and landscaping could add $50,000 to $100,000 annually per mile.
Low-end: $5M (Class II bike lanes with minimal modifications)
High-end: $60M+ (Class I path requiring significant construction and permitting)
All crazily expensive and none of this will probably ever happen, but it’s like Boog said in “Diner”: “If you ain’t got good dreams, you’ve got nightmares.”
Stay tuned for Part Two: In 1923, the main argument before the Supreme Court in Rindge Co v. LA County was that Mrs. Rindge was denying the public “access to beauty.” A weird argument, but it worked, and Uncle Sam declared eminent domain and forced the Roosevelt Highway through the Malibu — much to the displeasure of May Rindge.
Could Uncle Sam do this again, and argue that rebuilding that endless wall of apartments and mega-mansions will deny the public access to the beauty that Steve Woods and others have seen?
And another aspect of this mess people think about: Who will be able to rebuild along PCH? Will corporations rush in and buy up all the land and do evil deeds — as they are accused of doing in Lahaina and other disaster-stripped places?
And could the state or federal government sweep in and declare eminent domain — as they did with Mrs. Rindge and the Roosevelt Highway — and leave large swaths of PCH undeveloped, and provide public access to some beautiful beaches?
All food for future thought but for now, be like Her Majesty: Keep Calm and Carry On.