KBUU NewsScript Wed Dec 15 – Westward Beach Widening Rejected – Council Wonders Why City Did Not Follow Its Own Rules On Beach Projects – Dark Skies Ordinance Delayed Again

=.  Back to the drawing board at Westward Beach.

=.  Malibu’s city council worries that the road at Free Zuma may be covered by ocean tides.

=.  The Coastal Commission meets today to talk about its plans for managed retreat from rising ocean levels.

=.  The city’s Dark Skies ordinance oil once again delayed … until after a public education campaign.

=.  City officials say people in Malibu do not understand that it is illegal to point lights up into the sky.

=.  Logs floating around in the surf at Surfrider Beach … the creek has been full.

You can hear the news live every morning until 9:30 on KBUU.

FM 99.1 in western Malibu.  Also: streaming at www.radiomalibu.net and at s7.viastreaming.net/9140 .

Between 9:30 and 2 … you can hear the newscast playback loop on KBU2. That’s on FM 99.1 HD2 in your car, or streaming at s7.viastreaming.net/6500

If humanly possible, the KBUU NewsScript is usually published at around midday at www.radiomalibu.net

=====

The Westward Beach Road project has been sent back to the drawing board by the city council.

Worries about the proposed parking area … sand wall and cement walkway … going under water with rising ocean levels … have killed the current design.

On Monday night.,.. the city council sent the entire concept back to the two commissions that proposed it … in the name of improving traffic safety and increasing parking spaces and bike safety on the road.

City parks commissioner Suzanne Guldimann told the city council that the idea was a good one … three years ago.

NEWSCART 77803 SG WWARD 

“This project – when it was proposed – we had a much smaller assessment of what sea level rise is going to be like in the future.  That number has gone up in the intervening three years.  It’s probably unwise to build anything on the sand at the stretch of beach … inn addition to sea level rise … as you all know we’re dealing with sand loss.”

But city planning commissioners John Mazza and Kraig Hill said the city violated its own rules in proposing a project on a beach .. in a flood plain … without doing a flood or wave study.

Kraig Hill listed a series of reasons why the proposed seawall and walkway would hurt the beach.

NEWSCART 77802 KH WWARD 

“When it is reached by wave action … it too would become a seawall and the beach below would disappear.   Now this isn’t hypothetical … flooding has already reached the parallel parking on the north side of the road.”

The proposal was 40 additional parking places … in a 45 degree angle to the roadway.

Also … a 12 foot sidewalk / biking area. 

It would have extended 30 feet into the beach’s sand.

The project was proposed four years ago and had been sailing through the approval process at City Hall … ready to go out for bid … when some residents pointed out some major problems.

Just east of there … a section of Westward beach Road under county control fell into the ocean last summer. 

Monday  night … council members said the entire beach erosion issue … all along Westward and Zuma beaches …. needs to be looked at.,  

Mikke Pierson.

NEWSCART 77808 MP WWARD

“My worry on this project right now is actually not the project … it is the viability of the road.  and I don’t know one month one year 10 years … I worry about what I see happening at Zuma Beach overall.  Sand comes and goes …. but overall it’s going more than is coming.”

Other city council members wondered … how the proposed Westward Beach widening and seawall project got this far.

Steve Uhring pointed out that building anything on Westward beach means building in a flood plain .. in an ocean wave area … on sand.

Uhring says all of those meant that the city needed to do a flood and wave study.

Uhring questioned city public works director Rob DuBoux.

NEWSCART 77801 SU RdB WWARD 

STEVE UHRING: “Certainly this project meets like four or five of those criteria … Why wasn’t a wave uprush and sea rise level study done on this one?

DuBOUX:  “My department is not the expert on what’s be required under the planning code.  Then we would be called planners instead of engineers.”

The fact remains that the city staff sent this project out for approval … ready for bids … without studies that the Local Coastal Program apparently requires. 

So now … the council has voted to send this one back to the two commissions that proposed it … the public safety and public works commissions.

But city officials warn that the money for the project came largely from Metro … in the form of an approval of sales tax money.  And that approval may expire soon.

Some speakers last night said that would be a good thing … as that Metro money could instead be used for public safety improvements on Pacific Coast Highway. 

=====

The City Council on Monday night also approved delaying implementation of the city’s dark sky ordinance.

City officials say that the dark sky ordinance is not understood by many of the residents seeking to rebuild their homes after the Woolsey fire.

They are submitting plans with landscape lighting that points up into the sky… Something that is a no no under the ordinance.

That indicates that even environmentally sensitive people in the city or not aware of the dark sky ordinance… which is intended to preserve what once were velvety blacks guys in Malibu.

City council members agreed that much more education needs to happen before existing homes and businesses are put under the dark skies ordinance.

====

You are listening to the latest news from Radio Malibu … FM 99 point 1 KBUU. 

====-

Today … the California Coastal Commission will address the open revolt by some California cities and counties over the issue of sea level rise.

Local Coastal Plans are the issue … how local jurisdictions like Malibu will deal with rising ocean levels.

The state Coastal Commission controls that issue … as it controls Local Coastal Plans.

State law gives the coastal commission veto power over local zoning plans along the coast.

Those are enforced through LCPs. .. local coastal plans.

Those LCPs expire every 15 years … and rhe Coastal Commission wants managed retreat written into the new LCPs in some places.,

The commission is also being urged to move property lines uphill from there mean high tide line … into what a consultant calls a zone of concern.

And the coastal commission is also being urged by its consultants to prohibit coastal homeowners from protecting their structures … from using and seawalls or other projects to protect what is already there.

Coastal property activists say the state specifically protects property owners who protect their property.

Recently Santa Barbara County walked away from negotiations with the coastal commission staff over an updated local Coastal plan.

The city of Del Mar has done the same thing.

Del Mar says more than half the city would go underwater under the coastal commission’s plan for manage retreat.

The California coastal commission meets this morning to consider a report that the coastal commission is being asked to adopt as policy. 

====

Local cases of the Omicron variant of COVID-19 officially doubled yesterday.

Eight additional infections of the virus mutation.

The new cases confirmed by the county Department of Public Health brought the number of Omicron cases in that agency’s jurisdiction to 15. Long Beach and Pasadena, both of which operate their own health departments separate from the county, have now each confirmed one Omicron case.

The newly identified Pasadena patient is believed to have acquired the infection locally. The person was fully vaccinated, including a booster shot, and developed mild illness that did not require hospitalization, according to the city.

Of the eight new cases confirmed by the county, seven developed symptoms but did not require hospitalization. 

Five of the eight were fully vaccinated, one traveled internationally and two recently traveled within the United States. Two of the eight live in the same household, according to the county Department of Public Health.

Health officials have thus far said current vaccinations appear to be effective against the variant.

====

Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva is bemoaning a budget cut … and continues to campaign against county board of supervisor members who are shifting resources away from his department. 

Villanueva held a news conference yesterday to say his department is under funded and understaffed at a time that Los Angeles county is a need for more law-enforcement presence. 

The murder rate in LA County is up 46.6% over last year the sheriff said at a news conference yesterday.

NEWSCART 77699 AV DEFUND “The grim reality is the fact is that we are being defunded … and at the worst time possible in the history of the county.”

While the sheriff admitted that his budget was increased by about $100 million this year over last year… he complains that the sheriffs department is getting only 8.9% of the counties total budget… compared to 11.4% 10 years ago. 

County supervisors have shifted many responsibilities for law enforcement away from the sheriffs office… And several agencies like the MTA are no longer hiring as many sheriffs deputies as they were in previous years.