Crescent Bay Dwellers Pray Storms Will Spare Them

With the memories of severe winter storms of the 1980s firmly etched in their minds, homeowners along Laguna Beach’s scenic Crescent Bay are praying that the next few months will spare them the storm-induced devastation of the past.

Because if a new wave of storms does bash the south Orange County coastline, homeowners Jim Lund, Ann McDonald, Jim McNaughton and others who live along the picturesque cove fear that they could suffer major property damage. And they are frustrated that the city won’t let them take action to protect their multimillion-dollar homes.

While talk continues on a permanent shore-protection device, the City Council has rejected plans by the homeowners for an interim solution: the placement of 1 1/2 tons of sandbags at the base of the bluff through the winter.

“I think we are just going to give up and keep our fingers crossed and pray,” McNaughton said after a recent council vote.

Perched on top of cliffs 30 feet to 90 feet above the beach, the multilevel homes serve as the backdrop for the beach that is a favorite spot of locals and tourists alike.

But like other environmental causes in Laguna Beach that whip up the emotions of its citizens, even a temporary shore-protection device has been opposed by environmentalists who fear it will hurt the shoreline’s natural beauty.

And some citizens have raised doubts that an “El Nino”--a Pacific Ocean weather pattern that causes severe drought in some areas of the Pacific Rim and devastating storms in others--will actually occur. The need for an emergency measure, they said, simply does not exist.

“If you base it on historical records,” Javier Weckmann, an engineer hired by the homeowners, argued recently, “the frequency of storms that cause problems in California occur every three years.”

Weckmann said record high tides are expected Dec. 31 and “El Nino” systems can be expected every three to seven years. The last one, he said, occurred in 1983. Another series of storms pounded the coastline in 1988.

“If we get any kind of significant storms, it’s catastrophic,” he added.

But while there is opposition to the construction of a seawall or other device, there is little argument from opponents that the bluffs have eroded.

“If we are lucky, we will not get hit (by a major storm). But if we do, we will have another Lagunita,” McDonald said, referring to the January, 1988, storm that undermined the foundations of some homes in a section of South Laguna.

One house lost a porch, another lost a bathroom, and several were condemned as a result of that storm, Weckmann said last week.

Following that disaster, six Crescent Bay residents whose homes face south and are more vulnerable to a South Pacific storm system banded together to hire Weckmann and seek city approval for a permanent shore-protection device.

A report submitted by the consultant to the council in August stated that Crescent Bay had two slope failures as the result of storms in 1982 and 1983 and that up to 55 feet of sea cliffs have been lost to storm wave erosion since 1931.

And after numerous discussions with the Design Review Board and council, the residents received an acknowledgment of the problem from city staffers and other officials.

But citizens and council members worried that a 380-foot seawall in four segments would not help and instead cause further erosion in the cove.

Because not all the homeowners in the bay support the installation of a seawall--some homeowners have very old seawalls that provide adequate protection--there is fear that the force of the waves might divert the water around the edges of the wall and undermine those areas left unprotected by the new structure.

Former mayor Jon Brand, a member of the environmental group Village Laguna, said there is also the concern about aesthetics.

“Seawalls on pristine beaches are bad,” he said recently.

The council in August ordered that a lengthy environmental impact report be conducted before deciding whether to allow the construction of a permanent shore-protection device.

But with the threat of winter storms still facing them, the residents retreated and came back with proposed temporary solutions, the last being the placement of sandbags through the end of April.

“Staff still believes that some reasonable precautionary level of protection is warranted,” Community Development Director Kyle Butterwick and City Manager Kenneth C. Frank stated in a memo to the council recommending approval.

As council members ran their fingers last week through a sample bag of sand collected from underneath a runway at Los Angeles International Airport, Weckmann explained that it would match the color and texture of the sand already on the beach. Once the storm season had passed, the bags would be torn open and the sand would be left on the shore.

Although the residents have agreed to the environmental impact report, Weckmann protested to the council that the city has never required an environmental impact report for seawalls, including one now being built at Heisler Park.

But Councilman Robert F. Gentry responded that unlike Crescent Bay, the Heisler Park project will not cut into the available beach space because the base of the bluff is made up of rocks.

Butterwick also said later that the study was needed because of the magnitude of the project.

Gentry and Councilwomen Ann Christoph and Lida Lenney made up the council majority that rejected the temporary solution. The consensus was that without the environmental report, there was not enough information to determine what the effect on the shore would be.

“My concern is that the council has never certified that there’s a need for an ocean-protection device,” Christoph said, “and the EIR is supposed to be documenting what those needs are. We would be prejudging the EIR, in a sense.”

She recommended instead that an emergency preparedness plan be developed.

But Councilwoman Martha Collison, who voted in support of the residents, said that when such an emergency occurs, it will be too late to protect the bluffs.

And so the residents have given up, for now.

With the six homeowners having spent about $150,000 on consultant fees during the last three years, McNaughton said their only hope now is that the city lets them know before the next winter season whether they can build a permanent structure to protect the shore and their homes.