Officials Struggle to Save Coast Bikeway : Ventura: Waves have nearly smashed the popular path in two. A parks director says another severe storm may doom the section.

While officials are struggling to find a solution to the erosion of the Ventura coastal bicycle path, heavy surf has nearly smashed it in two.

The problem, officials said Wednesday, is that the solutions proposed so far are too expensive, temporary or environmentally unsound.

By last week, the waves had chewed through the entire seaward lane of the Omer Rains Bicycle Path and undermined even more of its foundation of fill soil.

With one more severe storm, the ocean could finish devouring the section of bike path and begin on a nearby parking lot, said Steve Treanor, regional director of the state Department of Parks and Recreation.

“I think we’re all at the mercy of Mother Nature,” Treanor said.

The department maintains the path near the Ventura River’s mouth, on a man-made stretch of coastline owned by the nearby Ventura County Fair Assn. Dozens of bicyclists, skaters and pedestrians cruise the popular path every day, and on weekends the numbers swell into the hundreds.

The asphalt path, built in 1988 and designed to last 30 years, has deteriorated far faster than expected, Treanor said.

But the developers of the beachfront park project--the fair association, the state and the city of Ventura--understood the risk, he said.

On Wednesday, state parks workers bolted more warning signs to the wooden barriers that, since last week, have been detouring cyclists around the 100-foot-long gap and through a neighboring parking lot owned by the fairgrounds.

In November, when the Pacific Ocean had washed away the artificial beach to within a few feet of the bike path’s edge, Ventura County Fair General Manager Michael Paluszak sought an emergency permit to fix it.

The plan involved dropping seven-ton rocks onto the beach to protect the path’s sandy foundation until a more permanent solution could be found.

The California Coastal Commission said no.

Its policies forbid building permanent structures on coastal beaches because stopping erosion one place can often increase its effect on nearby shores, as tides diverted by the man-made barriers spend their energy on unprotected sand.

“The commission approved the bike path in its present location on a temporary basis, with the understanding that in the event that coastal erosion were to damage the bikeway, the responsible parties would relocate the bikeway to a safe location,” said James Johnson, area manager for the Coastal Commission.

The safer location is a route paralleling West Front Street, about 100 feet north of the coastline, Johnson said.

Paluszak said he would like to have the path repaired in place, but the Coastal Commission policy may make that impossible.

“I think it’s ludicrous to have to stand here and watch and not be able to do anything,” Paluszak said Wednesday. “But . . . the solution that we would reroute it to the street is about all we can proceed with.”

However, an engineer hired by the city of Ventura has proposed another solution--shoring up the eroded area of fill soil with cobblestones similar to those that anchor much of the surrounding shoreline at Surfers Point.

Unfortunately, spreading and maintaining a cobbled beach in such an erosion-prone area could be too expensive for the fairgrounds, said Steve Chase, Ventura’s environmental coordinator.

By next week, the engineer will have a precise cost estimate, but he already has warned that the cobblestone solution would prove more expensive than simply rerouting the path to West Front Street, Chase said.

Beach erosion is the price that Ventura is paying for the 1959 installation of the Casitas Dam, said Treanor. The dam stopped sand from flowing naturally down the Ventura River and replenishing the beaches around its mouth, Treanor said.

Fortifying the man-made path and parking lot against the waves would be futile and far more costly than letting nature reclaim the area, Treanor said.

“In the past, we’ve tried to armor campgrounds, bike paths and stairways and they’ve all met with failure,” Treanor said. “The current feeling is we need to give the ocean currents, the ocean power, a place to work.”