Ventura Ignores State Order and Fixes Bike Path

A dispute between state and Ventura officials over a crumbling shoreline bike path intensified Wednesday when the city ignored an order to stop work and completed a rock wall to hold off the relentless pounding of the surf.

After the California Coastal Commission failed to halt the construction, an official said the matter will be referred this week to the commission’s enforcement division for investigation.

At issue is whether the city acted legally when it approved an emergency permit to construct a temporary rock barrier to halt erosion that has damaged a 250-foot section of the popular Omer Rains Shoreline Bike Path.

The city approved the $35,000 repair project Friday without notifying the regional office of the California Coastal Commission, which had rejected a similar request by the city last year.

The project, which included placing 1,200 tons of boulders next to the bicycle path above the mean high tide line, was finished Wednesday, said Steve Chase, Ventura’s environmental coordinator.

“All this does is call a timeout and give us the time to seek a community-based solution to the problem,” Chase said. “The Coastal Commission had backed us against the wall.”

The work also affects an adjacent parking lot owned by the 31st District Agricultural Assn., which runs the Ventura County Fair. The association paid for the entire repair project.

James Johnson, director of the Coastal Commission’s regional office in Santa Barbara, met with Chase and Michael Paluszak, the fair’s executive director, Wednesday morning, but said the meeting produced no agreement.

“We agreed to disagree,” Johnson said of the talks. “Our position is we believe the city’s emergency permit may not be proper, but we need to further investigate that possibility.”

Johnson said that in a letter sent Tuesday, the commission staff asked the city to explain its actions and told the city to stop the repair work.

Johnson said he will report the dispute to the full 12-member Coastal Commission when the statewide body meets in Los Angeles on Jan. 13. If the commission rules that Ventura exceeded its authority, commissioners could choose from a wide range of punitive actions, including ordering the rock barrier to be removed, Johnson said.

“Any development that is not legally permitted is considered not to exist by the commission,” Johnson said. He said the city was not authorized to issue an emergency permit because the Coastal Commission approved the bicycle path and parking lot in 1986 as temporary improvements that cannot be protected by seawalls or other artificial structures.

Chase defended the city’s action, saying the continuing erosion of the beachfront path constituted a genuine emergency and justified the repair work.

“When the Coastal Commission certified the local coastal plan, they invested in the city the authority to implement the plan,” Chase said. “They did not reserve that authority with their staff.

“If they want to play the game of what’s temporary, let them. That’s a bureaucratic solution I don’t subscribe to.”

Chase said two independent studies this year have predicted that the bicycle path and parking lot would be further damaged by storms this winter and that immediate action was necessary. He said the rock barrier was designed to protect a sensitive sand dune nearby and allow the coastal sand flow to continue unimpeded.

But the Coastal Commission and its staff have rejected the city’s plans to protect the bicycle path and parking lot four times in little more than a year, Johnson said.

“We have inspected the site at least three different times with three different personnel, and we are unable to understand the basis for finding the erosion a sudden and unforeseen event,” Johnson said.