Shoring Up : Now That the Summer Beach Party Is Over, It’s Time for Renovation and Repair

Like party hosts cleaning up on the day after, Orange County lifeguards and officials in beach cities began adding up the recent summer’s visitors Tuesday and turned their attention to planned off-season repairs all along the coast.

As giant combing machines raked up trash from the Labor Day weekend that unofficially closed summer, the small armies of lifeguards were reduced to skeleton wintertime crews, and beaches started closing earlier.

“You’re ready for the beaches to be inhabited by only sea gulls again,” said Mike Dwinell, lifeguard manager in Laguna Beach.

Officials turned their attention to beach renovations that can only be done once the throngs have gone home. In Seal Beach, the list of things to do includes permanent repairs to the city’s fire-damaged pier and finding thousands of truckloads of sand to replace its slowly disappearing beach. Work crews will resurface a bicycle and jogging path at Huntington State Beach, and the city of Huntington Beach will begin a five-year, $4-million project to replace restrooms and add a second beach path to ease congestion on the single path now shared by bicyclists and pedestrians.

While summer attendance figures were not yet totaled, officials said the beaches saw bigger crowds than they did the year before. Hot weather may have played a part--and cheaper parking may have too.

More than 1 million people were estimated to have visited Huntington State Beach and Bolsa Chica State Beach, where officials had sought to boost attendance by dropping the daily parking fee by a dollar, to $5. The number of cars parked in the lots--272,853--was higher than last year’s total, but by an amount still being figured, said Don Ito, park superintendent for the two beaches.

The damaged Seal Beach Pier, a stretch of which burned in May and was patched up for summer, will need four new crossbeams and about 80 feet of decking, City Manager Jerry L. Bankston said. Officials also plan to replace two concrete pilings along the charred section that were damaged in the 1992 Landers earthquake. The cost is expected to be from $300,000 to $350,000.

Bankston also said the city hopes to find a new source of replacement sand. Plans to use sand excavated during the Santa Ana River rechanneling project were set back because there wasn’t enough of the grainy stuff, he said.

Lifeguard towers will be lonely places now that beefed-up summertime crews have gone back to school or other jobs. Only 11 of the 29 towers at Laguna Beach will be staffed and the lifeguard crew will be dropped from 44 to 16 per day, Dwinell said. The year-round lifeguards have plenty of repair work and training to keep them busy for the winter, he said.

“With all the excitement of the summer, you’re ready for a break,” he said. “(Then) you’re ready for summer again.”