State Panel Tells Ventura, Fair Board to Move Coastal Bike Path

The city of Ventura and the Ventura County Fair Board must move a portion of beachside bicycle path away from the encroaching ocean within 30 days, the California Coastal Commission ruled Thursday.

The commission also gave city and fair officials two years to remove five to six tons of rock that they had placed along the coastline beneath the bicycle path in 1992, when the ocean ripped away a portion of the path during a winter storm.

The city had asked for permission to maintain the rock sea-barrier for three years.

But commission staff said Ventura agreed 10 years ago that it would not build coastal bicycle paths or hiking trails that require the construction of protective barriers. Meeting in Los Angeles, commission members voted 8 to 1 to hold the city to that agreement.

In a report to the commission, coastal program analyst Rebecca Richardson said the 15-foot-wide rock pile takes up space on the beach and may contribute to the erosion of sand from the rest of the shore.

Ventura Councilman Steve Bennett said city, fair and state representatives will meet in November to try to plot a new course for the 220-foot-long section of bicycle path that the commission ordered relocated.

The ruling did not specify how far inland the path must be moved, saying only that it should be “a sufficient distance from the top of the (rock pile) to ensure public safety.” The decision also did not affect a second portion of the path about a quarter of a mile to the east where the ocean has taken a bite out of the trail.

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Presently, a detour near the rock pile sends cyclists and pedestrians into an empty parking lot on the landward side of the path.

But Bennett said a web of jurisdictions complicates the issue. “The state runs the bike path, the fair owns all the land and people who are concerned about it call the city,” he said.

An official of the state Department of Parks and Recreation, which oversees the path, said he favored moving inland not just the small portion required by the Coastal Commission, but the entire mile-long stretch between the Ventura River and the pier.

Such a move would require a cooperative planning effort between the state, city and fair, which owns the oceanfront land along the path, said Steven B. Treanor, superintendent of the Channel Coast District of the state Parks Department.

Parking areas and access roads owned by the fair are now inland from the path. Bennett said the fair has been reluctant to sacrifice parking spaces. Fair officials could not be reached for comment.

Treanor said the most likely new location for a path would be along the road to the parking lots--giving walkers and cyclists a view of cars rather than of sand and surf.

The most powerful force in the matter, Treanor said, is not the state, city, fair or even the California Coastal Commission, but rather the mighty Pacific Ocean.

“The rest of the area is going to go,” Treanor said, predicting that much of the 5-year-old path adjacent the fairgrounds would eventually be washed away to sea.