Malibu Seeks Ways to Open Closed Road

For decades, Kanan-Dume Road has been a rugged cross-mountain thoroughfare: a snaking 13-mile asphalt artery of banking curves and steep grades connecting the San Fernando and Simi valleys with the seashore, and the northern stretches of Malibu with the outside world.

Now the once-popular route to the coast sits wounded and unused, a road to nowhere.

For nearly a year--since a landslide last September crippled the road, collapsing its entire eastern shoulder along a sloping canyon wall not far from the Pacific Coast Highway--Kanan-Dume has seen not a single tourist, back-roads wanderer or carload of noisy beach-goers. From Mulholland Drive nearly to the ocean, it’s closed.

Meanwhile, southbound commuters from Agoura Hills and Thousand Oaks have experienced long delays, rerouted to two other circuitous mountain passes. Merchants on both sides of the Santa Monica Mountains have seen business evaporate. And some residents worry that if other mountain roads fall prey to frequent landslides, they’ll be near-marooned in northern Malibu.

The nine-month road closure has sent fissures through the normally easygoing coastal community, inciting angry exchanges at City Council meetings, prompting the same seemingly simple question: Why can’t the city make the repairs and reopen the road?

“In the eyes of many people, it’s not that complicated a problem,” said Malibu Mayor Jeff Jennings, whose city is responsible for the southernmost mile of Kanan-Dume, where the landslide occurred. “They think it’s just a dirt thing. You know, bring in the heavy equipment, fix the road, get it reopened, get on with life.”

But for the 6-year-old city of Malibu, cash-strapped after the cleanup of four recent fires and floods, the fixing of Kanan-Dume has been a serious lesson in the hassles and responsibilities of cityhood.

For starters, Kanan-Dume was a road Malibu never wanted to own any part of.

Due to numerous accidents, locals called it “Kanan-Doom” until officials banned heavy vehicles and built a runaway truck route in the 1980s, putting an end to spectacular crashes at the intersection of busy PCH.

When Malibu incorporated in 1991, officials tried to leave responsibility for the troubled road entirely with the county, which had built the heavily-used pass in 1974. But Malibu lost that battle after the county appealed to the state Legislature.

Recent negotiations over who should pay for the estimated $1.7-million road repair have eroded relationships between Malibu and Los Angeles County, which insists Malibu should stop whining and pay for its own cleanup.

“I’ll say this very gently: When you’re a city, you take responsibility for your own roads,” said Maria Chong-Castillo, a deputy for county Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, who represents the area. “Other cities do it, even San Fernando, which has far less income than Malibu. They’re not trying to call the shots on which roads they’ll repair and which ones they won’t.”

Jennings acknowledges tensions with the county. Knowing they could not afford timely repairs after funding $16 million in disaster cleanup, city officials were “a bit too aggressive” in pushing the county to repair what the city said was a regional road.

Malibu officials say design flaws made by county engineers led to long-term problems at several points along the road, spanning unstable canyons. According to Malibu Public Works Director John Clements, “The road had an umpteen-year history of incremental failure” that the county merely paved over rather than fixing.

That kind of rhetoric only stiffened county officials’ resistance to compromise, said Jennings, “and I can’t say I blame them.”

Last week, the Malibu City Council took a first step to fix the problem. It voted to pursue a plan to borrow the repair money from either state or county sources, with repayment coming from several areas, including funds from a local gas tax. Although many details remain to be worked out, officials hope to make the repairs before the rainy season this winter.

Last week’s vote came only after a grass-roots movement among coastal residents and inland valley commuters.

“I wrote a letter to President Clinton,” said Gail Seelig, co-owner of Pinnacle Beachwear at the southern foot of Kanan-Dume. “Why won’t somebody help us? Don’t they realize Malibu is broke? The past few years have been disaster central here.”

Along with Malibu Canyon Road to the south, locals and commuters have been traversing the coastal mountains by way of Encinal Canyon Road--seven miles north of Kanan-Dume--a narrow, winding two-laner that backs up for miles on busy weekends and that many say is a catastrophe waiting to happen.

“If somebody gets seriously hurt, it used to be a 10-minute drive to hospitals on the other side,” Seelig said. “Now it’s three times that, if you can get through. That scares a lot of people around here.”

Led by a group of real estate agents calling themselves ROK--Re-open Kanan--community members took out full-page ads in local papers, imploring readers to respond “if you’re mad as hell and you’re not gonna take it anymore.” The ads brought 200 faxes within the first two weeks. The real estate agents circulated petitions that inspired 2,000 signatures at both ends of the road and held several vociferous rallies at the road collapse site.

“There is a simmering resentment in this community over the failure to get that road open,” said Terry O’Connor, a local real estate agent and group leader. “We proved it.”

While the local Chamber of Commerce made trips to Sacramento, group members attended every City Council meeting, reminding politicians that they expected action. “For me, it was a real civics lesson,” O’Connor said. “They’d talk for five hours about somebody’s easement and five minutes on Kanan. It didn’t make sense.

“This road is the economic engine that fuels Malibu, and it’s been cut off.”

In an effort to find the repair money themselves, locals staged an art auction that raised $2,500--a far cry from the $1.7 million needed--prompting one resident to observe: “We’d have to have a hell of a lot of bake sales to raise that kind of money.”

Along local roads, the social protest continues. On Encinal Canyon Road, one hand-painted poster reads “Re-open Kanan Now!” while another sends a message to Yaroslavsky. “Zev, Kanan is used by millions,” it says. “It was an inferior road. You dumped on Malibu. Pay up. We’ll remember this come reelection.”

Malibu Chamber of Commerce President Mark Ball said citizens got tired of waiting for two local governments to play a silly game of one-upmanship. “There was a lot of posturing on both sides, and finally the citizens had to step into it,” he said. “We put pressure on both agencies to work together, not against each other.”

Jennings said community reaction helped make Kanan “a front-burner issue” but stressed that the city has worked behind the scenes for months for money to get the road repaired.

Not everyone wants to see the return of cross-mountain traffic along Kanan-Dume.

On sunny summer mornings, Malibu native Margaret Sanchez-Herron rides her horse past the site of the road collapse and relishes the quiet, looking out over a peaceful scene of chaparral and native grasses uncluttered by the sight of cars.

She’s tired of people driving too fast on the mountain curves, always trying to make time, a fact that caused 42 deaths and 500 injuries in the first 10 years of its existence alone.

“I hope this road never reopens,” she said. “If it means extra time to get to the Valley, that’s a small price to pay. Soon this place will be just like it was in the 1960s.

“And that would be heaven.”