President Signs Bill to Repair Popular Chantry Flats Road

After months of bureaucratic wrangling over who should pay to repair the Chantry Flats road, this gateway into the San Gabriel Mountains may finally be reopened permanently for thousands of hikers and bikers.

President Clinton signed a transportation bill Monday that included $600,000 to repair the road, which was damaged by fires and floods and closed in January. It was temporarily reopened just before Labor Day, but will have to be closed again for the rainy season, officials said.

The new money should be enough to eventually open the road for good by cleaning up tons of debris from last year’s rains, as well as replacing damaged metal culverts beneath the road with much larger concrete ones, officials said.

It is not clear when the repairs will be completed, though work should begin after the proper permits are obtained from the Army Corps of Engineers and the state Department of Fish and Game, they said.

“I find it difficult to believe all these agencies will come together and get this done in a few months,” said Sierra Madre City Councilman Bart Doyle, who predicts that the road probably will be ready by next summer.

The two-lane road wends its way from Sierra Madre through Arcadia and county land into a lush canyon of the Angeles National Forest. With CalTrans also involved, five government agencies have potential jurisdiction over the Depression-era route. The county and city will do the repair work and be reimbursed by the federal government.

Much of the damage occurred on a 100-yard stretch in an uninhabited part of Sierra Madre, a city of 10,767 people with a small general fund. City officials said the repairs were a regional concern because thousands of outdoor enthusiasts come from all over the county to the scenic spot, drawn by its waterfall, deep pools and trails into the back country. Rangers say that as many as 3,000 people use the road on pleasant spring and fall weekends.

But for months, no agency would step up to pay for the roadwork. U.S. Forest Service officials said they could not fund a project outside their boundaries, even if it was on a road used only for access to the forest.

Finally, at the end of summer, Sierra Madre did about $5,000 in cosmetic repairs to the road, said Doyle. But because of a fire above the road last December and the threat of floods of debris during the winter, it will have to be closed during the rainy season, he said.

The funding in this year’s federal transportation bill was inserted by Rep. David Dreier (R-San Dimas), who visited the road earlier this year. “It’s the result of hard work of local, state and federal officials determined to restore access to the Angeles Forest,” said Dreier in a statement.