Laguna Beach gets emergency repair permit to fill in chunked out Aliso Beach

Sand washed into the Aliso Beach parking lot during recent high surf and surging tide conditions will be used to fill an area to the south where waves chomped away at the shore.

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If all goes as planned, officials said the parking lot at the popular, family-friendly South Laguna beach should be cleared and ready to reopen in about two weeks.

In late August, just before Labor Day, the city’s Park Rangers had to cordon off the entrance to the ocean-side lot and close a left-turn lane on Coast Highway.

Aliso Beach is a family beach with restrooms and a cafe that routinely draws hundreds of thousands of people annually. Some, still eager to use the beach, found parking on the highway’s inland side, which provides access to the beach through a tunnel, but yellow tape blocked access to an area along its south end where the ocean had eroded enough sand to affect underground utilities and water lines, while also crumbling the ADA parking spots near the Lost Pier Cafe.

On Tuesday, Sept. 29, crews began work to make the beach and damaged parking lot usable again after securing an emergency permit from the California Coastal Commission last week.

The approximately 25-yard stretch most impacted runs from south of the lifeguard stand to near the cafe. Crews will scrape and sweep the sand off the parking lot and create about a 6-inch base of sand to cover the now-exposed area, said Matt Schneider, the town’s director of community development.

“A lot of the electrical and plumbing is running under this section, and it’s compromised,” he said, adding that even with the current work in place, the outdoor shower near the lifeguard tower will not be returned to functioning. “We had to turn it all off because that was one of the first public safety concerns.”

Crews will demolish the remaining pavement in the now-off-limits area, bring in material to fill the chunked-out spots, and then level the whole area with the recaptured sand.

“We’re going to repurpose what we have, and we think we have just enough to cover this area,” Schneider said.

The surging surf also exposed a line of large boulders — known as riprap — put in long before the city had jurisdiction over Aliso Beach as a first line of defense against high ocean tides. Those, Schneider said, will be repositioned to create a uniform line along the edge of the sand and parking lot.

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Crews will also put up a temporary fence — a post-and-wire barrier similar to what’s down near the trail at Strands Beach in Dana Point — along a section of beach that now has a 4- to 5-foot drop-off. The fencing will be temporary to make the beach safer for people through the winter season, Schneider said.

“We really want to keep people off the rocks,” he said, adding that with predictions of a super El Niño, there will likely be more storms, hurricanes, and big swell events eroding the shore.

Laguna Beach is less worried than some of its coastal neighbors about sand renourishment ahead of the storms. San Clemente is prepping with extra sand now, and others need sand to build berms.

That’s where Laguna Beach is lucky, with its riprap boulder line and smaller coves; sand isn’t lost as easily as it is in areas with wide swaths of beaches and less protection from the sea.

“We’re different in the way that once the sand is washed away, we have riprap behind it,” Schneider said. “While neighboring coastal communities rely on the sand itself. While their sand is the buffer, this (riprap) is our final line of defense.”

He added that Laguna Beach also has a strong bedrock foundation, which helps. Many of the homes built decades ago along the sand have seawalls. City officials are now urging folks in those situations to get them inspected.

After the winter storms pass, Schneider said the city will evaluate its entire coastline for sand status and, if more is needed, will go through the usual Coastal Commission permitting process.

Other repairs, such as the outdoor shower at Aliso Beach, will also be made after the winter storms, Schneider said.

“We want to make it safe now,” he said of the work starting this week, “so that people can get in here.”

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