The long road, turning to the Beacon Sea reopened on Thursday, June 30, during the fourth weekend of July following the required repairs by a recent landslide.
City officials blocked the road with dirt and a parking lot spread over 85 feet above sea level after the May 2 crash, which damaged the road with explosions on the slope.
During the eight-week closure, the city and the Scripps Center for Oceanography monitored the stability and data collection to help decide whether it would be better to repair and reopen the road.
“The city’s geotechnical engineer has determined that the bluff is adjusting,” Encinitas officials said this week in a statement. The city will continue to work with Scripps, the State Department of Fire and the California Coast Guard to monitor the bluff for signs of a slip.
A contractor began repairs last week and completed Wednesday, June 29, with a final cleaning on Thursday morning, June 30th. The cost in the city, including staff time and temporary fences, is about $ 50,000, in addition to the work and equipment provided by Scripps, Public. Media Officer Julie Taber said on the evening of Thursday, June 30th.
Tricia Sundell walks on the stairs at Beacon Lake in Encinitas, CA, Thursday, June 30, 2022, the first day the road was reopened.
(Bill Wechter / San Diego Union-Tribune)
“The road has been maintained in the same order and the route has not been changed,” Taber said. “More steps have been added … since part of the road has been reduced by almost 2 feet.”
Four more small walls were added, some damaged steps were replaced and the road was rebuilt, she said.
Long-term plans need to restore parking from the bluff side to prevent parked cars from passing in an earthquake or due to continued landslides, according to the city’s website. Non-native vegetation will be removed, and aggressive vegetation will be planted, and original species will be planted to help level the slope.
The mountain entrance into the 900 block of Neptune Avenue, near the end of Leucadia Boulevard, began as a footpath more than 50 years ago. The improved road was built after landslides in the early 1980s, Taber said.
The amount of foot traffic in the area, a well-known surfing site, increases damage and tearing down on a weak slope.
The surfer, one of the first of the day, takes the stairs to the Beacon Lake in Encinitas, CA, Thursday, June 30, 2022, the first day the road is reopened.
(Bill Wechter / San Diego Union-Tribune)
In 2018, the city is proposing to build a wooden staircase with cement columns supporting the seafront, a project that is expected to cost nearly $ 3.5 million. However, the city’s Planning Commission rejected the idea, saying the design did not fit the venue.
In 2009 the state Department of Parks and Recreation rejected a proposal to reduce erosion by building a sea wall at the foot of the bluffs, saying the system would run counter to environmental policies.
Like many beaches around Carlsbad, Beacon’s is state-owned and is known as the Leucadia State Sea. The city maintains a beach route under an agreement with the state.
It is reported that the coast derives its name from an airplane mounted on a bluff overlooking the sea in the late 1930s. At some point in the years, useless apostasy increased.
Leucadia resident and former editor of Surfer Doug Fiske magazine investigated the issue and found maps of the 1963 “Southern California Beach Survival Guide listed as” Beacon Beach, “according to an article in the San Diego Reader.
