The road into San Onofre State Beach, battered last week by king tides that chomped away at the sand and dirt roadway, is expected to be reopened by the end of the week.
Just shy of 20 parking spots were lost, State Parks Lt. Jeff Kennedy said in an update Monday, Dec. 8. “But the road is still completely intact.”
There’s no timeline, however, on when water will be turned back on, impacting both the restrooms and the beach showers.
For now, portable toilets will be set out for use, Kennedy said.
Still, the damage was “not as bad as it could have been,” he said.
“We got very lucky,” he said. “Usually, I’m not rooting for small surf, but I certainly was the past few days.”
Some areas of the road will be more narrow, so people will have to use extra caution and drive slowly to pass one another while coming in and out of the beach area.
“We’ll make sure that it’s safe for the public before we reopen,” Kennedy said.
San Onofre State Beach has suffered from several years of storms, with erosion on the bluff side and the beach side — damage shut down the access road into the popular beach for a period last year and has dwindled the number of parking spots available to the public to about half of what it once was.
On Saturday, Dec. 6, about 150 people participated in a community workshop to discuss the future of San Onfore in a gathering hosted by Surfrider Foundation.
The San Clemente nonprofit received a $1 million grant from the Coastal Conservancy to host several community meetings, as well as fund engineering surveys and monitoring, to try and figure out nature-based solutions for the troubled area.
The grant covers about 60% of engineering design, and Surfrider will be seeking more funding to get through a final design phase and determine how much is needed to execute the plan.
The big takeaway from the event was how much people love and care about the beach, one of the few places along the Southern California coast where people can escape development, said Alex Mignogna, Surfrider’s coastal adaptation manager.
“You never know what to expect when you talk about challenges and some kind of change. I always brace myself for a lot of big emotions, and I think there was a great energy around gratitude that we are gathering,” she said. “There’s a lot of energy around doing whatever we can to maintain access to such a special place.”
A presentation showcased the history of the area – from the tribal uses thousands of years ago to the creation of the San Onofre Surf Club. State Parks environmental engineer Riley Pratt talked about the vulnerability of the area even with just moderate sea-level rise projections.
Mignogna talked about nature-based solutions, sharing a video of Surfers’ Point in Ventura, often used as an example of how a damaged beach could be saved by using natural resources.