Posted on July 24, 2024
Railroad bridge construction, increasing costs blamed for delay of project that would place sand on South Ponto Beach
Plans to dredge the Batiquitos Lagoon and spread the sand on Carlsbad’s rocky South Ponto Beach have been delayed for one year, a state official said.
Instead of starting this fall as previously planned, the work will begin in the fall of 2025 and conclude in the spring of 2026, said Gabriel Penaflor of the California Fish and Wildlife Service.
A significant factor in the delay is the construction set to begin this fall of a double-tracked railroad bridge across the lagoon, Penaflor said at a meeting of Carlsbad’s Legislative Committee earlier this month.
Another factor is the increasing costs of the dredging. The money in a trust account set up to pay for it has not kept pace with inflation, Penaflor said.
“That is a major concern for this project,” he said, and it raises questions about how future maintenance may be funded. Most dredging and sand replenishment projects in the region are covered by state and federal grants.
Two Carlsbad City Council members were unhappy to hear about the postponement.
Councilmember Teresa Acosta, chair of the committee, said Carlsbad should have been involved in the decision to delay the dredging.
“That’s a huge oversight and a real problem,” Acosta said. “There seems to be a gap in communication.”
Councilmember Melanie Burkholder, also on the committee, said she’s been trying to get more sand on the beach since she was elected in 2022.
“I don’t like that residents of Carlsbad are being pushed back on this,” Burkholder said. “If you look at Ponto Beach, it’s very rocky. Many of our children have sports and athletics and junior guards and all kinds of stuff in the summer on the beach.”
Batiquitos Lagoon was first dredged in a three-year restoration project completed in 1997 as environmental mitigation for an expansion for the San Pedro Harbor by the Port of Los Angeles. The Los Angeles port district paid for the project and set up a trust account to cover the costs of periodic maintenance dredging.
Since then, the western end of the lagoon has been dredged four times, most recently in 2019 at a cost of $1.4 million.
Without periodic dredging, the lagoon eventually would fill up with silt. Batiquitos, like some of San Diego County’s other coastal lagoons, has rock jetties installed on both sides of its ocean outlet that slow siltation and help to maintain tidal flows.
The longest the lagoon has gone without dredging since the restoration was eight years, and “during that time there was no closure or even partial blockage of the lagoon mouth,” Penaflor said.
The primary goal of maintenance dredging is to protect fish and wildlife within the lagoon, he said. Beach sand replenishment is secondary.
About five nesting sites for the California least tern, an endangered bird species, are located on small islands created within the lagoon. Waves erode the islands, and they are restored as part of the periodic maintenance project.
Any construction, whether dredging or a bridge, can only take place from September through February because the rest of the year is nesting season for the tern, which is protected by state and federal law.
North County Transit District and the San Diego Association of Governments, the area’s regional planning agency, have been working for years to build a second set of tracks between San Diego and Orange County, which will allow faster, more efficient train service. About three-quarters of the route has been double-tracked so far.
Construction of the Batiquitos bridge will take about four years to complete. It has been fully funded at a cost of $165.5 million, a SANDAG spokesperson said.
The 600-acre lagoon just north of La Costa Avenue is one of three in Carlsbad.
