Posted on October 30, 2015
Residents of Malibu’s Broad Beach have agreed to pay $31 million over the next decade to truck in tons of sand to build up the diminished shoreline filled with homes of the rich and famous.
The California Coastal Commission this month narrowly approved the unprecedented sand-replenishment project along the mile-long strand, the Los Angeles Times reported Monday (http://lat.ms/1H4rFTK ).
Owners of 121 parcels will fund the undertaking, which will involve bringing in mountains of sand from quarries in Simi Valley and Moorpark. Dunes will be built atop a massive, man-made rock barrier, according to the newspaper. The restoration work is expected to begin in the spring.
Broad Beach has seen decades of deterioration caused by pounding storms and high tides.
Among those who will be contributing to the $3.1 million annual fund for the next 10 years are “Modern Family” co-creator Steve Levitan, billionaire businessman Patrick Soon-Shiong and actors Dustin Hoffman, Ray Romano and Pierce Brosnan.
“As I understand it, what the homeowners are doing on Broad Beach is unique: We are funding the restoration totally at our own expense,” said Michael Sitrick, a crisis-public relations man who has had a getaway home on the shoreline since 1999.
The plan, approved by a 7-5 vote Oct. 9, has met with skepticism from coastal advocates, who remain unconvinced that the pricey venture will work and who fear that the public could pay a high cost in reduced beach access if it fails.
Jack Ainsworth, the Coastal Commission’s senior deputy director, described the plan as a pilot project subject to the vagaries of climate change.
“You can have the best modeling in the world but not know the effect of all the variables,” Ainsworth told the Times. “Certainly, this gets more difficult as time goes on and the sea level rises and we have more vigorous storms.”
