A meeting, organized by Kara Seward of Senator Fran Pavley’s office, was held June 16 to ask the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) to clean up its maintenance material stored below Castellammare and near Potrero Canyon along Pacific Coast Highway. Several Pacific Palisades residents, representatives from Assemblywoman Julia Brownley’s office, Caltrans and the Coastal Commission, and two members of Councilman Bill Rosendahl’s office attended. ‘They unanimously told Caltrans to pack up their stuff and put it somewhere other than on PCH or in the Palisades,’ resident Stuart Muller told the Palisadian-Post. ‘There were no ifs or buts accepted. The clear message was ‘Just do it, NOW!’ Caltrans did not put up much of a defense and in the end seemed to accept the outcome we demanded.’ Seward remembers the meeting slightly differently. ‘Caltrans said they would be in touch with the Coastal Commission to see whether there were any exemptions to store materials there,’ she told the Post on June 24. ‘Andrew Willis, who is an enforcement analyst, wasn’t sure and was going to check into it.’ Jim Fowler, Caltrans maintenance manager for the West Region, said that materials had been stored along PCH in Castellammare since the 1980s and were used for emergencies. He said that Caltrans owns a narrow strip of land near Potrero where they store K-rails, but the other construction materials, including cement pipes, the shed and the water tower, belonged to the City of Los Angeles. ‘We plan to move the wood posts and the I-beam steel [from Castellammare],’ Fowler said, explaining that the wood is placed between the steel beams to shore up various retaining walls, such as those between Chautauqua Boulevard and Potrero Canyon and near the Getty Villa. ‘The concrete blocks are used for retainer walls and we have crash cushion material here.’ Fowler explained that Caltrans keeps materials along the highway for unexpected landslides, falling boulders and other issues on local roadways. ‘We keep the stuff close by in case of an emergency.’ ‘This removal might happen quickly (especially the Castellammare junk) or never happen,’ Muller said. ‘We need to push on all fronts. This really needs to be a united community effort. If we pull this reclamation project off, we will have improved a priceless natural resource.’ At a PCH Task Force meeting held June 23 in Malibu, Jesse Switzer, Brownley’s senior field representative, addressed the issue. ‘The coast is not an appropriate place to store construction material that isn’t assigned to specific local projects or required to be accessible so as to enable Caltrans to respond to an unexpected emergency situation.’ Some of the material at Castellammare was removed on June 28, and tarps were placed covering other materials. Caltrans is speaking to L.A. County representatives, hoping they may have land off PCH where the steel I-beams can be stored, but still close enough to be readily accessible in an emergency situation. ‘We have a yard at Los Flores Canyon, but we barely have room for vehicles,’ Fowler said. Even if Caltrans clears everything out of the site at Castellammare, the chain-link fence will remain in place, because the state agency owns that strip of land. ‘If we had money, we could put redwood slats in the chain-link to make it look more attractive,’ Fowler noted. Enforcement analyst Willis told the Post on June 30 that Pavley’s staff has informed Caltrans that if they intend to retain storage facilities, they need a coastal development permit to authorize it. ‘Development is a broadly defined term under the Coastal Act which includes the placement of solid materials on a site, which Caltrans has done, or a change from an undeveloped site to a storage area,’ Willis said, noting that he has not heard from Caltrans about their intentions.
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