With hopes of reopening the Rancho Guadalupe Dunes County Park to vehicles by the spring, the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors voted on Dec. 6 to allocate $300,000 to repair the park’s damaged access road.
The majority of the money—$250,000—will come from Coastal Resource Enhancement Fund grants. The remaining $50,000 will be appropriated from county funds.
“To think that there is no beach for 150,000 people in the northern part of the county is mind-boggling,” 3rd District Supervisor Doreen Farr said. “If we don’t act on this now, we’re going to have to miss our window of opportunity this year, and we’re going to have to wait another whole year. I just can’t see doing that to the people of the North County.”
The access road, now officially called the Clarence Minetti Memorial Road, was washed out in March by heavy rains and flooding from the Santa Maria River. The county plans to build about 3,250 feet of roadway around the washed out section.
Guadalupe Mayor Lupe Alvarez thanked supervisors Farr and Gray for their work in pursuing the funding, and said he’d like the repairs to be completed by next spring, before snowy plover season, for the enjoyment of the community.
“The beach is very important to Guadalupe and the North County as a whole,” Alvarez told supervisors via a video link. “It’s essential we get this beach access road open up completely.”
Alvarez and other elected officials had lobbied the Federal Emergency Management Agency for more than $8 million in disaster relief funds earlier this year, a majority of which would’ve gone to repair the road, but the state’s request for an emergency declaration was denied.
This article appears in Dec 15-22, 2011.