Are supervisors bluffing on turning back flood damage funds?
by Gary Rees, McKinleyville, 6/7/2007
As a resident of the Ocean Drive neighborhood, although two blocks back from the bluffs themselves, I am concerned with the prospect that the Humboldt County Board of Supervisors may turn down more than $1.5 million in disaster relief funds to stabilize the bluffs at the end of School Road.
My home may not be endangered directly by bluff erosion for many decades, but I am concerned about the possibility that my neighbors and I could lose sewer and water services when erosion reaches the Ocean Drive and School Road intersection.
The liability and indemnification requirements the county is asking two residents to assume would put them at risk of bankruptcy. The county wants to make them take on all responsibility for maintenance and even defend the county in court. This is a risk that none of the supervisors would likely assume personally and that the two land owners cannot bear.
If the supervisors turn back the money from the federal and state government to solve the bluff erosion problem, the likelihood of getting money in the future appears very slim. The bluffs will continue their march toward the intersection of Ocean Drive and School Road, and houses and septic systems will fall into the Mad River estuary. Once the bluffs erode to that point, water and sewer service for a substantial number of homes in the Ocean Drive and surrounding neighborhoods would be disrupted, and the cost of repair could reach tens of millions of dollars.
The much-used river access on McKinleyville Community Services District property at the end of School Road would be gone. Public access through adjacent fields is restricted because of the application of waste water. The whole character of our neighborhood would change with the loss of this valuable public-access route.
I will be working with others in the Ocean Drive neighborhood on Sunday to distribute fliers about the risk our neighborhood faces if the supervisors don’t find a way to make the Mad River bluffs erosion control project work. We will be asking residents to contact Supervisor Jill Geist (707-476-2395) and to appear at the June 19 meeting of the Board of Supervisors to request that they take appropriate action before June 22, the deadline for accepting the funds.
My neighbors and I also intend to ask the MCSD to request that the county include the Ocean Drive neighborhood and, particularly, the infrastructure at School Road and Ocean Drive in an upcoming disaster prevention grant that will be submitted to the Federal Emergency Management Agency early next year. Such a grant would allow action to prevent future damage and to respond to the changing conditions of the bluffs. It will cost less and we will save MCSD infrastructure and the Ocean Drive neighborhood.
For more information about the Mad River bluffs, including a slide show, visit the Web site www.madriverbluff.org. If you want to help save this McKinleyville neighborhood, you are invited to join us for coffee and bagels in the parking lot of Rogers Market on School Road Sunday at 10 a.m. We will be walking the area west of U.S. Highway 101 between School and Hiller roads, and neighbors from within that area would be particularly welcome to join us.
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