Who’s Looking After the Look on Pacific Coast Highway?

• Curtailing Commercial Use of Malibu’s Main Artery Involves an Array of Agencies

BY HANS LAETZ

At one end of the parking area above Broad Beach, tourists with Michigan license plates pose next to the “27 Miles of Scenic Beauty” sign, the California coast they came to see stretching to Point Dume. It was another picture-perfect moment in Malibu.

At the other end of the lot, a construction worker revs up a front-end loader, drops gravel into a large dump truck, and discretely relieves himself next to one of the several piles of gravel stored at the non-permitted, unofficial construction materials storage site.

The mess in Malibu’s front yard is one of several unsightly problems along Pacific Coast Highway, the world-famous road that is also this city’s main street.

At Point Dume, as many as five sewage pumping trucks at a time park between the stored dumpsters, and cars for sale sit below one of Malibu’s last billboards. The trucks park along PCH to transfer their loads into bigger ones, consolidating sewage for the long trip to a sewage plant in Van Nuys.

Just down PCH, dumpsters permanently line the highway next to $10 million-plus homes, forcing bicyclists into traffic. City officials have to deal with the state Department of Transportation, the county, water quality agencies and others to try to keep the road sightly and traffic moving.

“We try to keep a lid on it, and then something comes out of nowhere and people start calling,” said Mayor Ken Kearsley. “And boy, do they call.”

Such complaints spurred city officials to phone the septic tank pumping companies this week, with a message that too much trans-truck pumping activity is happening on PCH at Point Dume.

“It’s not illegal, all we can do is tell them we are getting complaints, said city permit services manager Gail Sumpter. “We’ve asked them to move before, like when they were consolidating their loads on Civic Center Way. I called them and said, ‘Come on, guys, you can’t do this here.’”

Pumping company officials could not be reached, but a spokeswoman for a trade group said residents need to have their septic tanks pumped, and the companies need to consolidate their loads to keep costs down. “If three little trucks can transfer to one big truck, that means the three little trucks can go back out to three more jobs, and that saves homeowners money,” said Donna Ferraro of the National Waste Haulers Organization.

As for the wildcat gravel pit at the Trancas-area scenic overlook, Sumpter said Monday she will tell an Oxnard septic system company to remove it. The unofficial storage yard has been operating for more than a year on land owned by Los Angeles County, a wedge of unimproved but scenic land between Pacific Coast Highway and Broad Beach Road.

Ely, Jr. Pumping Service of Oxnard has kept four to six piles of various-sized sand and rock, a front-end loader, and a variety of trucks parked in the area for over a year. At times, brand-new concrete seepage pit liners have been stored on the site.

“That’s not right at all,” said Bailard Road homeowner Kay Collins. Like many people interviewed, she was surprised that the construction material between her house and the ocean was not a Caltrans project, but a private enterprise on public land.

“That’s very ugly, I thought Caltrans was still there storing stuff,” said Pt. Dume resident André Gruber, who drives by the site regularly.

Owner Ely Simental did not return a reporter’s phone call. Ely’s trucks have been spotted hauling the material to construction sites in Malibu Park and Point Dume, several miles from the piles.

Sumpter said she was not aware the storage facility was operating, and said there are no permits for this use on the land owned by Los Angeles County. “It would need a conditional use permit, and erosion control plans, and it would have to be on land they control,” she said.

The wildcat storage yard appeared after Caltrans set up a temporary storage yard while replacing a washed-out culvert under PCH west of Trancas. When Caltrans pulled out, the septic tank construction supplies remained.

“Our guys tell us they have no material out there within sight,” said Caltrans spokeswoman Judy Gish. “We’ve been done out there for more than a year.”

California Highway Patrol and Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department officials expressed surprise at a reporter’s question about commercial car carriers hauling brand new BMWs and Mitsubishis from Port Hueneme to points east through Malibu. On some days, four or five truckloads of cars, still in protective plastic, roll through Malibu within an hour.

“When we see ’em, we cite ’em,” said traffic Sgt. Philip Brooks at the Malibu-Lost Hills Sheriff’s Station. “Every once in awhile, we get a call about more trucks, and we go sit down there to wait for them and then cite the ones that we find.”

Last week, one truck driver stopped at the scenic overlook next to the gravel yard to take a photo.

He told a reporter that he had not seen any signs banning trucks through Malibu. Indeed, there are no signs on the road from Port Hueneme to Pacific Coast Highway to tell truckers that PCH is off limits to through trucks.

One sign on PCH near Point Mugu says, “No trucks past Decker Road” but doesn’t say where Decker Road is, or give directions to the alternate route to Los Angeles.

“It’s just an impossible task, dealing with all these agencies,” Kearsley lamented. “It’s like mowing through a jungle.”