Repairs to a storm-battered Scenic Road in Carmel are almost done, county says

For months, a quarter-mile stretch of Scenic Road has been closed to the public while infrastructure battered by heavy rain and high surf earlier this year underwent emergency restoration. Repairs began on Feb. 14 and are expected to finish on Friday. 

CARMEL – Repairs on a section of Carmel’s main waterfront drive – which was damaged during January’s parade of winter storms – are nearing completion, according to the County of Monterey.

For months, a quarter-mile stretch of Scenic Road has been closed to the public while infrastructure battered by heavy rain and high surf earlier this year underwent emergency restoration. Repairs began on Feb. 14 and are expected to finish on Friday.

“We worked (on this project) in 10-hour shifts, six days a week for the past two and a half months,” said Enrique Saavedra, Monterey County Chief of Public Works, explaining that “time was of the essence.”

Damages were primarily caused by storm surge. Saavedra previously told the Herald that severe weather at the start of the year brought repeated bouts of large waves to the beachfront slope that Scenic Road runs along. With the waves came erosion, exposing utilities housed in the road’s supportive slope while causing asphalt to crumble. The damage forced the Carmel Area Wastewater District to shut off water and sewage for a few houses close to the undermined slide of Scenic.

The Wastewater District rerouted an affected sewer line to avoid the risk of sewage spill out onto Carmel River State Beach, while county consultants devised and launched a plan to fix the impaired road.

Reconstruction plans primarily consisted of putting in a soil-nail wall. To do so, crews were tasked with driving 20- to 30-foot nails in Scenic’s undermined slope to anchor and hold a mesh cover.

The soil-nail wall has been completed, Saavedra said Monday.

Spelling out repairs further, Saavedra said nails placed in the hillside were coated with shotcrete – concrete air-sprayed through a hose – to shore up their durability and minimize erosion. Rocks were also placed at the foot of the wall as a stop gap against future impacts from high surf, Saavedra added. Finally, improvements were all covered with natural sand to return Carmel River State Beach to its pre-storm condition.

What remains this week is planned repaving of Scenic Road where it faltered underneath. Once the road is revamped, emergency repairs will be done and Scenic will be able to reopen, according to Saavedra.

“Things are looking really good,” he said.

In all, project costs will likely total $2.6 million, Saavedra estimated. Though paid for by the county up front, those costs will – hopefully – be covered by federal disaster relief funds made available by the Federal Emergency Management Agency to California counties hit particularly hard by the January storms – including Monterey.

“We’ve been working very closely with FEMA and Cal OES to make sure repairs are eligible for reimbursement,” Saavedra said. “I’m fairly sure that’s going to be successful, but we won’t know for sure until we get the check.”

Apart from the bill, there’s also the matter of how long emergency repairs will last.

Saavedra said, “We’re hoping they’ll last a long time,” but did note that more reinforcements are on the way. At least, that’s the idea.

For years now, a longer-term Carmel River Lagoon Project has been in the works. Still in the planning phase, the venture has three parts – including aspirations for a Scenic Road Protective Structure. More exhaustive than recent emergency repairs, the barrier would essentially be a full-slope wall running from Valley View Avenue to the southern end of the Carmel River State Beach parking lot.

Other project components include an ecosystem protective barrier floodwall running along Carmelo Street from the Carmel River State Beach parking lot at 17th Avenue east to the eastern boundary of the Carmel River Elementary School property, as well as interim sandbar management of Carmel Lagoon while the rest of long-term plans are completed.

Annual sandbar management has been ongoing since 2018. Meanwhile, technical studies needed to move both the Scenic Road and ecosystem protective barrier elements along have been underway, according to project manager Shandy Carroll.

The studies, which were first OK’d by the Monterey County Board of Supervisors in July 2018, will help enhance a draft environmental impact report initially prepared for the Carmel River Lagoon Project back in 2016. Carroll said the last technical study needed was completed in March. She also said that a 30% design plan, or rather an initial outline of a project’s design elements, has likewise been finalized.

The next step in seeing the lagoon project through is recirculating the updated draft EIR, technical studies and 30% design plan included. Carroll said the county hopes to recirculate the report later this summer. From there, the Board of Supervisors will need to decide what parts of the larger Carmel River Lagoon Project they want to move forward with, Carroll explained. That decision will likely appear on the supervisors’ docket toward the end of the year, she said.

Asked how long it could conceivably take for a longer-term Scenic Road project to take shape, Carroll couldn’t give an exact timeline but said, “It’s something that could take years.”

In the meantime, emergency repairs will have to do.