By Claudia Iseman
An overflow crowd packed the La Selva Beach community clubhouse on April 16, eager to hear about an ongoing climate resilience study by transportation planners at the Santa Cruz County Regional Transportation Commission.
“The purpose of this meeting is to provide information about climate hazards at the La Selva Beach and Manresa bluffs,” said Grace Blakeslee, Senior Transportation Planner for the SCCRTC. Blakeslee said she’s been working on the concept of bringing a passenger rail and or trail to the 32 -mile stretch of train tracks from Davenport to Watsonville for the past 20-years.
In December the board of the RTC directed transportation planners to focus their efforts on an interim trail, and for now anyway, keep the train off the tracks until the distant future.
According to Shannon Munz, Communications Specialist for the RTC, a final concept report on a passenger rail was completed late last year and indicated the rail project needs further environmental and preliminary engineering studies to move forward at a cost of 15-million dollars.
“The RTC doesn’t have the funding,” said Munz. She said staff is pursuing funding sources from the federal and state government, while at the same time, continuing to study the climate resiliency of an interim trail only.
For folks like Bill Spence, who serves as the La Selva Beach liaison between the RTC and the La Selva Beach Improvement Association, an interim trail is paramount. “So many in our community are study weary,” said Spence.
Public opinion during the meeting seemed strongly in favor of getting a plan in place to begin construction on an interim trail. Meanwhile, preliminary results from the climate resilience study show the La Selva Beach and Manresa bluffs as high-risk areas due to erosion from rainfall, coastal flooding, sea rise and mudslides.
Doug Green has been the president of the La Selva Beach Improvement Association for nine years and has made protecting the bluff a cornerstone of his tenure.
“When you look at the bluff below the tracks and see how close the erosion is to the tracks, we must realize it will only get worse with time,” said Green.
Munz is quick to caution that development of an interim trail plan has not even begun yet on the segment from Rio Del Mar Boulevard to Watsonville.
“There’s no timeline yet for La Selva Beach and Manresa,” said Munz. She adds the RTC is just launching the climate resilience study and the public is invited to participate in the feedback when they announce public meetings in May and June.
While many at the meeting were hopeful to hear an interim trail is in the foreseeable future, they left feeling somewhat ambivalent.
“There were a lot of questions that were unanswered but other than that, it was really informative,” said La Selva Beach resident Rich Morton.