Palo Colorado Canyon Photos

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• Who can we write in support of funding these road and bridge repairs in Palo and Big Sur Coast? Is there anyone else beyond Mary Adams, Bill Monning, and Jimmy Panetta? Thank you for your continued extraordinary service for the community, Kate!

  • Amy, I think those are the ones.

• Thickness of concrete is no match for water. I bet folks with dirt bikes are in high demand between these areas of slides.

• Amy, wouldn't hurt to add Mark Stone to your list of politicians to contact.

• What is really unfortunate about this situation is that the county has had years and years and years to mitigate the problems. The slide shown in the first few images started years ago. The counties solution to it was to put plastic sheeting over the first fifty feet or so and put some pylons in the road to keep people from driving over it.

  The reality is that if the rains that are forecast for the coming week come, Palo Colorado Rd. will most likely fail in multiple places, making ingress and egress from the canyon impossible. I met with a county works person several years ago to point out several spots in the first mile of Palo that were being undermined by the creek. His response to me said it all, "when it fails, we will apply for FEMA money and fix it, until then there is nothing we will do." So that is how MoCo operates. There is no concern or consideration for the undue hardship it places upon the residents. It is let it fail and we will find someone else to pay for it.

  Garrapatos Road is close to complete failure in one section. The county put in a poorly designed retaining wall 18 years ago that began falling toward the creek 17 years ago. They have had 17 years to fix this problem and put in a lasting solution. They have done nothing. The only reason the road remains in place is due to the hard work of residents and in particular, MB, who has tirelessly worked to keep the road open. And that is the case in general Big Sur. It is part of who we are as a community, that we join together to solve problems. But ultimately, we end up working so much harder because the counties unwritten policy is to let things fail and then fix them with grant money, which in the end is a far greater cost both in dollars and impact upon the residents, than it would be if they mitigated and put in solutions in advance, so that these well known problems could be prevented.

  Of course there will always be problems that could not be predicted nor mitigated in advance. That is a certainty of living here. But to not take action in advance on the known issues, that is unacceptable.

  Thanks for posting the pictures. I was going to send Kate some ones I took two days ago of the same area, but these are better.