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By Paul
Sisson
North County Times
September 11, 2007
DEL
MAR -- Though it costs $3.7 million, the Del Mar bluff
stabilization project will not look like anything when it's
finished.
Walking along the bluffs Friday, Ramon Ruelas, a senior
transportation engineer for the San Diego Association of
Governments, explained that the project is designed to keep
ocean waves from washing away the bluffs and sending the
coastal rail line into the Pacific.
"The
point is to protect the track and keep it operational,"
Ruelas said.
Since May, a construction crew has drilled 136 holes into a
section of the Del Mar bluffs, reaching depths of between 40
and 60 feet.
Those holes are now filled with steel I-beams and colored
concrete, and workers are adding horizontal underground
tie-back braces which reach east under the nearby coastal
railroad tracks. Unlike the sea walls used in other cities,
the entire system will be concealed underground.
Though waves washing against the bluffs may some day expose
the concrete pillars, they will be invisible for years, if not
decades.
Over the years, bluff failures have gradually pushed the edge
of the precipice ever closer to the tracks where about 60
commuter and freight trains rumble by every day. Years ago,
the North County Transit District installed an electronic
slip-detection system on the bluffs to provide advanced
warning of a sudden collapse, theoretically allowing
conductors to stop their trains if the rails were ever blocked
or missing.
Ruelas said that instability in the bluffs, including a recent
collapse in Del Mar, has convinced everyone that it is
important to bolster the tracks in addition to provide warning
to trains.
"We believe it poses an immediate problem at this time.
Otherwise we wouldn't be out here," he said.
In 2002, a 39-year-old man was found dead, buried in a small
cliff cave about 30 feet up the bluff face at Carlsbad State
Beach. On Jan. 15, 2000, a sunbathing Encinitas woman died
after a bluff failure just north of Moonlight Beach. And in
1995, a bluff collapse at Torrey Pines State Reserve just
south of Del Mar killed two people and injured a third.
Engineer Christopher Poli of Santa Ana-based Bureau Veritas
Group, a firm hired by the association of governments to
assist with the project, said Friday that the beach-going
public should not get a false sense of confidence from the
stabilization project. The new piles, he said, only protect
land to the east.
"The bluffs will continue to collapse for the part that
is closest to the beach," Poli said. "There is still
nothing holding that back."
While a sea wall similar to those employed by coastal home
owners might seem to provide more protection to the public,
Poli said a wall would not have provided enough support for
the train tracks.
"There are also a lot of concerns about how sea walls
look," Poli said.
This summer ocean-view home owners in one of San Diego
County's most exclusive locales have been awakened by the
construction work, which has been performed at night. The
project has had to be done nocturnally, Ruelas said, because
the work requires workers to stand on the rails while they
drill holes, and there are too many trains using those rails
during the day.
"We've had to do everything between 10 (p.m.) and 5
(a.m.)," he said.
Construction noise is one thing. But drilling in the middle of
the night is something else.
Del Mar resident Walter Baldwin, whose home on 12th Street is
very close to the work, said Friday that while he personally
has only been awakened twice by construction noise, many of
his neighbors have had a tough time getting a good night's
sleep since drilling began in May.
"It has been very bad on some evenings for some families.
But, in general, I think most people have accepted the reality
that the last thing they want is to have a cliff go
down," Baldwin said.
While he said he sympathizes with home owners' sensitivity to
the noise, Ruelas said it could have been worse.
"It's certainly a lot nosier driving piles than it is to
drill," he said. "I would say the vibration that
would be caused by pile driving would have also been worse
than that drilling."
The engineer said project managers have tried to notify
residents before work begins, hanging notices on door knobs
and maintaining a work schedule on a special Web site.
Though the construction contract for the bluff stabilization
project does not end until January, Ruelas said he thinks
workers are likely to finish sometime in November.
-- Contact staff writer Paul Sisson at (760) 901-4087 or psisson@nctimes.com
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