Goleta Beach County Park awaits $7 million in repairs following damaging winter storms from early 2023
GOLETA, Calif.—It’s a park that draws over 1.5 million visitors a year.
But during Wednesday’s storm, Goleta Beach County Park saw just a few people.
While most people are staying away from the waves, UC Santa Barbara graduate student Nikolas Claussen says windy days are the perfect time to run into them.
“I only come here during the storms. Then the wind is typically coming sort of from out over there. And this is a prime spot for Kitesurfing. So you have a big kite, you launch it into the air and it pulls you on this little surfboard right here. It's a lot of fun,” said Claussen.
And though the storm might be good for his kite surfing hobby, the winter storms from earlier in the year did a number on Claussen’s beloved Goleta Beach County Park— damages that will cost a total of 7 million dollars.
One million dollars will be dedicated to repairing the pier, which all vehicles are blocked from entering until the completion of replacing the 14 damaged poles that help hold up the pier.
“We like to have vehicles on the pier so that they can launch boats from the boat hoist. And we have a lot of fishermen and a lot of other recreational boat users that like to use this pier for the different activities, said County Parks Assistant Director Jeffrey Lindgren.
The other 6 million will go primarily to repairing the parking lots.
“we have seven large parking lots at the beach. And some of them were a bit undermined by some waves so that they take some structural repairs. But we also had a lot of sediment, deposition trucks, very, very heavy tonnage trucks that were coming through here for four or five months straight. And they just caused damage to the four inch thick asphalt parking areas,” said County Parks Capital Projects Manager Jill Van Wie.
An irrigation system will also be put in place to keep the main lawn green.
Workers say repairs won’t be able to start until next year following the anticipated El Niño storm season.
