LEUCADIA RESIDENTS PLEAD FOR HELP
They ask Encinitas City Council to finally fix known drainage issues
With buckets and sandbags, the people who live and work near Leucadia Roadside Park desperately fought an ultimately unsuccessful battle to keep rising floodwaters from entering their homes and businesses as a record-setting rainstorm hammered the region Monday.
Two days later, they pleaded with the Encinitas City Council to finally resolve drainage problems that have bedeviled the low-lying area for decades, saying the city’s previous attempts have done little, if anything, to improve the situation. Monday’s storm, which dropped more than 3 inches of rain onto Encinitas, provided ample evidence that drainage is still a huge unresolved issue in Leucadia, they said.
Stacy Reddell, the new executive director of the Leucadia 101 Main
Street Association, listed all of the small businesses that sustained damage from the recent flooding, including coffee shops, a pizza place and a ceramics studio. Some people, particularly the owners of The Mudd House Studio, were “completely devastated” by the amount of water that came pouring into their buildings after the roadways around the park on Coast Highway 101 began flooding Monday, she said.
On its website, The Mudd House has announced that it is now closed due to flooding damage. A GoFundMe
page (https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-repair-themudd-house-from-storm-damage) has been set up to pay for an estimated $25,000 repair project.
Noting that “the rainy season is just getting started,” Reddell told the council Wednesday that her Main Street business organization wants to work with the city to have a “real plan in place” to combat the next storm. And, she stressed, her organization also wants the city to quickly pursue a major construction project to permanently fix the
area’s drainage problems.
Nikolas “Nikki” Harth, the new president of the Leucadia 101 Main Street Association, said he felt the city had “failed the residents and businesses in a huge way” with the latest flooding incident. Harth operates two businesses — Coffee Coffee and Surfhouse hotel — that were impacted by the rising water Monday.
Leucadia resident Gary Murphy said the city’s public works department tried valiantly to pump the water out of the area Monday, but said that obviously isn’t a good fix for the drainage problem, especially as there was far more water than the pumps could handle. A longtime community advocate who’s been lobbying for years for storm drain improvements, Murphy asked for Mayor Tony Kranz to host a joint community forum with him to debate the city’s storm drain construction options.
“It won’t get out of hand,” he promised the mayor, saying they’ve been friends for years and could act like adults while debating.
Kranz didn’t agree to take him up on his offer, but said the council will be placing the drainage issue on its Feb. 14 meeting agenda. During that discussion, the council will hear the latest plans for the next phase of the Leucadia Streetscape project, which includes stormwater drainage improvements, Kranz said. Begun in 2020, Streetscape is a multiyear, massive renovation of Leucadia’s portion of Coast Highway 101, and includes everything from traffic circle roundabouts to new sidewalks.
“It’s going to be an important conversation,” Kranz said as he encouraged people to attend or watch the Feb. 14 council meeting online.
Calling the recent flooding situation “heartbreaking,” Kranz said that residents and business owners whose structures sustained damage can file for disaster relief assistance because both the state of California and San Diego County have declared states of emergency due to Monday’s storm. The city of Encinitas’ website has a link to the county’s disaster assistance form, Kranz said. Visit https://crisistrack.juvare.com/public/ sandiegoCA /request.html to view the form.