Refugio State Beach on the Gaviota Coast has lost several of its iconic date palms after winter storm beach erosion.
One or two palms fell down last week, and two more fell down on Wednesday, said Dena Bellman of the State Parks Channel Coast District.
The park is temporarily closed after being hit with flooding, waves and a sinkhole during the early February storm.
“We’ve been so lucky in the last few years with less damage in Refugio and more in other areas, but this year it kind of flip-flopped,” she said.
Tree inspectors, historians and archaeologists have inspected the palms to develop an appropriate plan, she said.
“Many of those trees were installed nearly 100 years ago,” Bellman said.
“They are to a certain extent at the end of their lifetime and certainly they’re in a precarious position, so coming up with an appropriate plan on how to approach keeping the historic aesthetic of Refugio while trying to deal with it … it’s a very emotional situation with those palm trees.”
State Parks expects to have a plan next week, and “we’ll be very transparent once we figure out what we can do,” Bellman said.
It’s not the first time erosion has threatened the seaside palm trees. When they were threatened in 2016, State Parks officials told Noozhawk that they planned to let nature take its course.
What used to be three lines of palm trees planted along the ocean’s edge is now down to one, they said.
Goleta-area history buff Tom Modugno has documented the life and times of these trees, and the people who planted them there, over the years.
Storm Damage Repairs and Cleanup Underway
Other winter storm damage included a sinkhole near the entrance kiosk from some kind of infrastructure failure, Bellman said. It flooded the park’s group camp.
State Parks is working on diagnosing the problem, with help from the county and Caltrans, she said.
“We need to make sure the whole hillside is not going to come down,” she said.
Getting the park open to the public “is our No. 1 priority, but it has to be a safe situation,” Bellman said.
El Capitan and Carpinteria state beach parks were reopened soon after the February storms, but Refugio and Gaviota State Park are temporarily closed.
Gaviota State Park needs a major cleanup effort, according to Bellman, and State Parks called in the California Conservation Corps to help. The crews filled two dumpsters full of debris on the first day, Bellman said.
Restrooms and other park facilities need to be cleaned out after being inundated with water and mud during the storm, she said.
State Parks doesn’t have a reopening date planned yet for either park.
