Daily over-irrigation of nearby residential lawns causes an untold amount of damage to Pacific Beach streets. And damage to the intersection at Garnet Avenue and Cass Street could cost the city possibly hundreds of thousands of dollars to repair well before a street’s approximate 20-year life span is up.
Take a stroll down Garnet Avenue and have a look for yourself.
Nearly every morning a pool of water collects at the intersection where passing cars and buses slosh through the water causing extensive erosion to a once-decorative brick crosswalk, which was laid in 2000. The yellow sea stars and other marine life silhouetted against the blue colored asphalt are so eroded they’re barely noticeable.
The city has plans to fix part of the intersection by late July to prevent the puddles, according to city officials.
The $40,000 beautification project sprouted from local community members’ desire to brighten-up their neighborhood. The streetscape plan included other projects such planting trees along the street meant to give Pacific Beach a fresh look.
Now, almost eight years later, all that’s left of the project are some faded splashes of the yellow sea stars on eroded, rocky asphalt.
Large delivery trucks stunted the growth of the trees along the sidewalk, whacking the branches as they drove passed, Benjamin Nicholls, executive director of Discover Pacific Beach said.
“It was a good program,” Nicholls said, “it just wasn’t thought through well enough.”
The Pacific Beach Business Improvement Association, now called Discover Pacific Beach, started the master plan beautification in the late 1990s with a series of community meetings and an extensive design process that lasted a few years.
Nicholls, who was not part of the group at the time, said the organization has since looked at redoing the intersection about four years ago, but added that it would have probably been a waste of time and resources.
He said that if it was the cross walk was redone it would erode back to the current condition in just a few years unless it was fixed to drain properly.
Fertilizers and animal waste add to the problems caused from the watering the green lawns dotted along Felspar Avenue and north of Garnet Avenue, he said. The runoff from the lawns feeds the weeds that seem to grow from nowhere.
“I tried to plant plants in the tree wells and they won’t grow, but we can get these weeds in the gutter that grow three feet high,” Nicholls said.
The rest of the runoff naturally flows directly to the ocean.
So who’s ultimately paying for the damage caused by overwatering? Well, everybody, according to city officials.
At a cost of up to $600,000 a mile to resurface a street, next year’s proposed budget plans to resurface, or overlay, about 80 miles of street, according to city officials. District 2, which includes, will see about 28 miles of newly overlaid streets next year.
The cheaper, thinner-coated, slurry-seal costs about $100,000 a mile. The city has plans to slurry seal about 133 miles of streets citywide, next year as well, said David Jarrell, deputy chief of Public Works for the mayor’s office.
Whether a street gets slurry-sealed or scraped and overlaid depends on the condition of the pavement. If it’s real bad it gets overlaid, he said.
But as for the problem intersection at Garnet Avenue and Cass Street, Jarrell said the city plans to remove part of the street and repave it so it drains properly. That project is calculated separately and may cost about $15,000 to $20,000, he said.
“That work is going to be done by the end of July [2008]. So, sometime within the next 90 days.” Jarrell said.
The streets become so worn for two reasons, he said. Either they weren’t maintained properly over the years, or they simply out last their useful service life, which is about 17 to 20 years, he said.
Keeping an eye on urban runoff also helps prevent extra damage to streets.
Although a city ordinance targeting overwatering exists, the city relies mainly on public education campaigns to aid prevention rather than handing out citations, Jarrell said.
“We do it through education, because somebody is spending money on water that’s really only spraying into the street and not doing any good,” he said.
The City Council approved a plan in January aimed at curtailing urban runoff and storm drain pollution, according to the city’s website. Part of the public education section of the plan urges seemingly obvious activities like picking up after pets and using a broom instead of a water to clean driveways and sidewalks, which saves money and resources.
Visit www.sandiego.gov/thinkblue for tips on runoff prevention.