No Dumping: Drains to Ocean

Our most recent project is to redesign a beach access in Laguna Beach, a real project being worked on by a real firm, not us, but we get to pretend and use some of their graciously-lended data. To scout it out, i made two trips there, one at night and one during the day. It isn't ugly, but it could use some love:

There isn't very much parking (surprise, surprise) and the parking that does exist in Laguna Beach is mostly parallel and metered. There are many of these signs--but most of them are more visible, of course!

One of the problems faced by beach structures, whether stairs, streets, buildings, or the beaches themselves, is erosion. It's a fact of life and the result of pounding waves and tides, but here it is accelerated by run-off from the hills, as well as the fact that beaches are partly grown by sedimentation from proper amounts of run-off. That doesn't happen when you have a hill-side community of paved roads that chute rain water and irrigation water down to the ocean. They've apparently had to redo the stairs at least once:

The view is worth the work cut out for us, isn't it? Even Clemente Island was visible. Too bad we had rush back for a lecture on campus--i'd have happily spent the whole day as a field-research field trip. :)