For years, City Councilwoman Nancy Gardner has sought ways to heal Little Corona Beach by looking for ways to stem the flow of water from Buck Creek onto the sand.
And now, city staff has a plan that may help alleviate the problems.
“We are considering an infiltration gallery that picks up nuisance water running down, before it gets to the beach,” said Dave Webb, Newport Beach’s Public Works director. “The water would percolate through the sand. You wouldn’t even know it was there.”
Plans are in their “infancy,” Webb said, and stage agencies including the California Coastal Commission and the Department of Fish & Games likely would have to approve any project before it is implemented.
For now, staff continues to develop a pilot program that would add the infiltration gallery, likely to be buried under the sand in front of a concrete weir that is at the base of the creek by the beach. The gallery would capture running water and let it slowly filter down into the sand and then to the ocean, as opposed to a running stream that sometimes cuts a deep ridge in the sand at Little Corona.
City staff also continues to work on educating neighbors who live upstream, urging them not to over-irrigate or send unnecessary water down Buck Gully.
Historically, Buck Creek was an ephemeral creek that did not have daily water flow, according to the California Coastal Commission.
“However, since the 1990s, the hillsides of the watershed have been developed with single family residences and the Pelican Hill Golf Club,” a Coastal Commission staff report said in 2011. “Irrigation associated with this development has resulted in additional inputs of water to the creek, so that now the creek runs perennially, with flows equaling approximately 17 million gallons per month during the dry season.”
In 2012, city staff gave a presentation on Buck Gully, which Gardner criticized for not addressing how to stem the water flow; read our story here.