Interim Walk-In Plan to be Operational This Weekend.

Santa Barbara County Parks will establish an interim walk-in plan at Rancho Guadalupe Dunes County Park to provide visitors the ability to use a designated pathway to walk to the beach. Visitors will be required to stay within the designated pathway as they make their way through the dune habitat area down to the beach.

The access road at the park, a portion of West Main Street to the beach, had been open on a day to day basis since the December 2010 storms. The most recent storm events undermined the road and washed out a portion of the road way requiring the park to be closed.

Santa Barbara County Parks will establish a foot path to detour around the washout. Parking will be provided on the existing road as space permits. Portable toilets for sanitation will also be provided at this location as the restroom at the Beach will be closed due to inability to access and service. Once parked in the designated area, visitors will be able to walk around the washout area on a marked pathway and then back on to the remaining asphalt road for the rest of the way to the beach, a distance of approximately three quarters of a mile.

County staff will continue to monitor the situation and explore opportunities and alternatives to provide public access to the beach at Rancho Guadalupe Dunes County Park. County Parks has been seeking funding to address the road issue, but no funding is available or identified at this time to be used on the project. Damaged by the December storms, County Parks had been informed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency as well as the State of California Emergency Management Agency that disaster funds are not available to repair the access road. While no available funding has been identified, the County continues to seek all opportunities to address repairs to the access road.