Many Big Sur residents are frustrated. Eleven miles of Highway 1 remains closed as Caltrans continues cleanup from the storms in January. The closures have disrupted the lives of many Big Sur locals, causing issues with getting to work, taking kids to school, and receiving services like trash pickup.
Some Big Sur residents say they're frustrated with Caltrans and feel the agency should be doing more to open roads. Kevin Drabinski is the spokesperson for Caltrans District 5 and recently spoke with KAZU's Jonathan Linden. Drabinski says Highway 1 at Paul's Slide is indefinitely closed.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Kevin Drabinski: We expect Paul's Slide to be a long-term closure. In maintaining Paul's Slide, previously, we could count on removing debris from the bottom of the slide. And so this is a top-down slide removal. (This is), I think, the most intense labor and time-involved slide that we've seen in years.
Jonathan Linden: I've been speaking with some Big Sur locals, and they have some questions. The first question I have for you comes from Jessie McKnight. Her question is about why there are two different standards for locals and construction crews.
Jessie McKnight: Why are crews being given access to pass and not locals? And is there any way that we could allow limited movement for residents in a way that's safe and controlled?
Jonathan Linden: It is important to note in Jesse's context that her husband has had to find another job because one of his jobs is south of Paul's Slide.
Kevin Drabinski: While it's a visual where you're seeing contractor's trucks go through, the contractor assumes the risk for themselves and their subcontractors to be able to get in there to make the repairs. The fact is that we have to have those trucks getting through in order to be able to make the repair to Paul's Slide and reopen it. And then conditions change over time. So there's not a physical path through there as there was in the immediate aftermath of the slide.
Jonathan Linden: The next one I have here is from Corinne Handy.
Corinne Handy: What has changed within Caltrans that will not allow them to communicate and work with and help separately the businesses and the residents here versus the large group that they would probably call all the public?
Jonathan Linden: Corinne feels like there should be a difference between locals and the tourists that are traveling through the Big Sur region.
Kevin Drabinski: Paul's Slide had kind of reactivated in a massive way, and that obviously is pushing 8,000-pound concrete barriers, and there's no protection for the traveling public there. The Mill Creek slide was recognized by our geo-tech team. It was assessed as (having) the potential for imminent catastrophic failure. That's not something we can be comfortable with having even local residents pass through. And at the Polar Star slide, you're dealing with a very steep slope and a very narrow roadway. And when we cut in a path to allow construction crews to get through, we added additional instability to that slope by changing the angle of where it would come to rest. And so while it looked visually as if a path could be created for locals, it, in fact, was unstable and posed a great risk to anybody that was traveling through there.
Jonathan Linden: Next, I have Anneliese Agren. She's a supporter of Caltrans, but she said she did have a question about the newer Safe System Approach policy. That approach is to prioritize safety first. This was a policy that was adopted by Caltrans last year. Here's Anneliese.
Anneliese Agren: Is that safety program part of why it seems different to residents now? Was that part of the change?
Kevin Drabinski: Well, every slide brings unique conditions to it, so it's hard to make an apples-and-apples comparison to slides in different areas and in different years. So I can speak to this year's conditions with some insight and with compassion and concern for the local community, who I can understand were frustrated that they couldn't travel when they saw construction crews getting through. I believe that access through the slides was made on a case-by-case basis and wasn't directed so strongly by any new policies as much as it was by the geological engineering circumstances and dynamics that existed at these slides that did not permit the public to travel through.