PACIFIC GROVE — A Pacific Grove homeowner is attributing what he likens to a canyon being eroded through his property to a poor design of Pebble Beach Co.’s Morse Road just on the upstream side of his property.
But Pebble Beach says the erosion is a natural occurrence in a waterway that has been running for decades and possibly much longer and that Pebble Beach Co. is in the midst of constructing erosion control measures, as should the homeowner.
Morse Road is roughly the dividing line between Pacific Grove and Pebble Beach.
Roland Unruh has lived at the same Buena Vista Avenue address for decades. His parents bought the small, modest home in 1969. Unruh said he has watched what was once a meandering little creek become at times a raging waterway that has gouged places more than 20 feet deep and far greater across.
Both Unruh and Pebble Beach agree that the erosion is major and that it needs to be shorn up. What they disagree on is whose responsibility it is to reinforce what are now walls along the creek bed on his property. Unruh calls the creek Sawmill Creek after an old sawmill that once stood on the Pebble Beach side.
“It was a gentle little creek, maybe 2 feet deep,” Unruh said.
In a number of places on his property, the sides are now more like 20 to 30 feet deep. On the east side of Morse Road on Pebble Beach property, the creek meanders through poison oak shrubs and dense vegetation, no more than a stream. On the other side of Morse Road, the damage is pronounced.
Between Morse Road and Unruh’s property, a distance of roughly 100 yards, conifer tree roots are exposed along the walls of the creek, causing some to have fallen over and others having to be been cut down before they teeter and collapse. Sandbags and boulders can be seen up and down the creek.
Pebble Beach said it has provided time and materials to help with the erosion on Unruh’s property, something Unruh acknowledged. But the damage is extensive and Unruh insists that what Pebble Beach has done for him is not enough.
Construction crews hired by Pebble Beach have been working at the site for months. Orange fencing, danger signs and huge plastic tarps surround the erosion that is now dangerously close to Morse Road — a matter of feet. Off to the side of the creek are a pile of large timbers that Unruh said will be used by Pebble Beach to shore up the creek walls on Pebble Beach property.
Since Unruh’s property — on both sides of the creek — sits within the city limits of Pacific Grove, it is unknown what role, if any, the city is involved in the dispute. Calls placed on Thursday and Friday to Pacific Grove’s Public Works Department were not returned.
On Wednesday Unruh stood on the side of the road, pointing to where the road begins to slope north toward the Samuel Morse Gate on Holman Highway, a distance of maybe a half-mile. Unruh contends that during storms water pours down the downward sloping road’s surface to a drain that feeds into the creek. He said the drain is ineffective and always has been. As a result, the rapid current jumps the drain and “blasts out” the creek’s sides, he said.
“When they came in to fix it they stopped short of my property line,” Unruh said. “They told me Pebble Beach doesn’t have enough money to continue.”
A Pebble Beach spokesperson said the erosion is an act of nature, and that the company is constructing a wide-diameter culvert under the road it believes will remedy the problem, at least for further erosion to the road. Where it cuts through Unruh’s property is his responsibility, the Pebble Beach spokesperson said.
On Wednesday, Unruh stood, his golden retriever and Doberman at his side, and looked toward his property on the other side of Sawmill Creek.
“They’re taking away a huge piece of my land,” he said.
