A peg below the rest By BRET KORRORD, Contributing Editor
Monday, July 10, 2006 1:09 PM PDT
SERGIO ESTRADA PHOTO
Levon Allen of Tucson leaves a portable toilet at Imperial Sand Dunes rest stop. He was on his way home from San Diego.
Buttercup, Sand Dunes - It’s not exactly a golden greeting from the Golden State.
The rest stop in the Imperial Sand Dunes, which greets travelers arriving from Arizona, is a mix of decaying, putrid port-a-potties, a handful of shabby salt-cedars, something that once might have been a stone monument to something and onramps to Interstate 8 that are uncomfortable if not dangerous for drivers.
State roads officials say some toilet improvements will be made at the rest area in coming months, but a permanent replacement for the shabby site won’t be in place until 2013.
That is a date our state senator says is way too far down the road.
LOCAL OFFICIALS DISSATISFIED
Imperial County Supervisor Wally Leimgruber, in whose district the Sand Hills Rest Area rots, said of the rest stop, “It needs improvements. It needs to be brought up to date with the rest of the rest stops in the state.”
Leimgruber conceded the rest area, which is run by the California Department of Transportation and which he called “pre-1950s era,” does not present a good image of Imperial County or California to the 23 million people within a four-hour drive of the dunes. He also said it is a sad how-do-you-do to the hundreds of thousands of people each year who use the sand dunes for recreation.
“They need to at least have a rest stop that is presentable,” Leimgruber said.
Leimgruber would like to see the rest area brought up to the standards of the state rest stop off Interstate 8 on Buckman Road in the mountains between Imperial County and San Diego.
Leimgruber said he was planning to bring up the condition of the Sand Hills Rest Area with Caltrans officials at a meeting on a separate highway matter this month.
Cathy Kennerson, chief executive officer of the El Centro Chamber of Commerce & Visitors Bureau, agrees with Leimgruber.
She said a center as nice as the one on Buckman Springs Road or even the Sunbeam Rest Area on Interstate 8 near Seeley, with restrooms in permanent buildings and landscaped grounds, would be a great step up the quagmire of a rest stop in the dunes.
“Anything would be an improvement,” she said. “I certainly have noticed it’s not as nice as some of the other rest stops in California. It’s not maintained as well as the rest.”
Kennerson said Congressman Bob Filner has earmarked money for a California welcome center somewhere in the dunes area. No such center exists on Interstate 8 for those coming into the state from Arizona.
That means the first welcome center in California westbound travelers encounter is at the El Centro chamber, which maintains travelers’ information about the San Diego area and the rest of California. That is why there is signage on Interstate 8 directing travelers to the chamber, Kennerson said.
Another advantage of having a fully functioning rest stop in the dunes is it likely would have a septic tank dumping station for dunes visitors. The dumping stations at the Sunbeam and Buckman Springs rest stops sometimes have long lines of those who have visited the dunes.
THE STATE SIDE
When Tom Ham, Caltrans project manager for highway planting and rest areas for San Diego and Imperial counties, was asked if the agency gets complaints about the Sand Hills Rest Area, he said, “Oh yeah, we do.”
“I have to agree with the people,” he said. “It is something we need to improve.”
Ham said he hasn’t seen all of the more than 90 rest areas in the state, “but I would think it’s not our best one,” he said of the Sand Hills stop.
The rest area does not have a drinking water fountain. It has a water spigot to cool radiators but the water at the rest area is untreated.
There are no wash basins at the rest stop for post-bathroom hand-cleansing and no soap to use for those who might use the spigot.
The Sand Hills Rest Area originally was a maintenance station where employees lived, Ham said. Travelers would use the restrooms there, though, and eventually it became a “temporary” rest area and the maintenance operations and people who lived on the site left. It has remained in a “temporary” state for at least two and a half decades.
Ham said getting a better rest stop in that area of the county long has been a priority for Caltrans officials, “probably on and off for 15 years.”
After examining some 30 sites in the 1990s with considerations including ease of access, affordability, endangered species, Native American history, hazardous waste, water and power availability and whether the area had good visual approaches to allow travelers time to see the rest area and stop if need be, Caltrans officials ultimately chose property on the northeast quadrant of the intersection of I-8 and Sidewinder Road near Felicity.
Caltrans began purchasing the property in 2001 and 2002 but California’s fiscal problems in 2003 resulted in funding being pulled for the rest stop design program.
Ham said he was 30 percent finished with the design of what will be called the Imperial Rest Area when the money disappeared. Safety projects were the priority for state highway dollars during those tight times.
Money for the Imperial Rest Area project has been restored in the Caltrans funding cycle starting in 2010. Ham said after he works on the design for a couple more years and after a year of construction, what has long been planned may actually happen.
“With any luck we’ll open the Imperial Rest Area in 2013,” Ham said.
In the meantime, because Caltrans officials realize the condition of the Sand Hills Rest Area is dire, six prefab, unisex, waterless “vault” toilets with fewer odor issues will be installed at the Sand Hills Rest Area in the fall to replace the portable toilets. That should make the rest stop more pleasant for travelers until the new rest area is built on Sidewinder Road, Ham said.
Ham declined to discuss the safety of the rest area’s onramps and off-ramps, saying that is the purview of Caltrans engineers.
Edward Cartagena, a Caltrans public information officer, said a report would have to be run in Sacramento to determine how many accidents had occurred around the rest area in recent years and that would take a few days.
He said he did talk to Caltrans engineers and they told him a bigger concern than merging into the fast lane of the interstate is “sight distance,” meaning how far back onto the interstate a driver who is merging can see. He said sight distance is not a major problem at the rest stop and slower drivers merging into the fast lane should have time to comfortably move into the slow lane.
State Sen. Denise Moreno Ducheny, who represents Imperial County, said she is happy there is a plan to replace the Sand Hills Rest Area and that improvements will be made for now.
She just wants to see the project for the permanent site “move up the speed chain. I’d like to push it up to, say, 2008.”
Ducheny said with the recent passage of the state budget, money has been placed in the budget for this fiscal year for such Caltrans projects. That might mean the rest stop at Sidewinder Road may get done sooner than projected.
If the state’s voters approve a bond for highway improvements in November, that might speed the process even more, she said.
Along with the aesthetics, the rest stop sitting in the middle of the interstate may present traffic safety issues, Ducheny said.
“That is dangerous,” she said. “I’m glad they’re doing a new one.”
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