After nearly a year of repair efforts from last summer’s Tropical Storm Hilary, the Big Morongo Canyon Preserve has finally been approved for funding to finish the vast damage incurred from the storm.
While BLM was initially in charge of financial aid to the Preserve, Wong said three years ago all aid was pulled from the Preserve, leaving them in a tough position. Since 242 of the 21,000 acres of the Preserve is under jurisdiction of San Bernardino County (mainly the infrastructure; the driveway, parking lot, buildings, and trails within the Riparian areas), the County agreed to take over repair after the Preserve initial volunteer efforts.
“The County stepped up and said ‘we will cover your volunteers. We will give you a small yearly stipend for maintenance issues and we will work with you on future projects and future plans.’ So this is kind of a new process of us working with the county who’s been very good, they’ve been quite responsive and we want to thank the county for everything that they’ve done including approving the funding that took place on Tuesday at the Board of Supervisors meeting. Without that funding we wouldn’t be able to do the repairs. In fact, they’re going to do the repairs—they’re going to hire all the contractors and get the repairs done as well as the driveway coming in will be paved graded and paved and the parking lot will be graded and paved so there’s multiple projects to be done the first is repairs on the boardwalk of course. After that, other improvements will take place.”
The County has wasted no time in their efforts—last week they had a Country maintenance team come out to begin their “bathroom rehabilitation project.”
While Wong did not have the exact amount approved, he said it was a little over one million dollars, and already had the rough breakdown of how the funds would be allotted.
“600,000 goes towards the boardwalk repair/replacement and 400,000 towards the driveway and the parking lot,” said Wong.
