Oprah Winfrey has amassed a powerful assortment of Montecito actual property over the past 20 years.
However the media mogul’s newest headline within the luxurious neighborhood shouldn’t be a few home, however a wall — one which neighbors worry would possibly reroute flooding onto their properties in the course of the subsequent rainstorm.
After months of heavy rainfall and flooding throughout the neighborhood, a boulder wall was put in alongside San Ysidro Creek, which runs alongside Winfrey’s property, to guard the property from flooding and creek erosion, in keeping with Santa Barbara’s Noozhawk.
It’s an inexpensive precaution; Montecito has lengthy been susceptible to climate disasters, together with a 2018 mudslide filmed by Winfrey that killed 23 folks, plenty of whom have been swept into San Ysidro Creek. Earlier this 12 months, the realm was evacuated when a storm swept via the neighborhood.
However residents worry that the wall may redirect the creek, pushing floodwater onto different properties throughout intense rainfall.
“You possibly can’t alter creek canals and never anticipate there to be outcomes,” Sharon Byrne, govt director of the Montecito Assn., mentioned in an interview with Noozhawk. “Don’t change the creeks. They will shift and transfer on their very own.”
The wall was reportedly put in by Jimenez Nursery, which obtained a allow to construct it on Feb. 1, a couple of weeks after the realm was evacuated. The allow sought to reconstruct the creek financial institution after the flood and substitute boulders that had both eroded or washed away.
This month, a gaggle of officers and inspectors met on the wall to investigate the venture after a criticism was filed with the county. John Zorovich, a deputy director for the Santa Barbara County Planning & Improvement Division, instructed SF Gate that an investigation was ongoing.
The wall was constructed on Winfrey’s Santa Rosa Lane property, which she purchased at public sale for $28.85 million in 2015. On the time of the sale, the 23-acre property often known as Seamair Farm held a ranch-style house constructed by prolific architect Cliff Might in addition to equestrian amenities resembling a steady, barn, using rings and a horse coach’s home.
The property was an enlargement of “the Promised Land,” Winfrey’s well-known foremost residence that she picked up for round $50 million in 2001. The 42-acre unfold facilities on a 23,000-square-foot Georgian-style mega-mansion overlooking the ocean.
