by Robb Fulcher

The city is set to receive $9.4 million for allowing a telecommunications company to use Hermosa Beach to land an undersea fiber-optic cable from Japan, after officials approved a lease agreement on Tuesday.

The project by the multibillion-dollar TyCom Ltd. Communications still must face the scrutiny of the California Coastal Commission.

Hermosa Beach City Council members said the deal was the most lucrative struck by any California city, including Manhattan Beach, which bear similar trans-Pacific cables.

"This is the highest amount dollar-wise of any state in California," Councilman JR Reviczky said.

"We set the benchmark," Councilman Michael Keegan said.

The deal calls for TyCom to run the narrow, steel-banded cable from underneath the ocean floor to a manhole at Second Street near The Strand, burying the cable nine feet under the beach sand.

TyCom is set to pay the city $9.4 million over the 25 to 35 years the company makes use of the cable, and must remove it after that time, unless city officials want it to remain.

City officials’ plans for the money include constructing a new beach bathroom at the head of the Hermosa Beach Pier, refurbishing three other permanent beach bathrooms, and increasing the ongoing street and sewer repair programs.

At Tuesday’s council meeting, a number of residents expressed concerns over noise and parking disruptions while TyCom contractors dig trenches to carry the cable underground up Second Street to the Greenbelt, then South to Redondo.

At the urging of Reviczky, TyCom agreed to pay $275,000 to repave Second Street following the trenching. TyCom plans to bore a tunnel underneath Herondo Street to get the cable from the Greenbelt to Redondo Beach, so traffic on Herondo would not be disrupted.

TyCom officials have said the work at the Second Street landing would take several days, burying the cable under the beach would take two to three weeks, and the trench work in the streets would take another three to four weeks.

One resident, Dennis Sowers, complained that the planned location of the manhole landing would have blocked parking access to a residential property he owns. During a break in the council meeting, he got together with TyCom officials who agreed to move the manhole off of the roadway into a pedestrian area of the Second Street cul-de-sac.

Burying the heavy, flexible cable under the beach sand would require workers to dig a 40-foot wide trench that would be covered over once the cable is laid down, TyCom officials said. The cable could be uncovered only by an "extraordinary" storm that would have to strip away nine feet of Hermosa’s sand, all the way down to the water table, the officials said.

If such an event occurs, TyCom would be required by contract to come out and rebury the cable, company officials said. ER