MCTV carried no coverage of Saturday’s tsunami advisory, despite the fact that it led to the closing of the harbor and all Coastside beaches by the Harbor District and the County Sheriff. This was noted by Darin Boville on Montara Fog yesterday.

I sent MCTV attorney and spokesman Mike Day a question about whether MCTV covered the tsunami and he issued the following statement.

In response to your inquiry, we have checked and MCTV received no email or phone call notification from anyone at San Mateo County regarding the tsunami warning Saturday morning.  You are correct that Mr. Boville made no effort to contact MCTV before publishing his article criticizing MCTV.  We have indicated in the past that MCTV can serve as a means to transmit public safety information to the community, and we have placed messages on the message channel and shown public service programming on specific topics at the request of the County and other governmental agencies.  However, if we do not receive any communication from the governmental agencies, it is obviously not possible for MCTV to disseminate such information, particularly when it is time sensitive information.  Mr. Boville’s uninformed and unfair criticism does not take into account the fact that MCTV has always made an effort to cooperate with the County and City to inform the community about public safety issues and other important public matters in addition to the regularly scheduled meetings we cablecast—when we have been asked to do so. [emphasis added]

The entire Coastside was buzzing about this event on Saturday. I was stopped by a couple of readers in downtown Half Moon Bay that morning asking about the tsunami. MCTV is the only Coastside media outlet that was not covering the tsunami. In addition to Coastsider, Montara Fog and the Review issued bulletins throughout the day. Coastsider alone received 2,400 visits on Saturday—about five times our typical Saturday traffic.

If, as Mr. Day says, “MCTV can serve as a means to transmit public safety information…”, they should to be prepared to do just that in an emergency and not wait for the authorities to give them a call.

NOTE: The reason for the communication breakdown between MCTV and the county has been updated in the comments.

Is your road difficult to navigate during winter rains?  Are the pot holes and ruts taking a toll on your car? The San Mateo County Resource Conservation District (RCD) is offering a free workshop, a field tour (if weather permits), and information on funding assistance for rural road improvements. 

The workshop will help rural road residents understand the basics of erosion and drainage, recognize the early signs of road failure, find funding and technical assistance for improvements, and get tips on creating a road association and working with neighbors to improve private roads
 
Saturday, March 6: noon to 2
2pm Presentations
4pm Site visit
 
Gazos Grill,
5720 Cabrillo Highway/Rte. 1
(just south of Pigeon Point Lighthouse)
 
RSVPs: Ellen Gartside 650.712.7765 or .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
 

Brews & Views continues its ongoing discussion of critical issues featuring some of the most interesting, informative and timely topics in its Brews & Views series. We are calling our next gathering ‘The Economy Summit – What does the future hold for us?’ taking place Thursday, March 4 from 6-8 pm at The Half Moon Bay Brewing Company.

When it comes to defining where our economy is headed, both locally and nationally, Brews and Views is featuring some of the best economic minds in the Bay Area: Sean Randolph, President & CEO of the Bay Area Council Economic Institute; Jon Haveman, Founding Partner of Beacon Economics; Cynthia A. Kroll, Senior Regional Economist and Executive Director for Staff Research at University of California, Berkley; Jed Kolko, Associate Director and Research Fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California; and Prof. John Zysman from the University of California Berkeley and co-founder of the Berkeley Roundtable of the International Economy (BRIE).

This local economic ‘dream team’ brings together perspectives from business, government, and academia promising a provocative, enlightening, frustrating and lively exchange of ideas with all those in attendance. This Economic Summit will be moderated by Lenny Mendonca – senior partner at McKinsey & Company and founder of the Half Moon Bay Brewing Company

“With all the uncertainties and misinformation that’s floating about when it comes to the current economic climate, this Economic Summit could not come at a better time. This superb panel will dispel some myths, and provide fuel the reform fire when it comes to areas in serious need of economic rehabilitation” says Lenny Mendonca.

The Brews & Views Events have added a new element to its program and that is philanthropy . The Half Moon Bay Brewing Company will contribute 10% of your dinner on the first Thursday of every month to a local charity.  Come for the event, stay for dinner and support the community.

Today groups from Special Olympics from the Bay Area including players from the Coastside went to the Jewish Community Center in Foster City California to play in a Basketball Tourney.  Okay I took too many pictures but enjoy them…at the following link

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=5363030&l=49b6551ea1&id=582045258

All the players did well the games were exciting Then afterward the participants enjoy and very nice lunch…

P.A. Chimienti

Highway 92 is open after a vehicle fire that closed Highway 92 between 35 and 280, according to Sheriff’s deputies on the scene.

UPDATE at 10:56: Forecast initial wave height in Half Moon Bay is 3.3 ft, shortly before forecast arrival in San Francisco at 1:26pm today.

A tsunami advisory (low-level warning) has been issued for the coastal areas along California. The tsunami is expected reach San Francisco at 1:26pm, and the San Mateo coast shortly before that.

Significant widespread inundation is not expected for areas under an advisory.  Tsunami advisories mean that a tsunami capable of producing strong currents or waves dangerous to persons in or very near the water is imminent or expected.   

Currents may be hazardous to swimmers, boats, and coastal structures and may continue for several hours after the initial wave arrival.

NOTE: This was originally posted as a comment on an earlier story. We’ve republished it as a letter in order to spark some conversation about the proposal.

Absent from the recent “Traffic & Trails” outside consulting effort last year were:

1. An awareness of the coastal environment in general—what it means to be “coastal”—and our local coastal environment in particular.
2. An awareness of the California Coastal Act and our LCP.
3. An awareness of the history and character of our local communities.
4. An awareness of the numerous past considerations of vehicular and non-vehicular transportation in our area.
5. An awareness of the essential natural and financial resources of our area, in concert with what development our area can absorb without being degraded.

What we saw was a set of “principles”, etc., for imposing the designs of landscape architects and community planners on, essentially, a blank slate.

In every example of their work elsewhere, we saw designs that resulted in greater development and the increased hardscaping that goes with it. These people are for increased building and pavement—at least that is what their designs show. They do not know the physical difference between a road and a trail. They don’t recognize huge energy and pollution costs of industries involved in implementing their designs—for example the cement industry.

Some of their ideas would come close to creating de facto transportation corridors and hubs that would exempt, via last year’s SB375, surrounding new development from vital environmental regulations and reviews. Such simple matters as their prolific use of tree “walls” in their designs would block coastal views in El Granada that some residents have rightfully fought to preserve for decades. (There were no native trees on our coastal terrace.)

Rather than restore the now-parking-blighted Burnham Strip to the community commons it was originally laid out to be, they would cut off edges of it for widened roads. The runoff from the additional paving in their designs would add to the problems we already have, further degrading some local creeks into the storm sewers they are becoming.

Now I’m well aware some locals, including our urban environmentalists, like the idea of turning the midcoast into a putatively-“upscale,” artificially-designed suburbia, not unlike some of the planned and paved-over coastal communities created or retrofitted in Southern California and Florida. But I’m hoping those who appreciate the remaining coastal character of our communities and who prefer to live more in harmony with our area rather than institute ever more expensive efforts to dominate it will push for genuine improvements to our roads and trails and not fall for this setup for further urbanization.

It is difficult to see this consultant’s work as anything more than justification and a step toward the overdevelopment our county supervisors are trying to foist on us in their (so far unapproved) revised LCP worded for the benefit of their developer and builder buddies.

Reprinted from Newsdesk.org

For the second straight year, the much-loved California Brown Pelican population is experiencing a mystifying die-off.

“It’s a mystery,” said Dana Michaels, a spokeswoman for the California Department of Fish and Game, She is quoted in the Mercury News as saying, “It’s tragic. It’s very sad to see these poor birds suffer,” she said “I hope we can get to the bottom of it. There’s something really endearing about pelicans.”

Indeed, the pelican is the inspiration behind one of the most-quoted limericks of all time:

A wonderful bird is the pelican,
His bill will hold more than his belican,
He can take in his beak
Enough food for a week
But I’m damned if I see how the helican!

—Dixon Lanier Merritt, 1910

DFG wildlife biologist Esther Burkett said, in a report in the Chronicle:

“We think it’s probably related to El Niño and the big storms. “When the ocean gets all mixed up, the fish are moving around and the birds cannot find them. The majority of birds we found were just weakened by the lack of food.” The pelicans began turning up sick and dead in odd places throughout California and Oregon in mid-January. The wave of starving and emaciated pelicans overwhelmed the International Bird Rescue Research Center in Cordelia, which took in about 400 pelicans at its two branches. Many of the ill pelicans were waterlogged and suffering from hypothermia, problems that normally occur during oil spills.

A similar die-off occurred in 2009. The birds had been spending time off the coast of Oregon when a severe storm hit, driving the birds south and inland, fleeing the winds and freezing temperatures. Many of the birds recovered by rescuers showed signs of frostbite on their feet and pouches, suggesting that the birds were indeed unprepared for the unusually harsh conditions.

The pelican has had a precarious time of it in recent years, according to a report in Scientific American.

Brown pelicans are a rare endangered species success story. Once ravaged by the effects of DDT, the brown pelican was formerly protected under the U.S. Endangered Species Act. But decades after DDT was banned in the U.S., pelican populations have rebounded, and the bird was removed from the endangered list last November. The current population is estimated at around 650,000.