Worried about coastal erosion, flooding and sea level rise?

Come hear local coastal engineer, Bob Battalio, present an assessment of our challenges and opportunities in an age of climate change. Learn how Pacificans can adapt while maintaining our coastal community, save our natural shores and enjoy the ride.

August 16th 6:30pm to 8:00pm @ Sharp Park Library Community Room, 104 Hilton Way, 
Pacifica.

This post has been updated with details on a second walk and more information about the planning process.

This Sunday, August 8, 2010 at 10:00am and 2:00pm, the board of Midcoast Park Lands is conducting a walk from the parking lot of the Moss Beach Distillery to the Montara Light House.  The primary purpose is to walk the trails in the Fitzgerald Marine Reserve where proposed trail improvements are under review (PLN2010-00183).   

This is an opportunity to view story stakes of the proposed trail location, trail width (14’ wide), bridge location and scale of the proposed bridge (12’ wide x 60’ long).

The public comment period has been extended to August 16, 2010 by 5:00pm.
 
A Negative Declaration has been published for the projects.  Comments should be sent to Mike Schaller (San Mateo County Planning – 650-363-1823 – .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)). Information on the plans and the Negative Declaration document are available at the Fitzgerald Marine Reserve page of the San Mateo County Parks Web Site/.

The Negative Declaration comments will be an agenda topic at next week’s MCC meeting [MCC].

The optional full walk goes from the north end of de-commissioned Ocean Blvd. to the Montara Light House.  This path affords an opportunity to view potential routes, views and issues involved with completing a route for the California Coastal Trail and a Bicycle Route from Pillar Point to the Montara Light House.  The walks will be led by Len and Gael Erickson and will leave the Distillery Parking Lot at 10:15am and 2:15pm.

Open Street Maps is a self-described “Wikipedia of Street Maps”: a complete set of local street maps that anyone can contribute to.

On Saturday, August 14, at 10am,  Bay Area OSM fans will converge at LaDiDa in Half Moon Bay for a mapping party [Meetup].  Bring your GPS or cell phone with GPS software—or borrow a GPS from the organizers at the event.

OSM’s goal is to create an open-source map of the world’s streets. Commercial street maps (such as Google, Yahoo, MapQuest, and Bing) are copyrighted by one of two companies (TomTom or Nokia). OSM got its start in Europe, where copyright restrictions made it impossible for developers to create new systems on top of existing map data.

I’ve been personally contributing to OSM for more than a year by cleaning up their maps of Montara and adding points of interest. Most of the Coastside maps have been created using US Census data and are already quite good, but parts of them are out of date, incomplete, or incorrect.

I’ve been using EveryTrail’s free iPhone app for my work, but there are other apps available for iPhone and Android. I recommend downloading a GPS app and practicing recording your tracks between now and the 14th. Or just bring a GPS or borrow one at the meeting.

You’ll get help uploading your tracks and updating the map based on your data.

CGF opposes wide asphalt trail at Fitzgerald Marine Reserve

The Committee for Green Foothills has written a letter opposing the county’s plan for a wide, paved trail inside the Fitzgerald Marine Preserve. The comment period for the proposed trail has been extended to 9am on Monday, August 16. The county has promised to put up stakes showing the coverage of the new trail by Friday, August 6.

The CGF notes that the proposed project is not in compliance with the county’s Local Coastal Program policies regarding environmentally sensitive habitat areas (ESHA), particularly wetlands, as well as the master plan for the marine reserve itself. Among its objections:

• The marine reserve’s master plan says the county should “emphasize the sensitivity of the resource, to enhance the educational value of the Reserve, to manage visitation, and to limit use of the Reserve as a recreation destination.”
• The marine reserve’s master plan says, “all trails and paths …shall be surfaced with pervious materials such as decomposed granite”, instead of the asphalt planned by the county, and that pervious surfaces can be ADA compliant.
• The CGF describes the proposed trail as “an overblown paved transportation facility that does not invite people to enjoy and appreciate the natural setting, and connect with nature.”
• Changing the location of the existing bridge over San Vicente Creek would increases impacts on riparian vegetation and an archeological site.
• The proposed changes to beach access, including much more extensive rip-rap, will impact the beach.
• There is not enough information in the plan to judge the impact on environmentally sensitive habitat areas (ESHA).

Read the full letter after the jump.

County Parks is planning to construct 10.5-foot wide asphalt trail, with 3-foot wide aggregate shoulders on either side at the Fitzgerald Marine Reserve. The plan includes a 60 ft long by 12 ft wide bridge across San Vicente Creek.

The public comment period for the Negative Declaration is July 1 to July 30. 

The plan includes:

• Trail in the approximate location of an existing Dardenelle Trail on the east side of the FMR. The proposed trail will have a 10-foot wide asphalt surface with 2‑foot wide aggregate shoulders on either side of the trail.
• A 60-ft. long by 12-ft. wide prefabricated fiberglass clear span bridge approximately 30 feet upstream of the removed bridge.
• Bridge abutments, which are 12 feet wide, spanning the width of the bridge. The abutments have wing walls, which extend approximately 10 feet. The wing walls on the north side of the bridge are at 45-degree angles from either side of the abutment base and the wing walls on the south side of the bridge are at 90-degree angles extending behind the bridge. The abutments are 9.5 feet in height and are mostly buried underground. A 3.5-inch diameter foundation pipe pile extends from the bottom of the abutments to a minimum of 37 feet in depth and will be embedded 10 feet into bedrock.
• Fence with handrail along the asphalt trail
• Retaining wall, 1-6 feet tall along the north side of the trail
• Large overlook, 35 ft. long by 40 ft wide, with reinforced concrete grade beam surrounding it
• Auxiliary overlook, 30-ft. by 20-ft and approximately half way down the trail, on the creek side

Send comments to Michael Schaller, County Planner:

Michael Schaller
Senior Planner
Planning and Building Department
County of San Mateo
P: 650/363-1849
F: 650/363-4849

The proposed “trail” would be wide enough to drive an RV on. Please send comments!
 
http://www.thepelicaneye.com

The county Transportation authority will show its plans to widen Highway 1 for 1.3 miles between Fassler and Reina del Mar in Pacifica at 6 p.m., Tuesday, June 22 in the Pacifica City Council Chambers, 2212 Beach Blvd. You can download a complete package of attachments from Coastsider from the link above.

The meeting package includes eleven alternatives, but only two—both of which will widen Highway 1 for 1.3 miles—will be given further study. From the release:

The first hour of the meeting will be an open house, which will give people the opportunity to view exhibits and talk to the project team.  An informational meeting will follow which will include presentations on the history of the project, the purpose and need for the project, the environmental constraints and concerns, the design concepts that have been reviewed and an overview of the environmental process and schedule.  This will be followed by a question and answer period. 

 
The meeting is being held by the San Mateo County Transportation Authority and the City of Pacifica, in partnership with Cal Trans. For more information please contact the Transportation Authority at 650-508-6283 or .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).  Additional information is available on the project website.

This is based on a county press release

Jim Eggemeyer, acting Director of Planning and Building for San Mateo County, has been appointed to the position permanently by San Mateo County Manager David Boesch. Eggemeyer succeeds Lisa Grote, who left San Mateo County employment to take a position with the City of San Mateo.

This is a highly edited version of the county’s press release. 

The San Mateo County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday agreed to accept a small parcel of land from Peninsula Open Space Trust (POST) as the future site for restrooms and parking. The parcel is located south of Pillar Point Harbor, on Magellan Avenue at the southern end of the Mirada Surf Trail.
  
The project is expected to be complete by late summer 2010 and fulfills the San Mateo County 2007 Midcoast Action Plan’s call for restrooms.
 
POST in 2009 bought the 0.07-acre parcel for $20,000 to support recreational activities along the coast with the plan to donate it to San Mateo County.
 
“Sometimes protecting the smallest bit of land can make a big difference, and POST is pleased to assist the County in providing a place for these necessary facilities at Mirada Surf,” POST President Audrey Rust said.

NOTE: An open letter from Darin Boville to Jim Eggemeyer, Interim Director of San Mateo County’s Planning Department. Jim recently took over as acting head of the department after the resignation of Lisa Grote.

Dear Jim Eggemeyer,

At a Planning Commission meeting in late March of this year you made the startling announcement that you would be allowing Big Wave to help complete its own environmental report and that your staff would assist in this effort. This was necessary, you said, since Big Wave was unable to pay the independent consultant to answer the hundreds of questions submitted by citizens upset with the scale of the Big Wave project and with the secretive-seeming process by which it was being moved forward.

You did not explain how a project budgeted at over ninety million dollars could have run out of money so early in the process.

You made this announcement on a highly controversial topic with no notice to the public—there was no agenda item concerning Big Wave at the Redwood City meeting.

Since the resignation of Director Lisa Grote and since your assumption of duties as Interm Director, your office has become unresponsive to public inquiries. This is unfortunate since as a public servant you have an obligation to serve in your position, however temporary, in a way that meets the standards of good government.

Immediately after your announcement Montara Fog submitted five questions to you. Since then I have received a few e-mails from your staff assuring me that the answers were on the way, that you were busy, that the questions were under legal review.

That was one month ago and still no answers.

It is reaching the point now, Jim, where Big Wave will be finished with its controversial review of itself before the public even knows what is happening or why. This is a poor example of open government.

Here are the five questions:

1)  The arrangement with Big Wave to help answer the public questions without a consultant seems unusual. Has this arrangement ever been used by your office in the past? If so what were the projects and dates?

2)  This arrangement regarding Big Wave was announced by Eggemeyer last week—but it seems to have already been in progress. When was this arrangement agreed to? When did the work begin?

3)  Scott Holmes, of Big Wave, is saying that he expects to answer only 10-15 of the questions. Is that your understanding as well?

4)  If so, who will be answering the remainder of the 245+ questions? County staff? If so, how many hours of staff time is that expected to take?

5)  Will there be any indication to the public on who answered which questions?

If you choose to answer I will happily print your responses here.

Darin Boville
Publisher, Montara Fog

NOTE: This letter has been updated by the author.

Board of Supervisors Meeting - April 13, 2010
Agenda Item 11: Midcoast LCP Update

At the Board of Supervisors meeting today Supervisors Adrienne Tissier, Rose Jacobs Gibson and Mark Church showed their collective unwillingness to consider California Coastal Commission suggested modifications to the Midcoast Local Coastal Program.

Supervisor Tissier said, “Growth limits are a catch 22, it’s a no win situation.” One wonders why that is a “no-win situation”; certainly there are gains for an entire community, and not just for a few developers, when growth is subject to intelligent controls.  Mark Church said, “The Coastal Commission recommendations are a subjective interpretation of the Coastal Act.” This is a no-brainer; all interpretation from whomever is subjective because interpretation is a product of the human brain and imagination. The question that begs to be asked is: Are CCC’s suggested modifications responsible and intelligent.  Supervisor Jacobs Gibson supported Supervisor Tissier’s suggestion that the Board resubmit the LCP Update without any additional modifications.

Board President Rich Gordon, District 3 said he is very concerned about lot retirement leading to weed filled lots in residential areas. He did not evince any concerns about storm water flooding, salt water intrusion, water pollution in Pillar Point Harbor, sea-level rise, coastal erosion and limited traffic capacity on Highway 1. Supervisor Gordon shows due diligence to surface niceties; he cannot tolerate unsightly weeds growing in a few lots but he can, apparently, tolerate avoiding the significant challenges facing the Midcoast.

Supervisor Carol Groom said she would like to have one more meeting with Coastal Commission staff before making a decision. Supervisor Rich Gordon supported Grooms request for one more meeting.  Hopefully the two Supes will use the time with Coastal Commission staff to discuss ways to move the process forward rather than focusing on weed abatement. 

Supervisors Adrienne Tissier, Rose Jacobs Gibson and Mark Church made it clear that they were not interested in meeting with Coastal Commission staff.  Perhaps if they had attended the December 10, 2009 California Coastal Commissionhearing in San Francisco they might be better informed. To help them grasp the complexities of the LCP Update process, all three would benefit from meeting with Coastal Commission staff. If they had asked more specific questions of County Planning staff today they would have learned that resubmitting the LCP Update without any additional modifications is not a reasonable or appropriate next step.

The Supervisors’s fear of lawsuits initiated by developers was punctuated and highlighted by the angry tirade and finger pointing of local land use attorney David Byers. Intimidation is a standard tool in the lawyer’s bag of tricks.

The Supes habitually site the fear of lawsuits as an excuse to turn a blind eye to environmentally responsible land use policy. Fearful thinking is likely to continue ruling the decisions of the Board due to the loss of over 150 million tax payer dollars to Lehman Brothers.

Kicking coastal resources to the curb has short-term benefits for developers and real estate lobbyists. Enhanced coastal ecotourism, recreation, environmental education, and proactive sea-level rise planning provide long-term benefits to California residents.

The environmental catch 22 Supervisor Tissier invokes may be a win-win proposition for developers and supervisors with political aspirations, but it’s a losing proposition for thousands of County residents.