I thought I’d take my camera down Highway 1 and into downtown Half Moon Bay and talk to the people running retail businesses here on the coast. I stopped at random and spoke with the owners and managers and asked them a single question: How is business with the Slide closed?

The answers were surprising.

We went up on Devil’s Slide Thursday afternoon to take a tour of the repair site with Caltrans geologist Grant Wilcox.

In the tour, Grant tells us how the Devil’s Slide landslide structure, how the roadbed has dropped historically and how it dropped this winter, what Caltrans has done to reduce the risks from rockslides, how the repair is designed and how it’s supposed to work, alternate repairs considered by Caltrans (including dewatering), and worst case scenarios, including whether the repair would survive another winter like the last one.

On Wednesday at 8:45pm, the Midcoast Community Council hosted a debate by the candidates for the State Senate District 8 Democratic and Republican nominations. Of the Democrats, only Leland Yee show up up. Mike Nevin and Lou Papan were absent.  Of the Republicans, only Oscar Braun was there.  Mike Skipakevich did not show up.  Click on the image to see the video by Darin Boville

On Wednesday at 7:45pm, the Midcoast Community Council hosted a debate by the candidates for Board of Supervisors.  Three of the candidates (Rich Gordon, Jo Chamberlain, and Jack Hickey) were contesting the seat that represents the Coastside. The fourth, Jerry Hill, is running unopposed for the seat that represents Foster City, San Mateo, and Belmont.  Click on the image to see the video by Darin Boville

Darin Boville sat down for a conversation with former Half Moon Bay City Council member Mike Ferreira, for the first video in a series of conversations he plans with interesting Coastsiders.

Mike joined Darin at Caffe Lucca in Montara to talk about about his transition from one side of the Coastside divide to the other, the role of highways and stoplights in local development, transit, and the Balkanization of the neighborhoods in Half Moon Bay.

What’s interesting about what Darin has done is to capture a person a lot of Coastsiders have read about, but not nearly as many have had a chance to spend some time with.

Last week Montara’s Farallone View Elementary held their annual Oceans Week, a 5-day long series science-oriented activities and presentations. Each day offers a new set of events and interactive exhibits--this year’s theme was “Waves”.

The program began thirteen years ago and has grown in scope and ambition since. The activities draw heavily upon the parents, many of whom are in ocean-related occupations.

On Friday, the last day of this year’s program, I stopped by to visit and to see what Oceans Week was all about.

Behind a chain-link fence Caltrans is in the process of restoring wetlands in Montara.  Tuesday afternoon, Caltrans took interested members of the Half Moon Bay City Council and Planning Commission, media, and a few citizens on a tour of the site.  The weather was perfect for an outside event, and Coastsider was there to take video of the tour for Coastsiders who couldn’t be there.

Caltrans is building the wetlands to mitigate the taking of some wetlands in the construction of the Devil’s Slide tunnel.  They’re restoring about 5 acres, roughly three times the size of the wetlands they’re eliminating.

The new wetlands are nestled between two existing wetland areas. This area was probably a wetland itself in the past, but was filled in at some point.  The plantings are all native species that were collected locally. The property is owned by the Peninsula Open Space Trust, which plans to sell it to either the federal government for the Golden Gate National Recreation Area or to a farmer with a open space easement.  The deed will include a provision to maintain the wetlands.

The project, which was six years in the planning, will take another three years to complete and cost about $2 million. Most of the planting has taken place, but the fences will remain until the completion of the project to give the plants time to establish themselves. The site will be monitored for ten years.