Pescadero Conservation Alliance is holding a Geology Beach Walk on the San Mateo Coast Saturday, February 18 at 1:30pm.

Geologic processes are responsible for shaping our changing coastline and making the San Mateo Coast a beautiful, special place. Come and join Irina Kogan of the Gulf of the Farallones National Marine Sanctuary to find out how the San Mateo Coast fits into the ‘Pacific Ring of Fire’ and take a walk on the beach to learn about local geology.

A short presentation will precede the field trip. The number of stops will depend on time and weather.

The walk will begin at a lecture/workshop is Native Sons Hall, Stage Rd, Pescadero (next to post office).  There is a $5 suggested donation per person or family. For more information, see the website of the Pescadero Conservation Alliance or contact Randy or Debbie Bennett at 650-879-0841

The following lecture will be March 18 on “Marbled Murrelets and Other Seabirds”.

The Board of Supervisors has ordered three critical flood control projects for Montara. All costs of design and construction will be paid by the County using the mitigation fees they have been collecting since 1990, and there will be no cost to the community.

At their January 10, 2006 meeting, the supervisors authorized the Department of Public works to move forward with construction of drainage improvements at:

• Etheldore Street and Sunshine Valley Road


• Cypress Avenue from Etheldore Street to Highway 1


• Cedar Street between George Street and Montara Creek

The supervisors found that the construction  “is allowed by the MidCoast Community Plan as said drainage improvements will meet the goal of the Midcoast Community Plan to ‘preserve and enhance the visual qualities of the coastal community which gives it a unique character and distinguishes it from other places,’ by minimizing the damage that happens each time flooding occurs in these areas.”

Montarans United Against Flooding organizer Steve Lowens has promised to keep working the the Midcoast Community Council to develop a framework to prevent these problems from recurring, and monitor the DPW to make sure the projects really happen.

J. Edmond (Jed) Cyr, Jr. was last night unanimously elected President of the Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District’s Board of Directors for a one-year term. Also elected were Directors Ken Nitz as the District’s Vice President, Mary Davey as Treasurer, and Nonette Hanko as Secretary.

Jed Cyr has lived in Sunnyvale for 38 years and represented its residents on the Board of Directors since 1996 when he was first elected to a seat on the Open Space District’s Board.
“There are three clear goals I will work toward as President,” Cyr said. “Implementing the Coastside Protection Program, balancing District lands for multiple uses, and improving resource management.”

A dedicated user of the District’s preserves, Cyr will chair tonight’s special Board meeting where District history could be made if Directors vote to purchase the 3,681-acre POST Driscoll Ranch, the single largest purchase in the District’s history.

“This will be an important milestone for the District, the coastside, and the entire region,” Cyr said. “The purchase of more than five square miles of coastside land allows us to help preserve the coastside’s precious agricultural land while protecting water quality and threatened species.”
Jed Cyr thanked outgoing President Larry Hassett for his leadership during an important year for the District in which the agency purchased four properties on the coastside and held a number of public meetings to revise its Good Neighbor Policy.

Jed Cyr was born in San Francisco in 1941 and raised in Colma, CA. He received a Bachelor of Arts degree in Social Sciences and a Master’s degree in U.S. History and Geography from San Jose State University. Now retired, Jed taught in the Social Sciences field at the middle school level in Sunnyvale for 37 years.

For the last 150 years, we have been blessed with a surplus of oil. First it was from wells in the US, but since our domestic wells peaked out in the early ‘70s and are now in decline, we have been importing more and more from a variety of other nations. Some of those nations are not too friendly, especially to the current administration.

As a nation, we now use 25% of the world’s oil production but produce only 2%. We are also importing much of our natural gas.

But just as the US oil fields reached maximum production 35 years ago, it seems that world wide oil production is about to, or has already peaked. The optimistic experts say oil production will peak within the next two decades but an increasing number think it has already peaked. We won’t know for sure for a little while since nations are unwilling to make their production records public. But it really doesn’t matter.

Click “read more” to see the rest of the article, and to discuss the implications of Peak Oil for the Coastside.

The last week of Pacific storms have brought amazing waves to Montara State Beach.

Darin Boville

Click on the image to get a larger version.

The Peninsula Open Space Trust (POST) announced today that its Saving the Endangered Coast campaign has surpassed its $200 million goal. As of today, the campaign total stands at $200,783,407. The campaign funds will be directly leveraged to protect thousands of acres of open space on the San Mateo Coast from development.

Click “read more” to see the rest of the press release.

Highway 1 at Montara was closed around noon on Sunday, January 1, at Montara after a fire on a power pole at the old Charthouse restaurant left a gaping hole.  PG&E crews worked to shore up the pole and the road was reopened about 2pm.

You can see daylight through the break in the power pole.  Click image for larger size.

Thousands of rare red phalaropes, many of them hungry, are looking for refuge in Half Moon Bay, reports the Mercury News. The birds normally live many miles offshore and are rarely seen on land. But, apparently driven by the storms that are churning our coast, they’re showing up around the Bay Area, especially on the Coastside, and a flock of 1,200 has been spotted in Half Moon Bay.

Weather may be to blame. The birds float and eat by skimming sea life from the surface of the water. Smaller than a robin, they are easily tossed and turned by turbulent ocean waves and can’t eat under those conditions.

“There are storms across the entire Pacific, from China to the west coast of California. It’s a steady stream of storms, with no break in between them,’’ said Steve Anderson, a forecaster with the National Weather Service in Monterey.

At a special public meeting held on Skyline, the Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District (MROSD) Board of Directors last night unanimously voted to purchase the 151-acre Rapley Ranch and 50-acre Portola Lookout Peninsula Open Space Trust (POST) properties. The Rapley Ranch property is an addition to Russian Ridge Open Space Preserve and Portola Lookout is an addition to Long Ridge Open Space Preserve, and represents the third and fourth purchases within the Coastside Protection area.

Click “read more” to see the rest of the release.

Every year, juvenile steelhead die in Pescadero Marsh before they are able to make it out to sea. Last year, 300 died. This year, there is no accurate count.  Steelhead are a threatened species that comes to the creek to spawn every year. According to the County Times, it’s unclear whether the fish are dying from natural or human causes, but disease has been ruled out.

Every spring, adult steelhead swim upstream to spawn. As water levels decrease, a 40-foot sandbar forms on the beach, dividing stream from ocean and creating a brackish estuary rich in plankton for their newborn trout to feed. The first storms of winter break the sandbar open, delivering the young fish to the ocean and beginning the process anew.

The problem, explained Joanne Kerbavaz, a resource ecologist with State Parks, is that a portion of the young fish suffocate before they reach the ocean.

There are a number of theories as to why, one of which has to do with the movement of water in the marsh. The water contains saltwater on the bottom and freshwater on top. When the sandbar breaks and the marsh flows out to sea, the water gets mixed together and the fish lose their oxygen. Another hypothesis is that naturally occurring hydrogen sulfides are stirred up off the bottom of the lagoon, killing the fish.

There is some concern that the die-off may be the result of changes made over the last 20 years. California State Parks has been working for twenty years to restore the creeks. They have removed numerous farmers’ levees built to prevent flooding. In 1991, Caltrans built a bridge over the watershed.