The Chron has a nice story on the return of the San Francisco garter snake to its eponymous city.  It covers some of the same territory as the press release Coastsider ran earlier, but it’s a lot more fun to read.  The reporter also goes to Mori Point in Pacifica to see some restored habitat, where one endangered species (said snake) dines on another (the California red-legged frog).

This article is reprinted from the May 2005 issue of California Coastwatcher.

Two very large homes—more than three times the size of the average existing home—have been approved by the Coastal Commission for agricultural land on the southern San Mateo County coast. The Commission’s decision-making process regarding the two proposals was marked by aggressive concern for protection of agriculture, aggressive disregard for imposing any limits on the size of mansions and the adverse impact those monster homes have on rural agricultural land values, and a flagrant decision to allow a private driveway through ESHA that is patently illegal under the Coastal Act.

Michael and Ana Polacek want to build 6,787-sq. ft. of residential development on an 18-acre farm along Bean Hollow Road. The coastal staff report for the Polacek project is at [url=http://www.coastal.ca.gov/sc/5-2005-Th13a.pdf]http://www.coastal.ca.gov/sc/5-2005-Th13a.pdf[/url] and you can see Bean Hollow State Beach at [url=http://www.cacoast.org/6281]http://www.cacoast.org/6281[/url]

Keith and Cindy Waddell proposed to build 7,650-sq. ft. of residential development on a 153-acre ranch along Highway #1 at Tunitas Creek. The Waddell staff report is at [url=http://www.coastal.ca.gov/nca/Th13b-5-2005.pdf]http://www.coastal.ca.gov/nca/Th13b-5-2005.pdf[/url] and a 1972 photo of the Waddell property is at [url=http://www.cacoast.org/7218028]http://www.cacoast.org/7218028[/url]

The positive step taken by the Coastal Commission to protect agricultural lands on the California coastline required the use of affirmative, permanent agricultural easements that were required to be established to insure the long-term viability of the agricultural operations on the properties. Thus, even if Polacek and Waddell do not wish to continue farming themselves, they are required now, by law, to lease their lands to other farmers to insure the agricultural lands outside the residential building area on each parcel remain actively farmed. Such requirements had never been included in a coastal development permit before.

The second important step taken by the Commission was to require that all residential development on each property be contained within a 10,000 sq. ft. “development envelope” insuring that the vast majority of each farm will remain solely for agricultural purposes. The limited residential building envelope for agricultural lands was also a precedent established by the Commission that will enhance future protection of agricultural lands throughout coastal California.

Click “Read more” to see the rest of the article.

THE Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District (MROSD) will soon decide whether to acquire the Peninsula Open Space Trust’s (POST) 676-acre Miramontes Ridge property as an addition to the Mills Creek Open Space Preserve. In addition to its natural features, Miramontes Ridge offers views of the city of Half Moon Bay.

The District has begun considering the purchase of POST’s Driscoll Ranch property.  The approximately 3,700-acre ranch is adjacent to the District’s La Honda Creek Open Space Preserve. It features such special species as the California Red-Legged Frog, San Francisco Garter Snake, And Steelhead Trout, as well as former and now-capped oil wells. 

The District will hold a public workshop on the potential ranch purchase in late summer 2005.  Following the workshop, the District’s Board will consider and vote on the property’s purchase at a public meeting held on the Coastside.

Click “Read more” to see the District’s press release.

Pillar Point Harbor’s beaches are among the most polluted in the state, according to Heal the Bay’s 2005 California beach report card. This is Capistrano Beach’s the second year in a row on the organization’s “Beach Bummers” list.

Venice Beach at Frenchman’s Creek was the second-worst beach in the county, with consistent scores of D and F.  The County has been working on Frenchman’s creek and discovered a landowner storing a a large amount of manure next to the creek. This problem has since been cleared up. But after a relatively good summer in 2004, the high bacteria counts resumed in September and October.

There’s a good story by Amelia Hansen at the County Times, quoting Dean Peterson, the county’s director of environmental health services, as saying that because the issues with the storm drains at Capistrano beach have been cleared, he suspects that the high bacteria counts may be due to the large bird population in the Harbor.

Petersen says that Venice Beach is a higher priority for cleanup because a lot more people go into the water there. He’s also not sure it’s fair to compare tiny Capistrano Beach with some of the biggest beaches in Southern California.

Heal the Bay

Click on the report card for an interactive version at Heal the Bay’s website.

The US Fish & Wildlife Service and San Francisco Zoo are cooperating to bring five male/female pairs of San Francisco Garter snakes to the zoo where we can see the endangered reptiles up close.  The SF Garter Snake is often described as of the most beautiful snakes in the world, and it’s certainly one of the most newsworthy. The presence of the snake can be a real problem for any development because under California law, unlike the California Red-Legged Frog, there is no legal way to mitigate a “take” of SF Garter Snakes.

San Franscisco Garter Snake no longer exists in San Francisco. It can only be found in San Mateo County.

Click “Read more” to see the USFWS press release.

The Coast Guard is transferring the Pigeon Point Lighthouse to to the California Parks Department in a ceremony at the lighthouse today.  The long account in today’s Mercury News is well worth reading.

Despite its significance, this landmark is being preserved with private money. The state park system has no money to restore the lighthouse. The private California State Parks Foundation is raising $5 million over the next five year to renovate the lighthouse, which has been damaged by time and storms. Meanwhile, the Peninsula Open Space Trust (POST) has bought much the surrounding land to keep it from being developed.

The results of survey of Montara Water and Sanitary District customers by an anti-public ownership think tank [PDF of survey] are in and they’re pretty much what you’d expect.

At the end of 2004, residents of Montara Water and Sanitary District received a mysterious survey in the mail. The survey, from the libertarian Reason Public Policy Institute, explained that property taxes had increased as a result of the purchase of the water system from California-American Water Company (owned by the German utilities conglomerate RWE), and then asked them “Would you vote for this measure again knowing what you know now?” At the time, some Coastsiders characterized it as a “push poll”.

The researcher, Adrian Moore, has made a career of arguing that private ownership of utilities is better than public ownership. And a number of private utilities, including the former owners of Montara’s water, contribute to his employer. Moore provided an pro-privatization FAQ to something called Coalition Against a Government Takeover which was fighting a public takeover of RWE-owned Kentucky-American Water Company.

If the survey was designed to make public ownership look bad, it has done its job.

By a two-to-one margin (62% to 31%), respondents said that would not vote to buy the water system again [PDF of survey results].

After that, the rest of the results are an anticlimax:

• 62% said the quality of the service was unchanged.


• 67% said the quality of the water was unchanged.


• 47% said the cost of water bills is “worse”.


• 71% said the cost of property taxes is “worse”.


• 76% said they were aware that Montara and Moss Beach homeowners are paying an additional $169 in property taxes since the bonds were issued to buy the water system.

There are plenty of cautions that should be observed before interpreting this data. The survey was released between Christmas and New Year’s Day—timing that is guaranteed to reduce response rates.  89% of Montara and Moss Beach residents who received the survey did not respond. Also, the survey was clearly biased against public ownership. I strongly recommend you read it for yourself. It focused out the negative (the cost of the bonds) without pointing the positives (local ownership and control of rates) of the acquisition. This could certainly have influenced those opposed to public ownership to respond in greater numbers.

However, because the survey didn’t ask people how they voted in the election, only how they would vote if they could do it over, we’ll never know if the sample was biased. In 2001, 81% of Montara residents voted to issue bonds to buy their water system.

Meanwhile, Felton in Santa Cruz County is gearing up for an election on whether to buy out their own Cal-Am system.  This data should be very useful to Cal-Am their fight to keep Felton voters from buying them out.

There have been plenty of accusations and jokes about it here on the Coastside, but someone has documented a likely case of a transplanted endangered species at a development site in Sebastopol.

Endangerd Sebastopol Meadowfoam has been found on the site of a controversial development in Sebastopol, and a scientist for the California Department of Fish and Game says it was probably transplanted there by someone who wanted to stop the development. He won’t say how he determined this because he doesn’t want to encourage this kind of activity. But it sounds like maybe there was soil from its original location in its roots.

“People joke about this all the time—stopping a development by putting an endangered plant in its path,” said Gene Cooley, a Fish and Game botanist who surveyed the meadowfoam last week. “I have 25 years’ experience with state and federal agencies, and this is the only instance I know of where it’s actually happened.”

The fact that this is the first case this Fish & Game scientist has seen is probably more notable than the fact that the endangered species was transplanted.

The County Times has more information about Peninsual Open Space Trust’s land management, especially dealing with pampas grass.  Because POST’s goal is to transfer land that they buy to other agencies, management is not a big part of their budget. But they are responsible for managing properties while they own them. The articles says that POST’s annual budget for “stewardship” is between $500,000 and $1 million.

The Bella Vista Foundation has awarded Peninsula Open Space Trust (POST) a grant in the amount of $30,000 to help complete the removal of pampas grass on the 6,391-acre Cloverdale Coastal Ranch in Pescadero, CA. The Bella Vista Foundation has supported POST’s land management activities on Cloverdale since 2002, granting a total of $130,000 for stewardship activities. As a result of this support Cloverdale Coastal Ranches’ grasslands are much more diverse and healthier than they were several years ago.

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