This coming Saturday, Sep 15th, is the date for the Expo to be held at Half Moon Bay High School. A special exhibit will be a 100+ mile per gallon Plug-In Prius, one of only eight in the Bay Area. See: http://www.calcars.org/vehicles.html

This car has been retrofitted from a stock Prius. It has a much larger Lithium Ion battery pack and the engine controller allows the car to travel up to 40 miles on battery power alone. The gas engine is still there and will kick in as needed. It will allow the car to go an additional 350 miles on a tank, so range is not an issue.

The major benefit is that you can charge the batteries at night from an ordinary 110 V electrical outlet. That way, you are fueling up in the most environmentally friendly way, and when electricity rates are lowest.

Those of us with solar panels have a special advantage. We can generate power in the afternoon and sell it back to PG&E when rates are highest. Then, at night when rates are lower, we can buy back electricity from PG&E to charge our car.

California Coastal Cleanup Day is Saturday September 15 from 9am to noon. This is an important event in our community and we participate whenever we can at Montara State Beach.

California Coastal Cleanup Day is the premier volunteer event focused on the marine environment in the world. In 2006, a total of 358,617 volunteers pitched in with their precious time and effort to help clean 34,560 miles of shoreline of some seven million pounds of trash.

Wendy and Kevin Stokes of MontaraBeach.com are beach captains again this year for Montara State Beach. Kevin writes, "One notable change for this year is that we will be including Grey Whale Cove in the clean up, a beach always sadly neglected by such events."

The county coordinator is Sarah Pratt of the San Mateo Countywide Water Pollution Prevention Program (650) 599-1325 [email protected] A complete list of Coastside beaches and coordinators can be found on the program’s website.

There has been a moratorium on new connections to the Montara Water and Sanitary District Water supply since 1975. Those building new homes since then have had to dig their own wells on their own property to get access to water.  The problem is that everyone—including MWSD—is drawing water from the same aquifer.

Julia Scott of the County Times interviewed one family whose well is running dry. They want to move, but they can’t get water and can’t sell their house.

"We’re just stuck," Gary said. "We have this incredible burden on us that we can’t get rid of. They tell me that even if the house was condemned, they wouldn’t give us a hookup. One more hookup wouldn’t tax the system that much more."
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"Our concern is that we’re all drilling in and getting water from the same area. It’s like straws in a big milkshake: We suck out water, and they suck out water — it seems to us that there’s going to be a diminished resource," [MWSD General Manager George] Irving said.
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The unincorporated Midcoast is one of the fastest-growing areas of San Mateo County. A master plan for the area, approved in draft form by the Board of Supervisors in October 2006, allows for the construction of 7,153 new homes in the next 30 years — roughly doubling the current population.

MWSD gets all its water from local wells. El Granada and Half Moon Bay get their water from the County Coastside Water District, where you can get a water hookup (if you have tens of thousands of dollars) because they’re buying their water from the SF Public Utilities Commission, which gets its water from the Hetch Hetchy Reservoir [Wikipedia] at Yosemite.

Wednesday, we spent the morning at Wavecrest with Audrey Rust and Walter Moore of the Peninsula Open Space Trust and Half Moon Bay City Council members Marina Fraser and Naomi Patridge, taping them for a video we’re producing about the site.

Wednesday as the kind of hot, sunny day we don’t get that often on the Coastside. We met at Smith Field, walked around the property and discussed the future of the property, POST’s relationship with the city, and the beauty of the site itself.

If you have only driven by Wavecrest, you owe it to yourself to visit so you can understand what we’re talking about. First, it’s huge. At Smith Field, you can’t see Highway 1, and you can’t see the ocean.  Second, although it’s mostly covered with dry grass right now, it’s teeming with life. Even casual observers can see a dozen raptors (hawks and kites) making a living on the property within minutes of arriving. Third, it’s crossed by many informal trails. There are plenty of different ways to experience Wavecrest.

This Labor Day weekend, it will be beautiful at the beach.  But it’s a three-day weekend and you should spend one of those days at Wavecrest.