The Coastside County Water District (CCWD) will hold a public hearing on increasing its water rates by 7%, followed by a vote on the rate hike, at its next regular meeting, on Tuesday, June 13 at 7:30pm.

The Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District (MROSD) is asking for public input by June 16 on its amended draft "Good Neighbor Policy" that was developed with the extensive involvement of neighbors and neighborhood groups and includes input collected at four facilitated public workshops.

The current policy, explanation of the process, a pdf of the proposed new policy, and an online form for collecting comments can be found on MROSD’s Good Neighbor Policy page.

Members of the public can also obtain copies of the Policy and provide comments by calling the District (650) 691-1200 or writing to the District at 330 Distel Circle, Los Altos, CA 94022.

After June 16, a final public workshop will be held in order to provide the public with an additional opportunity for comments. The last step in the process will be a meeting of the full Board in a public session to discuss and vote on the revised Policy.

The District’s Good Neighbor Policy governs how MROSD interacts with its neighbors and was last revised in August 1996.  The amended policy will cover a variety of topics from addressing neighbor privacy to natural resource management issues such as controlling invasive species.

The public meetings and the amended policy, when completed, are designed to foster a spirit of cooperation between the District and its constituents on whose behalf the agency manages over 50,000 acres of open space land.

A process to seek input from the public on issues constituents believe should be addressed in the Good Neighbor Policy was initiated last year and included a number of interviews with constituents and several meetings with local neighborhood organizations, including the Midcoast Community Council, Pescadero Municipal Advisory Council, the South Skyline Association, and Kings Mountain Association.

In addition to four public meetings, District neighbors and constituents also provided suggestions through e-mail, the District’s Web site, and regular mail.

Coastside County Water District (CCWD) has recently announced another water rate increase, 7 % this time around.  At its May 16 meeting the City Council chose to schedule the issue of water conservation for the very end of a lengthy agenda.  This is the time when most of the audience has gone home, the councilmembers, staff, and any remaining members of the audience are tired, and the viewing public has probably either turned off their TV or changed channels.

As I have stated repeatedly, providing homebuilders with the tools to save money and water in designing their landscapes is a very much-needed service.  Frequently, these new residents are unaware of our prolonged dry season, recurring droughts, and the not too distant future of doubling water rates.

The discussion of how the city could address the needs of home and landscape designers in a climate of decreasing supplies and hugely escalating costs of water was originally scheduled, for the April 13th joint meeting of the City Council, the Planning Commission, and the Architectural Review Committee.  The joint meeting was, however, almost exclusively devoted to an ethics-training workshop, and although I had a chance to speak about the issue, there was no time for discussion or action.
Now, a month l later, the Planning Department recommends that the council take no action on the issue and that it should be sent back to the Planning Commission for analysis, study, and recommendation.

Applicants for single residence CDP’s have presumably had to abide by the condition “any landscape improvement shall apply xeriscape principles for drought resistance and to reduce water consumption”.  However this dictate has been largely ignored.  Many designs have come forward for Planning Commission approval in which lawn areas in the front, back, and side yards were the predominant landscape feature. I first brought up the discrepancy between what was on paper and what was routinely approved on the ground more than a year ago.  How many more months or years will pass while the Planning Department and the Planning Commission toss this issue around? 

While the Planning Commission is pondering the issue, the City Council could have chosen to allow their standing resolution of 1993 to at least partially fill the gap.  All they had to do was to remove a single sentence: “These guidelines shall not be applied to single family residential projects involving no common area landscaping” They did not do that.

In the meantime, how many more water-intensive landscapes will continue to drain our watershed as well as the bank accounts of unwary residents?

The Half Moon Bay Open Space Trust (HOST) is looking for an executive director.  HOST’s mission is to acquire and preserve environmentally sensitive open space within the City of Half Moon Bay.  You can download the job description from Coastsider [PDF].

In addition to the contact informtion on the job description, you can contact Mike Kimsey 650-712-1273.

This is Lyme Disease Awareness Month. Be aware that the nymphal ticks are prominent right now, and most likely to carry Lyme disease and other devastating co-infections like Babesia and Erlichia! Get treatment promptly, rash or no rash, if you have a bite and experience ANY unusual symptoms. Check out the California Lime Disease Association and ILADS - International Lyme And Associated Diseases Society websites.

Chris Pritchard

Caltrans is taking the Half Moon Bay City Council, planning commissioners, staff, and interested citizens on a tour of its wetlands mitigation project in Montara on Tuesday, May 2.  Caltrans’s karma (OK, the law) demands that it provide new wetlands in exchange for wetlands taken by building the Devil’s Slide Tunnel.  It’s restoring and creating five acres of wetlands in Montara, across Highway 1 from the old Charthouse. This includes removing soil, adding native plants, removing non-natives, and creating seasonal ponds.  The tour group is meeting at 5:00pm at "the parking area on the ocean side of the chain link fence across the highway and the northern end of Montara", and will carpool from there.

The San Mateo County Resource Conservation District (RCD) encourages young people, 15 to 18 years old, to attend the June 18-23 California Range and Natural Resources Camp in Half Moon Bay. This is the 22nd consecutive year that the range camp has been held in Half Moon Bay at the UCCE Elkus Youth Ranch.  As the host conservation district, the San Mateo County RCD will be sponsoring two students for camp, which normally costs $350. To apply, contact the RCD at 712-7765 or email [email protected]

Range camp is designed to introduce young men and women to the extent, importance and value of California’s rangeland resources. It encourages leadership and good stewardship through interaction with recognized professionals in both classroom and field sessions. Students interested in natural sciences or agriculture will find this a unique opportunity to learn from range scientists about wildlife management, forestry, environmental careers, riparian watersheds, and other topics.  It can be an important experience for career decisions.  In San Mateo County alone there are over 45,000 acres of range and grazing lands.

This camp is sponsored by Resource Conservation Districts, University of California Cooperative Extension, the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service, the Society for Range Management, and others.  The application deadline is May 15.

Further information and photos are available at www.casrm.org  In addition, experienced Range Camp leaders in San Mateo County are available to answer questions and to speak with parents or teachers.  You can download the Range Camp brochure and flier from Coastsider.

Ocean Blvd between Los Banos and San Lucas Ave [Google satellite map] has been closed by the county because of "subsidence".  The area has been zoned "Design Review—Geologic Hazard" for years, according to Neil Cullen, San Mateo County Director of Public Works. Even before the recent activity, Ocean Blvd was a very uneven surface.

This area, which rises more than 100 feet above the elevation of the Half Moon Bay Airport, is a "fault scarp" of the Seal Cove Fault. Cullen says that although the weather has dried up, there is still a great deal of water moving underground in the area and the county won’t be able to assess the situation until the ground is drier.

A dead crow in Moss Beach was found to be carrying West Nile virus, the first case of what the Examiner is reporting could be the most severe season for the disease so far.  We’ve had a wet winter, and there’s plenty of standing water to play host to mosquito larvae.

“I do expect to see at least one human case of West Nile virus originate in San Mateo County this year, but nothing on the order of Sacramento County last year,” which led the state with 177 human cases, said Dean Peterson, director of environmental health for the county. The one human case of the virus reported in the county in 2005 was brought in from outside, Peterson said.

I’ve seen county mosquito abatement trucks on the Coastside a couple of times already since the rains have let up.