Join Coastside Land Trust for a showing of "FLOW: For Love of Water" (90 min), an award-winning documentary investigation into what experts label the most important political and environmental issue of the 21st century: The World Water Crisis.
 

• Official Selection, 2008 Sundance Film Festival
• International Jury Prize, 2008 Mumbai International Film Festival
• Best Documentary, 2008 Vail International Film Festival
• Winner, Best Documentary United Nations Association Film Festival

Thursday, May 7 at 7 pm
Ted Adcock Community Center
535 Kelly Ave, Half Moon Bay

The film will be followed by a panel discussion of coastal water concerns by:
 

• Moderator: Kellyx Nelson, Executive Director, San Mateo County Resource Conservation District 
• Tim Ramirez, Manager of the Natural Resources and Lands Management Division, Water Enterprise for San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, which owns the upper Pilarcitos watershed and which is responsible directly or indirectly for management of many Coastsiders? water sources.
• David Dickson, General Manager of Coastside County Water District (CCWD)
• Gary Warhaftig, President of the Montara/Moss Beach Water Improvement Association. Gary laid the groundwork and worked diligently for deprivatization of Montara’s water. Citizens Utilities purchased water rights in 38 states, and at the time Montara won back the right to their own water, Citizens said that Montara was the only community to do so.

 
This event is free and refreshments will be served.

CORRECTION: In an earlier version of this article, the net revenue for 2008 was shown as positive, rather than negative, due to an editing error.

The opponents of Sharp Park’s golf course constructed a pair of arguments that lead inevitably to their desired conclusion, that this is the right time to restore the original wetlands habitat in order to save the nearby endangered species. The first premise is economic:

"Sharp Park’s deficit is substantial. Sharp Park has lost between $30,000 and $300,000 a year for the past four fiscal years from the golf fund alone. San Francisco’s other golf courses suffer for it, because they must subsidize Sharp Park’s losses, robbing other courses of needed maintenance. But that isn’t all it costs San Francisco to operate Sharp Park: Sharp Park also draws down the capital fund, the open space fund, and the natural areas program fund."

But what if the claim about all the money being lost is false? Does that make a difference to the validity of Plater and SF Supervisor Mirkarimi’s argument against the golf course?

According to the San Francisco Controller’s 2009 report for the last 4 years showing the net result after subtracting Sharp Park’s expenses and overhead from revenue:

The Controller also states that revenues from earned interest, citywide membership fees and non-specific concessions are not allocated to individual courses but to the overall golf fund. For the years shown above the cumulative revenue to that fund was $1,467,755

If we were to allocate just 11% of that number (based on percentage of total golf revenue) to Sharp Park’s results we would increase its cumulative by $161,453 to a new total of $836,731

San Francisco’s Sharp Park golf course operation does not have a financial viability problem. Rather, it has a financial management problem that a small fee increase would help.

Plater’s other premise, that the golf course is bad for the environment and the endangered species may or may not be true, but we can see that he does not want to find out. Supervisor Mirkarimi’s legislative end-run around the Environmental Impact Review process so he can place the golf course in the care of GGNRA doesn’t portend a fair hearing for the existence of the golf course once out of San Francisco and Pacifica’s control.

Why not? In answer let us note that Brent Plater is a prominent volunteer at GGNRA and retains substantial connections there. No need to wonder why he sees Mirkarimi’s legislation as the golden opportunity it is.

Ken King
Half Moon Bay

Groundwater is so scarce in parts of the Midcoast that in a dry year, water levels can fall far enough to endanger the water supply, even if no further wells are dug, according to the County Times’s report on the county’s groundwater report.

"I think a safe and sustainable water supply is crucial to a community’s public health," said Steve Monowitz, long range planning services manager for the county. "And if an individual homeowner drills a well that impacts the community, that’s something the county needs to review when it considers new development proposals."

"What I took away from the report is that all the basins are at risk of problems in dry or very dry years, not just the granite areas. I wouldn’t limit the possibility of banning wells to the granite rock areas," Monowitz added.

The county report has been in the works for at least six years and in some cases, is more notable for the information it doesn’t provide than what it does.

The purpose of the study was to gauge how much groundwater could safely be extracted over the long term without exceeding the amount replenished by rainfall each year, as well as to determine environmental impacts.

But this could not be achieved because of lack of well data and accurate stream-flow measurements. Of the 1,097 wells in the county’s database, only half gave crucial details like their location and how much water they can produce.

Two or more consecutive dry years can cause the water table to drop all the way down to sea level and even below sea level, raising the risk of saltwater intrusion in the groundwater aquifer. The Midcoast is in its second consecutive dry year right now, but officials can’t say what the effects have been. The county is not monitoring any wells on a long-term basis.

In his April 27 opinion piece on Coastsider, Ken King makes several false statements about Sharp Park, the restoration proposal for the land, and the bill introduced by Supervisor Mirkarimi to kick-start that proposal.

Every environmentalist has demanded that scientific studies be conducted before any decision about Sharp Park’s future is made, including decisions about Sharp Park’s illicitly built and crumbling sea wall.  The Mirkarimi bill expressly requires, based on the best scientific evidence available, that a restoration study be conducted along with alternatives that retain or redesign the golf course.  The bill will force these studies to be integrated into the EIR process referenced by Mr. King, but it will modify that process to ensure that restoration alternatives are considered along with existing alternatives that keep things largely as they are.  Mr. King has steadfastly opposed restoration studies, because for political and personal reasons he doesn’t want the status quo to change.

But the status quo cannot be maintained.  The golf course loses too much money, it causes too much harm to the environment, and it exposes the surrounding community to flooding risks that will be exacerbated by climate change.  In the face of these liabilities, subsidizing golf in San Mateo County for as little as $12 a round while San Francisco makes drastic cuts to basic city services simply cannot continue.

Mr. King proposes a simplistic solution: raise prices.  But if Sharp Park raises prices, fewer golfers will play there and the course’s deficit will increase.  The Bay Area already supplies 6 million more rounds of golf than golfers demand, driving golf prices downward precisely when Mr. King claims we should raise them.  Moreover, the National Golf Foundation found that golfers at Sharp Park have very little loyalty to the course and play there primarily because it is cheap. Because of this, San Francisco’s Budget Analyst concluded that Sharp Park cannot reduce its deficit by simply raising prices: golfers will just take their game elsewhere.  

This story was originally posted as a comment on the story about the Sharp Park Golf Course restoration debate

The financial excuse that San Francisco loses money and has to carry Sharp Park is disingenuous by intention and deliberately misleading. San Francisco Supervisor Mirkarimi, the legislation’s sponsor, has himself said he doubts the accuracy of the figures cited by proponents and thinks that whatever gap there may be is mere "chump change". Given Sharp Park has the lowest greens’ fees among San Francisco’s golf courses, or even in the surrounding area, a modest hike disposes of that argument. But why do that when it serves as an excuse for those intent on accomplishing their own estimable goals? 

Goal one of the Center for Biological Diversity and affiliated groups is to restore the area to its original pristine condition for all of the stated purposes outlined by Mr. Plater. Definitely laudable. But take a moment and consider his description of how the entire area was massively filled in, and then later buffered by the addition of an enormous seawall - a 20-foot high berm stretching along the entire width of the golf course at least a half-mile long. To "restore" the area would involve removing hundreds, maybe thousands of semi trucks full of fill, this in an area containing endangered species. Who, we might wonder, would be the permitting authority for this activity? 

There’s more. Laguna Salada, the fresh water lagoon snaking around the edge of the golf course receives the runoff from the entire golf course when it’s watered or raining. The berm between the lagoon and ocean keeps it all from draining, allowing only excess overflow to reach the ocean. This freshwater environment provides breeding habitat for the Red legged frog that in turn provides a food source for the San Francisco garter snake. The restoration folks want the berm breached in order to take us back to the pre-1930s when the lagoon was a brackish, read that as saline, estuary. With global warming raising sea levels three feet by the end of the century, if not faster, there go the frogs and the snakes that rely on them. 

Something seems strangely amiss here with the bio fans pushing so hard in face of the problems and contradictions inherent in this enterprise. Maybe restoration would be a net benefit to the species of concern regardless, but how could we determine that beforehand? The answer of course is to do an Environmental Impact Report that studies all of the possible alternatives, including doing nothing at all, then make the best decision. It so happens that San Francisco’s Planning Department is preparing to do just that, but this process would take one or two years to conduct, and our biological friends are in too much of a hurry and too wowed by their own Big Idea to want to hear anything scientific that might contradict their own romantic and well-intentioned project. There’s momentum now, so keep on pushing and worry about the details after they accomplish their mission. 

Mr. Plater is an environmental lawyer and college professor with an enviable record suing entities on behalf of threatened species. Supervisor Mirkarimi is looking for a way out of continued nuisance lawsuits from people like Mr. Plater, so one can hardly fault him for trying to remove San Francisco from potential legal liability for Federal violations. However, it’s plain to see that neither side is so much concerned about the species in question as with getting what they want. None of this ought to be considered without condoning and paying for a thorough and complete EIR that will shed light on whether restoration in any form at all will benefit the animals and improve the overall environment or not. 

We know one thing, and that is the frogs and snakes coexisted at Sharp Park for the last seventy+ years. We also know that critter protection improved substantially in recent years as the golf course was enjoined to change its practices. Ending the golf course or substantially altering it as restorationists propose may be a great idea, or it could prove hellish for the animals - remember what they say about the road to hell? The point is that we don’t know, and neither do they. 

The problem in a nutshell is that there’s no science underlying any of this, only out there as an eventual goal, the science education center, etc. Should these folks succeed in pulling this off without an EIR, I hope that there will still be something left to study there one day

With all the buzz about getting back to local farming and all, it has me thinking about it too. Those of you who have been to Europe have probably seen "victory gardens", or "community gardens". I know there are gardens like this around the U.S. too. My husband and I lived in Sweden for a few years where these gardens were such community gems! They could be very pretty, people could gather there, work the land, socialize a bit and soak up the sun. (which is a valuable commodity up there I must say.)

Is there a chance that our community here could start such a garden? I know there was a time when that plot of land just to the south of Farmer John’s place, was going to consider becoming an educational garden or something along those lines. I wonder if there is a land owner around town that would consider renting plots to folks who would like to try their hand at growing food and flowers for their families.

Sara Nebeling

The Coastside Land Trust is sponsoring a series of summer classes through Half Moon Bay Parks and Recreation called "How to Turn Your Lawn into a Water-Conserving Landscape." Led by local experts, each class of the four classes will meet from 9am to 4pm, with a mixture of class time and on-site landscape design and planting. The four classes will cover site analysis, design , plant selection, and planting. The cost of the course is $70 per class, or $240 for all four. Registration information is in Parks and Recreation’s Summer Activity Guide [click to download].

Now we need a nice lawn to work on! We’re looking for a property on a well-traveled street from Montara to Half Moon Bay where the class would provide the labor and expertise, and the homeowner would pay for the materials (costs dependent on the size of the lawn) and could participate in the class for free. We would place a small sign on the property for a few months mentioning that the landscaping was provided by the Coastside Land Trust’s Lawns to Water-Conserving Landscape Class, listing our website for information on upcoming classes.

If you know of someone who might be interested in this opportunity, please contact Shari Deghi at 650-208-9020 or [email protected].

Some people are trying to get Sharp Park Golf Course restored to a natural state, and others say that this is neither desirable nor practical.

There’s an interesting debate at the Examiner’s web site, and you can read the full text of the arguments there.

Sharp Park is a peculiar piece of land: a public golf course in Pacifica owned by the city of San Francisco. The San Francisco supervisors will hold a committee hearing on converting Sharp Park into a nature preserve on Thursday, April 30 at 1pm.

I first heard Brent Plater make his case for restoring the course on KQED:

The story of Sharp Park Golf Course, located in Pacifica but owned and operated by San Francisco’s Recreation and Parks Department, is one of benevolence, hubris, and tragedy. In 1918, wealthy benefactors who required the land be used as a "public park, or public playground" deeded Sharp Park to San Francisco.   Unfortunately, Sharp Park’s vibrant lagoon—with its abundant wildlife, coastal access, and beautiful vistas—was violently reshaped in the 1930s by Alister MacKenzie, a landscape architect who spent fourteen months filling Sharp Park’s wetlands to create an 18-hole golf course along the coast.  But he failed to tame Sharp Park’s natural ecology: the course’s ceremonial opening day was delayed twice because of wet playing conditions; coastal storms destroyed all seven of the beach-side holes a few years later; and a separate storm brought sea water so close to the clubhouse that the City illicitly built a crude sea wall to protect the course’s remains.  The sea wall gambit backfired: it cut-off Sharp Park’s natural water outlets, and now the golf course floods almost every year—with fresh water—threatening homes in the surrounding communities.

For this taxpayers take a net loss of nearly $300,000 each year on Sharp Park Golf Course.  A 2007 Recreation and Park Department analysis concludes that under current conditions the golf course will cost San Francisco taxpayers millions more by 2013.  But even with this massive subsidy golfers are leaving the sport, and more specifically leaving Sharp Park.  Rounds played at Sharp Park have declined nearly 40% since 2000, and it operates at 45% of capacity.

A new planning process for Sharp Park was recently proposed by San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors: partner with the Golden Gate National Recreation Area to transform Sharp Park from an environmentally destructive and budget-breaking golf course into a community-centered model for urban development, natural flood control, outdoor recreation, and endangered species recovery.

Meanwhile, Examiner public policy blogger Bruce Balshone says that this could be counterproductive.

If the course is removed and made into a biological reserve it will undercut the work of the environmental community in Pacifica and the development pressures that have been a constant in Pacifica will only increase – imperiling such properties as the old quarry site which developers have twice attempted pave over.

It is this dichotomy which is of the most significance. If the current council fails, a new more pro-development council may emerge. This would be an immense set back for the proponents of a biological preserve. Despite the fact that the City and County of San Francisco owns the golf course property, the City of Pacifica, according to State land use law will have the authority to determine its land use and  zoning.

In addition, the property carries with it a deed restriction included by the wealthy benefactors who gave the land to San Francisco which requires the land be used as a "public park, or public playground" and, if not kept as a public park or playground, the property could revert back to the heirs of the original donors. While San Francisco activists insist that an ecological reserve will suffice in meeting that requirement, it is likely that a court may decide that issue and it may or may not work out in the way activists foresee.

Yet another rationale for the destruction of the course is that the course consistently loses money, as much as $300,000 annually. But Pacifica city leaders and course administrators have publicly stated that the course is self-sustaining and much of the debt load is due to administrative costs and diversion of funds from the course into the revenue stream for the entire Parks & Recreation Department. As a stand-alone, many believe the course could maintain itself.

San Mateo county has released a long-anticipated Midcoast groundwater study. The study provides a great deal of useful information about the sustainability of the Midcoast’s water supply in the face of current and planned future demand.

There is a 60-day review and comment period for this report that will end at 5pm on June 22.  Comments should be directed to:

Steve Monowitz
Long Range Planning Services Manager
455 County Center, 2nd Floor
Redwood City, CA 94063
Phone: 650.363.4161
Fax: 650.363.4849
[email protected]

You can download the full report and the executive summary from Coastsider.  Both documents are worth downloading. The main report contains a great deal of detail about the sustainability of water in each of nine Midcoast regions, and detailed maps of the area. The summary makes it much easier to understand how the details fit together.

The Montara Water and Sanitary District (which serves Montara and Moss Beach) has a moratorium on new water connections. And although it’s possible in El Granada to buy a County Coastside Water District water connection on the open market, but this can cost tens of thousands of dollars. Meanwhile, the county has continued to approve new development on the Midcoast by allowing builders of new houses to drill onsite wells.  However, both the MWSD and the private wells draw from the same sources of groundwater.

We’re working on an analysis of the data and conclusions, but here is our summary of study.

The county’s inadequate records of the wells they have approved on the Midcoast have made it impossible to asses the sustainability of Midcoast development.

The initial purposes of the study were to evaluate Midcoast groundwater conditions and assess the suitability and long-term sustainability of Midcoast ground- water supplies.  This was to include an analysis of the potential impacts of groundwater withdrawals on sensitive areas such as riparian and wetland habitats, and an estimation of "safe yield."  However, as the study progressed, it was determined that safe yield and groundwater/habitat relationships could not be accurately assessed due to the limited availability of well data, concerns regarding the accuracy of the data, and information gaps regarding surface water flows.

While Midcoast aquifers may have a surplus in years with average rainfall, they may be in deficit in dry and very dry years.

• There was only one very dry period (1975-77) in the last 55 years. However, the report doesn’t address whether climate changes could lead to a higher percentage of dry and very dry years in the future.
• When Coastside aquifers are in a prolonged deficit, they can drop below sea level for an extended period of time and salt water can intrude into them. The report does not address the effect of rising sea level on the security of local aquifers.
• Individual wells may go dry in prolonged dry years, particularly in areas where the aquifer is in fractured granite, rather than soil.

While most areas of the Midcoast are in "general long-term balance", the number of new houses planned by the county is likely to upset that balance and put the groundwater into deficit in dry years.

• In the El Granada, planned growth would double the likelihood of groundwater falling below sea level from 11% to 24%.
• In the Miramar Terrace area, planned growth would more than double the likelhood of groundwater falling below sea level from 7% to 18%.
• In Upper Moss Beach, planned growth could put the area in groundwater deficit in two years out of three.
• In Upper Montara, planned growth could increase the percentage of deficit years from 30% to 53%, and create "significant risk of localized well interference, large well drawdowns in dry years and the risk of indiviudal wells going dry in dry and very dry years."
• in other areas, fewer houses are planned and there is less risk to sustainability from planned growth.

We’ve set up a wiki page to summarize news and background information about the Big Wave development. Any Coastsider user who can post without pre-moderation can create or edit information on our wiki, and you’re invited to help us keep the page complete and up to date.