Gulf of the Farallones and Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuaries are holding a joint advisory council meeting in Half Moon Bay at the Bell Building on Feb 15, from 9am to 4:30pm. Click for the agenda.

Although the Montara Water and Sanitary District has been given immediate possession of its three wells near the airport by a Santa Clara County superior court, San Mateo County has been trying to get it back, reports the County Times. The wells produce about 60% of the district’s water. Why a Santa Clara County court?  MWSD requested a change of venue.

In 2003, the water district discovered that the permit under which it had leased the land since 1943 could be canceled on six months’ notice. That caused the California Department of Health Services to deny the district a $5 million loan to finance several badly needed upgrades. Eventually, the water agency concluded the only solution was to own the wells.
...
If they had their way, the water district would use very little of the well water drawn from the aquifer under the airport. It’s contaminated with nitrates and tricresyl phosphates. The latter come from a gasoline additive old airplanes once used.

"The airport water requires more treatment, and it’s farther from storage. It has a higher per-unit cost to run the electrical pumps. It’s not as good a water as the Alta Vista water," said Irving, referring to the well the district commissioned in October.

The county is trying to make a federal case of it, arguing that the FAA has jurisdiction over the land.

San Mateo County will be holding a community forum to discuss a proposed amendment to the San Mateo County Building Regulations to establish a "Green Building Program" with minimum required standards as well as incentives for expedited building permit processing and building inspections.  The forum will be held at El Granada Elementary School Multi-use Room from 7:00 to 9:00 p.m.

A minimum standard of 50 GreenPoints, using the Build It Green Rating System, would be required for all new residential single-family and low-rise multi-family construction, 75% and 50% remodels.  Incentives would be available for new residential construction, 75% and 50% remodels of residential buildings, which voluntarily achieve 75 or more GreenPoints under the Build It GreenTM Rating System or LEED® Certification.  These incentives include a 30-day turnaround on building permit comments from County Departments.  An additional incentive would be available for those projects achieving a GreenPoint rating of 100 points or higher or LEED® certification, which would consist of guaranteed building inspections within two working days of a request.

For new commercial and industrial construction of 3,000 sq. ft. or larger, LEED® certification would be mandatory and would receive expedited building permit processing.  Achieving LEED® "Silver" certification would be voluntary and would receive guaranteed building inspections within two working days.

This item is scheduled to be considered by the Board of Supervisors on Tuesday, February 12, 2008, at 400 County Center, Redwood City, in the Board Chambers at 9:15 a.m.

For Further Information
Please call Mike O’Connell, Assistant Building Inspector Manager at 650-599-1594 or Jim Eggemeyer, Deputy Director at 650-363-1930 or Lisa Grote, Director at 650-363-1861.

The Montara Water and Sanitary District and Seacoast Disposal Company are making their Recycling Drop-Off day a quarterly event.  This Saturday, Feb 9, disposal is free for accepted items at Farallone View Elementary from 9am to 1pm. The event will also be held May 10, August 9 and November 8, 2008. For Questions Please Call 728-3545

Click below for a list of accepted items and those that will not be accepted.

Thank you for your coverage of the attempt by the La Honda community to get the San Mateo County to address the landslide on lots they inherited from FEMA in 1998. 

We had a very good community meeting with Supervisor Rich Gordon in La Honda on Monday night, and again, good attendance and participation in speaking at the Supervisors’ Meeting on Tuesday morning.

The Supervisors now recognize that the proposed assessment district had serious flaws and sent staff back to the drawing board. I am also trying to get them to appreciate that the assessment that they propose to lay on our community is proportionately much larger than Keenan’s judgement against Half Moon Bay, on a per capita basis. 

At issue here is a decade of minimal and ineffective action by the county, and continually growing hole in our community. 

Jerry Hill is scheduling to visit us next week to see first hand our plight and maybe some other Supervisors (other than Gordon who has been here often) are also going to come on site.
 
Attached is an article in the San Mateo County Times about the slide issue.

 
I realize La Honda seems peripheral to the coast side community, but our kids go to High School in Pescadero or Half Moon Bay, and many of us are more oriented to the coastside than the Bay Area. So I hope you include us in your scope.

Tom Dodd

An appeals court has rejected the appeal of Californians for Property Rights challenging the expansion of the Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District.  CROS sued San Mateo County and the county’s Local Area Formation Commission (LAFCO) over the decision to reject petitions for an elections.

The court rejected the appeals by CROS on the basis of notice, an ambiguous map, and how the protests were verified. It also upheld LAFCO’s cross-appeal that it had properly excluded protests that used only a post office box and not a street address.

The MROSD has been proceeding while the decision was under appeal. In a press release, the district noted that it has already "purchased 4,794 acres on the coastside including the magnificent 3,681-acre Driscoll Ranch property as an addition to the District’s La Honda Creek Open Space Preserve."

You can download the decision from the court. | pdf | doc |

A study published Thursday in Science magazine portends "a coming crisis in water supply for the western United States."

The study is likely to add to urgent calls for action already coming from Western states competing for the precious resource to irrigate farms and quench the thirst of growing populations. Devastating wildfires, avalanches and drought have also underscored the need. Researchers led by climate expert Tim P. Barnett at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego, studied climate changes in the West between 1950-1999. They noted that winter precipitation falls increasingly as rain rather than snow, snow melts faster, river flows decrease in summer months, and overall warming is exacerbating dry summer conditions.

The researchers used statistical modeling to compare climate changes that would have happened with natural fluctuations over time, to climate changes with the addition of human-caused greenhouse gases and other emissions from vehicles, power plants and other sources. They found that most changes in river flow, temperature and snow pack between 1950 and 1999 can be attributed to human activities, such as driving, that release emissions including carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

The changes they observed differed significantly from trends that could be attributed to natural fluctuations between wet and dry periods over time, they said.

"The climate’s changing in the West. We’ve known that. The question is why, and no one’s really addressed that," Barnett said in an interview. According to his study, "The answer is it is us." "The picture painted is quite grim so it’s time to collectively sit down and get our act together," Barnett added, suggesting the need for conservation, more water storage, and a slowdown on development in the desert Southwest.

"The building is just going crazy, so it would be a pretty good idea to put a curb on that unless they can figure out how to get more water," he said.

The study also included researchers from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, the University of Washington, Seattle, and the National Institute for Environmental Studies in Japan.

"Our results are not good news for those living in the western United States," they conclude. The research "foretells of water shortages, lack of storage capability to meet seasonally changing river flow, transfers of water from agricultural to urban uses and other critical impacts."

Ric Lohman

Last fall, I interviewed Bruce Russell, who initiated and represented Wavecrest’s owners in the sale of the property to the Peninsula Open Space Trust. That deal closed yesterday for $13.5 million. There are many remarkable things about this sale, but most remarkable is Russell’s recognition of the opportunity to end the bitterness that has divided the community for more than a decade. Thanks to Darin Boville of Montara Fog for filming and editing the interview.

Today the Peninsula Open Space Trust (POST) announced that it has acquired Wavecrest, a 206-acre property located on Cabrillo Highway on the southern tip of Half Moon Bay. POST purchased the land on January 29 from private owners for $13.5 million, to be paid over the next

three

two years.
       
"We are very pleased to preserve this stunning Coastside property," said POST Executive Vice President Walter T. Moore. "The land here has everything going for it—open meadows, winding trails, sweeping vistas, dramatic bluffs, thriving wildlife, popular ball fields and a key location at the edge of Half Moon Bay. The protection of Wavecrest means the community is no longer at risk of losing this amazing natural and recreational resource. From now on, residents and visitors will come here and know that this beautiful, vital landscape will remain this way forever."

CORRECTION: The original version of the press release said it was to be paid over three years, not two.

Those tar balls washing up on Pacifica and Coastside beaches for three days this week turned out to be the result of natural oil seep carried on the current from Southern California reports the County Times.

A number of tar seeps dot the coastline of Santa Barbara County, particularly around Goleta and near Point Conception, he said. The oil seeps represent the shallowest tar deposits along the Monterey formation, an underwater ridge line of brittle rock that formed between 23 million and 5 million years ago, according to Lorenson.

The plankton that formed fossils in the rock have, over time, been exposed to pressure and pushed to the surface by the movement of the Earth.

The USGS has a "fingerprinting" test that allows scientists to distinguish between the provenance of various natural tar seeps. In this case, however, Lorenson said, they may never be completely sure of the source.

"The size of the tar balls can be rather large. That’s a characteristic of the tar balls that come from Point Conception," he said.