The Blue Circle is a quarterly community forum for sharing ideas, information and resources for the goal of natural resource management, education, and stewardship. It’s sponsored by the county Resource Conservation District. The Blue Circle roundtable discussion is titled, "Water Quality Monitoring in San Mateo County". 

This informal talk includes roundtable participants Neil Panton, San Gregorio Environmental Resource Center; Carolann Towe, SurfRider; Joe Giustino, Coastside County Water District; Tanya Yurovsky, Montara Water and Sanitary District; Kathryn Ivanetich, UC San Francisco; and Dean Peterson, SMC Environmental Health.  A Blue Circle Social featuring food, beer, wine, and an auction will follow. In keeping with the horse ranch location of the upcoming Blue Circle, if you arrive wearing a western style hat, you go directly to the prize table.  Prizes are locally grown and well worth the effort to dig in the closet and dust off your old cowboy(girl) hat.

The meeting is 3:00pm on Tuesday, October 10, 2006.  It will be held at Moss Beach Ranch in beautiful downtown Moss Beach, CA.  Go to http://www.mossbeachranch.com/directions.htm for directions to the Ranch.

To RSVP, call 650-712-7765

Who are the real Nimbies?

People have been throwing around the word "Nimby" lately. On the Coastside, Nimby (Not In My Back Yard) is usually used to describe people who insist that developers follow the law.

Some folks will tell you that the people who insist on environmental impact reports, biological studies, preservation of endangered species habitat, or even permits before changing the use of a piece of land aren’t environmentalists. They’ll tell you that these people are Nimbies or no-growthers using environmental preservation as an excuse to prevent development in their back yard. That their concern for open space, public access, wetlands, and endangered species habit masks a darker, selfish purpose: to prevent all development on the Coastside.

What do you call someone who doesn’t want to preserve the environment in their back yard?

Why isn’t it Nimbyism to say, "I want to preserve the environment, but not at the expense of developing the Coastside"?  Perhaps you didn’t support the expansion of the Midpensinsula Open Space District to the Coastside. Or you think the Peninsula Open Space Trust is bad for the local economy.  Or that the Coastal Commission has too much control of Coastside development.  Or you don’t think there should be a process for changing the use of environmentally sensitive land. Or you’re quietly planning to vote for Proposition 90.

Why doesn’t that make you a Nimby?

Personally, I don’t find the label useful. But if you insist on using it, why must it be applied to opponents to one type of activity in one’s back yard (development) and not another (conservation)? When will we accept that every proposal must stand on its own merits—including its relationship to its environment—and that name-calling has no place in our community?

The Livability Project and NorCal Solar Electric are sponsoring the Pacifica Solar Home Tour on Saturday, October 7th, as part of the American Solar Energy Society’s National Solar Tour.

The tour begins at the Pacifica Community Center, 540 Crespi Drive, at the corner of HWY1 and Crespi Dr.  Tour maps and a vendor fair will be available from 1:00 to 3:00 PM.  Tour homes will be opern from 1:00 to 5:00 PM.

Six homes featuring PV, solar hot water, and/or solar pool heating will be available to tour.  Homeowners will be on site to to answer questions and share data related to their systems.  One home will also have a collection of electric vehicles on display.

For more information contact Jeanie Ferreira at 650 355-8602, e-mail [email protected] or go to www.nationalsolartour.org

Eight Mountain View and Los Altos residents have applied for the seat on the Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District’s Board of Directors left vacant by Deane Little’s resignation on August 11, 2006. The appointment to Ward 4, which includes Mountain View and Los Altos, will have to be made by October 10, 2006, 60 days from the effective date of the vacancy.  The applicants are:

1.  Jerome Galli - Mountain View
2.  Terrance Hanna - Mountain View
3.  Lucy Hsu - Los Altos
4.  William J. James - Los Altos
5.  Joshua G. Moore - Mountain View
6.  Curt Riffle - Los Altos
7.  Jeff Segall - Mountain View
8.  Patricia Showalter - Mountain View

The Board voted on August 23, 2006 to appoint a new Director to the seat left vacant by Deane Little rather than having a special election which would have cost $770,378.

The deadline for candidates to submit their applications was Monday, September 18, 2006. The Board will meet with candidates for a first interview on Monday, September 25, and with second-round interviewees on October 9, 2006.  A third and final round will be scheduled for October 10, if necessary.

The Half Moon Bay Open Space Trust (HOST) announced last week that veteran environmentalist, Zoe Kersteen-Tucker, will serve as the organization’s first Executive Director. 

Kersteen-Tucker, a Moss Beach resident, is best known for her roles as the founder and spokesperson of the Coastal Open Space Alliance to expand the boundaries of the Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District to the San Mateo County coast, Executive Director and formerly President of the Committee for Green Foothills, and the co-founder and principal spokesperson for the successful Devil’s Slide Tunnel initiative-Measure T.

The San Mateo County Public Works Department will be holding an information meeting about its vegetation management practices, which include the use of herbicides (including glyphosate, or Roundup) for weed control along roadsides. 

The meeting will be held on Wednesday, Sept 20, 7pm at the Cuesta La Honda Clubhouse.  From Hwy. 1, take Hwy. 84 east to La Honda, turn right on Entrada, then continue straight on Escondido.  Park in front of the playground and the meeting is up the steps to the right.   For more information, contact Dave Clarke, Deputy Director of Public Works, 650.363.4102.

The 22nd Annual California Coastal Cleanup Day is this Saturday, September 16th, from 9am to noon at over 700 locations around the state.  This year San Mateo Countywide Stormwater Pollution Prevention Program (STOPPP) is coordinating the Clean-up in San Mateo County, with 26 locations at coastside, bayside, and inland creeks.
 
Last year 52,000 volunteers turned out to remove just under 1 million pounds of debris from California’s shorelines.  In San Mateo County 971 volunteers picked up 14,633 pounds of debris.
 
We did this last year. it’s not only tremendously rewarding, but you have no idea what kind of junk gets left on our beaches until you help clean them. Here’s how to participate:
 

Select the cleanup site and recruit your friends, family, and coworkers. Cleanup sites and directions for San Mateo County visit the county’s site. For other locations around the State go to http://www.coast4u.org.
 
Check in online. Bring or wear sunscreen, closed-toed shoes, a hat and gloves (disposable gloves are provided). When you check in at the cleanup location you will be given a data card to tally the items you collect. Prizes will be given for the most unusual item!
 
Pick up trash and collect data. Your data goes into The Ocean Conservancy’s database, which is used to identify the sources of debris and to help devise solutions to the marine debris problem.

 
For more information contact Sarah Pratt [email protected] or go to the STOPPP website. 
 
Dean D. Peterson PE, REHS
Director Environmental Health
San Mateo County
(650) 363-4968
http://www.smhealth.org/environ/index.shtml

The expansion Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District was done properly,  Superior Court Judge Beth Labson Freeman ruled Friday, according to the Mercury News.

Though no one but a handful of true believers on either side knew it, the lawsuit by Citizens for Responsible Open Space and Californians for Property Rights to overturn the expansion of the district has been dragging though the courts, as they say, for two years.

The groups also argued that a notice to the public from LAFCO was missing some key elements, specifically noting that the area to be annexed was not properly identified in the notice. The groups subsequently submitted 5,340 protest forms in hope of forcing a vote on the matter. However, the county elections office found that only 3,443 of the protests were valid, according to the lawsuit.

"The court finds that petitioners have failed to prove that at least 25 percent of the registered voters in the affected area filed valid protests," Labson Freeman wrote in her tentative ruling Aug. 22.

The resignation of Midpeninsula Open Space District baord member Deane Little a couple of months past the deadline for putting the seat on November’s ballot is reminiscent of past resignations as well as a "notorious incident" that seemed designed to keep the board in friendly hands, according to the Palo Alto Weekly.

Little said he was unaware of criticisms of the board in past decades, following late resignations that forced the board to appoint someone or allowed an insider candidate to file at the last minute. He would have had to resign by last June to allow time for the board to include his seat in the Nov. 7 election.

In a notorious incident in the 1970s, former board member Bill Peters simply failed to show up to file re-election forms and a different candidate, Ed Shelley, showed up instead with his own filing papers. The sleight-of-candidate move prompted the state Legislature to pass the current law allowing five extra filing days when an incumbent fails to file.

The MROSD has already announced that it plans to appoint Little’s replacement.

Sewer Authority Midcoastside (SAM), which operates the Coastside’s sewer system, has receive a report from the Environmental Protection Agency that should be a relief.

Two years ago, when the agency commenced a study of SAM following wet-weather sewage spills,  there was concern that the investigation could lead to large fines or legal action. Instead, the EPA made 14 recommendations for improving the system. SAM Manager Jack Foley says that SAM has already put into effect many of the EPA’s recommendations.  These include a "flusher" truck to inspect lines and remove grease blockages from the system, the completion of the Montara Storm Water Retention System in 2003, and an overflow reduction system in Moss Beach. However, the agency also recommended some large capital improvements that have not yet been made.

The EPA’s report contains a great deal of detail on how the Coastside’s sewers operate, past failures, and improvements that have been made to the system. You can download the report from Coastsider.