San Mateo County Environmental Health has ordered the closure of Esplanade, Linda Mar, Rockaway and Sharp Park beaches as a "precautionary measure". Tar balls from the Golden Gate oil spill washed up on Esplanade Beach in Pacifica Monday. The tar balls range in size from tear drop to a couple of inches in diameter.

Contractors employed by the ship owners are assessing the extent of the contamination and will be cleaning up the beaches, according to the county.

Grey Whale Cove and Montara State Beach have been placed on "Warning" status due to bacterial contamination.  No oil has been spotted there, according to Beverly Thames, Public Information Officer, San Mateo County Health Department. Earth911 is reporting that Gray Whale Cove and Montara State Beach have been closed due to the oil spill, but Thames says this is incorrect.

You can check the status of beaches in San Mateo County on the Health Department’s website.

Following its investigation of incidents at a football game against Sequoia High School, the Cabrillo Unified School District has concluded there was no evidence of "any retribution in any manner by the Half Moon Bay High School football teams towards the Sequoia football teams" for personal fouls by the Sequoia team. This conclusion is based on statements by the game referee and the Half Moon Bay High coaches. You can download the press release from Coastsider [pdf]. This file also includes copies of the district’s and students’ apologies to Sequoia.

According to the release, "Sequoia has identified an incident" during the game that is still under investigation, saying that if there is substantive evidence, any discipline would have to remain confidential

The district says did not investigate reports of rock and egg throwing, which took place off school grounds, but that all evidence will be turned over to the Half Moon Bay Police.

Even in our relatively peaceful community there are kids that could jump in your car, slam it in gear, stomp the gas pedal and do great damage in less time than you could sprint 10 feet.

Twice in the last three weeks I have seen people leave their cars running while they dashed in to pick up their mail at the El Granada post office.

I work as an aide at a Special Education school. There are kids in my school that fall in love with cars and dream of driving just like ordinary kids.

Some of the kids will grab a steering wheel and jerk the shift lever and stomp on the gas pedal just to see what happens. Imagine a youth with the size and strength of a high school football player and the judgment of a 3 year old trying to drive your car in the post office parking lot.

If your car has a weak battery or you have a baby that needs air conditioning or you have a hard starting diesel then switch to an alternate mail pickup scheme.

Information from Mark Massara, Save the Coast/Sierra Club

If you see oiled wildlife, don’t pick it up—- the oil is toxic. Instead, report it by calling (877) 823 6926 so that a search team can come to your area.

If you want to help volunteer with caring for and treating oiled wildlife, call (800) 228 4544. A good source for getting involved with volunteering to rehabilitate oiled wildlife is the Oiled Wildlife Care Network, at http://www.vetmed.ucdavis.edu/owcn/.

If you want to help with cleaning up the beaches, training sessions are being held around the Bay Area so citizens can learn how to help. Check out http://www.baykeeper.org/news/oilspill.html for news about the training sessions, and help clean up your coast!

Rob Gaskill is the new Superintendent of the Cabrillo Unified School District. He’s the new boss of our teachers’ bosses.

Coinciding with the long-awaiting commencement of construction on our new middle school is the retirement of CUSD Superintendent John Bayless, making room for an outsider to take the reins as school superintendent. In this video Rob introduces himself to our community and offers insight into his approach and his way of thinking.

Three oiled surf scoters were found on Francis Beach in Half Moon Bay Sunday afternoon. One was already dead, one died shortly after being picked up and one seemed well enough that it might survive. The latter was unable to fly and was slowly losing its body heat.

This could be a really big deal if the oil starts washing up on the beach. That is due to happen soon,  but no one knows how bad the oil will become. The oiled birds, we now know, are likely to be a serious problem.

There are Peninsula Humane Society and Marine Mammal Center persons working along this coast and are coordinating with State Parks volunteers.

Volunteers will be accepted today at the Half Moon Bay State Beach—Francis Beach—and the need for volunteers the rest of the week depends upon how things progress.  Volunteers will need to check in at Francis Beach, but may be asked to go to another location in this area. Volunteers should call the State Park Kiosk at

650-712-8820

(650)726-8820 to be sure there is a person available to show what needs to be done.

The Cabrillo Unified School District have apologized to Sequoia High School for incidents at a football game on Friday, Nov 2, reports the County Times.

Cougar football players also will have to undergo sensitivity training before next season, Cabrillo Unified Interim Superintendent Allan Kass said. And structural changes will be made to the stadium area to prevent egg- and rock-throwers from keeping out of sight.

"There are structural things we could do to make people feel safer (at games)," Kass said. "This is not a regular occurrence. That was the last home game, and we haven’t had any of this at any other home games."

The changes to the stadium, which will be in place by next football season, could include putting up fencing where the streakers entered the field, adding floodlights and trimming bushes around the stadium so anyone throwing objects from off school grounds could be easily spotted, Kass said.

Wednesday’s scheduled monthly meeting of the Midcoast Community Council has been cancelled due to an anticipated lack of a quorum. The next scheduled meeting will be Wednesday, December 12.

Darin Boville has posted some great photos of Comet Holmes in the Montara sky, along with instructions on how to find it for yourself, over at Montara Fog.  There’s also more at Sky & Telescope.

Two weeks ago Rich Gordon (of the Board of Supervisors, the governing body for the unincorporated midcoast) held a workshop in Half Moon Bay to get input on setting goals for San Mateo County. It was a high-tech affair with electronic voter handsets and instant results displayed on the big screen.

Very cool.

We need to do more of this sort of thing. Get people together. Talk about shared vales, shared goals. See what we can come up with.

I look at this workshop as a sort of prototype of the sort of thing that would go a long way toward making the coastside a healthier place, politically speaking.

If you missed the workshop but still want to take the survey it is all online.