Last night at El Granada, the multi-day charratte style workshop, Traffic and Trails on the Midcoast: What Would You Do, opened at El Granada Elementary School.  The evening began with an engaging presentation by charrette leader Dan Burden of Walkable Communities.  Dan used well framed descriptions and photographs from other projects to illustrate the possibilities locally and reviewed the design elements that will be used to develop a final plan.  Participants expressed strong support for the approach taken by the charrette to listen to and involve the community.

In a series of exercises audience had opportunity to effectively express viewpoints, vision and values.  All participants had the opportunity to vote (see photo) on most valued elements that will shape the final design.

The charrette continues on Saturday with a walking tour that will leave from El Granada school shortly after 9am.  The session continues into the afternoon and a BBQ lunch (courtesy of the Half Moon Bay Lions chapter) will be provided.

Starting on Saturday, more information on outcomes from the charrette sessions will be available at the web site:  http://mprc.sanmateo.org/charrette.html .

The county is holding Green Building workshops on Monday June 30 at 6pm, in the multipurpose room

in the Library (new location), Room D-4 at El Granada Elementary School. The purpose is to discuss possible revisions to current regulations, include additional types of building, and set new standards.

Read the County’s staff report on green building [pdf] for more information on what is being considered.

The county’s Green Building Task Force and the Planning and Building Department are the sponsors.

Dan Burden (along with other experts) is coming to the Coast, to help us plan bike paths, safe highway crossings, and make our community more pedestrian friendly.

Burden is an internationally recognized planner and was cited by Time Magazine as one of the nation’s top innovators.

This first phase focuses on Miramar to the Airport, which includes one of the most problematic areas, Surfers Beach. The project is sponsored by San Mateo County and is headed up by Dave Holland, the Director of Parks and Recreation.

Everyone has an opinion—make sure yours is heard—starting June 25th (this Thursday) 7-9 PM at El Granada Elementary School.

Reprinted with permission from Montara Fog.

The county Board of Supervisors will be holding a hearing on the county’s update of its Local Coastal Program at 5pm today at Half Moon Bay High School.

The Coastal Commission staff returned the update to the County with about 300 pages of recommendations and background. The county will respond to the staff report at the Coastal Commission, probably at the August meeting in San Francisco.

This is an opportunity to tell the county whether you support either the county’s version of the LCP, or the Coastal Commission staff’s recommendations.

The county is holding Green Building workshops on Wednesdays June 30 and July 28 from 6 to 9pm, in the multipurpose room at El Granada Elementary School. The purpose is to discuss possible revisions to current regulations, include additional types of building, and set new standards.

The county’s Green Building Task Force and the Planning and Building Department are the sponsors.

Comments in italics are by Coastsider

Jim Larimer’s recent column in the Half Moon Bay Review is nearly incomprehensible if you don’t speak the secret language of property rights extremists. In it, he tries to convince us that the city of Half Moon Bay should let Chop Keenan develop Beachwood, rather than pay they settlement they (cynically, yet foolishly) agreed to. He fails to make his case.

He also uses innuendo and falsehoods to try and draw a line between what he calls "no-growthers" (anyone who doesn’t agree with his plans for the Coastside) and environmentally-minded Coastsiders (who are more than half the population).

Let’s take a look at his argument. You can mouse over the highlighted phrases for more detail if you like. I apologize in advance for the length of this deconstruction, but Mr. Larimer’s essay is full of rich material. The indented material includes his entire piece, so nothing was taken out of context.

The U.S. District Court for Northern California ruled in 2007 that the city had taken the Beachwood property by first flooding it and then by declaring it a wetland [The federal judge did not say the wetland determination was a taking]. The value taken from the property owner was established by the court to be the value added to the property if had it been fully developed as originally planned [The valuation was nuts, but it’s no longer at issue].

On March 27, 2008, the city entered into an agreement with the property owner to provide him with a permit to develop the property by June 30 of this year or to buy it at a loss-of-value price of $18 million. If they are unable to pay in full by Aug. 29, the city will owe the property owner $19.9 million plus interest on any remaining unpaid debt until it is paid in full. A bond to raise the cash to pay this debt in full by Aug. 29 will require substantial principal and interest payments to be paid from property taxes for many years to come and will limit the services that would otherwise be funded by our property taxes.

The city could act to restore the full value of the property by allowing the improperly installed storm sewer to be fixed and by additionally providing the owner with a building permit. The city would be required to confess its error in ruling that the property is a wetland [There is no evidence that this was ever an option]. No action to admit this error or to re-examine the process that made it has been taken by the city. The most likely outcome now is that the city will purchase this land in accordance with the 2008 agreement.

Mr. Larimer repeats a familiar demand: "Rewrite/reinterpret/ignore the city’s definition of wetland and let the building begin!  We need the tax revenue!". There is no evidence that this is an option at Beachwood, and no evidence that it would satisfy the settlement.

We’ll discuss his tax-roll foolishness in a moment.

The act of purchasing the property acknowledges that it is a wetland unsuitable for almost any development [The property was always a wetland. That’s why they drained it]. It will be a vacant lot, an eyesore [In Mr. Larimer’s eyes, from the highway, at 45mph.] in perpetuity, sandwiched between two housing developments on similar properties. The only winner if this happens will be the no-growth political faction [No such faction exists.] whose political leadership on previous city councils created this disaster by ignoring the reason the property became flooded and then denying a permit to develop it [That’s not an option]. Beachwood is an example of their many victories in controlling growth in our community.

In other words, it’s the city’s fault for not ignoring the law at the request of a powerful developer. Not even Judge Walker went that far.

Is Beachwood an "eyesore"?  I’ve walked the ground at Beachwood, and once you go in about 100 feet, beyond the highway noise, it’s really pretty nice. The open space blends into the hillside—where Mr. Larimer wants to build even more houses and a bypass—in a seamless environment. He’s right that it’s kind of homely from the highway, but it’s a bad idea to plan our communities to be most pleasing when viewed from a moving car.

Is a uniform wall of single-family homes (and their six-foot fences) along Highway 1 is more beautiful than a glimpse our hillsides and natural scrub?

Mr. Larimer keeps referring to some shadowy "no growth faction", imputing multiple strawman motives to them. Who are they? What is his evidence that they exist? He offers us nothing, only their supposed motives and mysterious misdeeds.

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.

The San Mateo County League for Coastside Protection greatly appreciates and thanks Senator Leland Yee and Assemblymember Jerry Hill for their efforts (AB/SB 650) on behalf of Half Moon Bay’s residents in trying to craft a solution to the city’s financial problems due to its ill-considered Beachwood settlement agreement. Besides expressing appreciation, we would like to offer a few ideas we think would help move their bill beyond the mounting opposition from various individuals and groups.
 
The most obvious problem stems from our legislators’ good intention in trying to obtain $10 million for the city with as few strings attached as possible. This could only occur absent an appraisal of the land’s worth, a nonstarter with the park and environmental folks: they object that this presents a potential abuse of Proposition 84 park bond funds, and we agree that this is problematic. However, there is another way to go that should garner less opposition from this quarter, and that is by reverting back to the funding source for Senator Yee’s previous bill, SB 863, which relied on Proposition 1C housing/park funds.
 
SB 863 foundered last year because of opposition from housing advocates who objected to the funds going solely to park development. They might well have become allies if housing, particularly lower-cost housing, was proposed on some of the property. Currently the city is updating its housing element and like much of the San Francisco Bay area, seeks to improve the potential for affordable housing. In 2001, the California Coastal Commission approved a Coastal Development Permit for houses on the southwestern portion of Beachwood where there are no wetlands. The city has an opportunity to close ranks and solve several problems at once.
 
We support limited building in non-resource areas on the Beachwood property as a way to accommodate an objective appraisal process – it is not conscionable that the property be acquired for more than it is worth, and its worth should be fairly determined by an independent agency, such as SB 863 anticipated in designating the Coastal Conservancy, the state agency that specializes in coastal property acquisition and administration. Finally, we believe that SB 863 correctly anticipated the city’s financial needs regarding park acquisition and development.

Respectfully submitted,

Dana Kimsey
Co-Chair, SMC League for Coastside Protection

The website of the Pillar Ridge manufactured home community has set up an informational website about the proposed Big Wave office complex.  Pillar Ridge is the closest neighborhood to the Big Wave site.