Four beaches on the Coastside and in Pacifica have reported tar balls, likely as a result of the Cosco Busan spill, according to Dean Peterson, the county’s Director of Environmental Health.

 

• Linda Mar State Beach - several quarter to softball size tar balls

 

• Rockaway Beach - several quarter size tar balls

 

• Sharp Park Beach - several dime size tar balls

 

• Fitzgerald Marine Reserve - Several quarter to half-dollar size tar balls. There is oil near the seals, no impact has been reported on the seals.

The O’Brien Group, the contractor for the Cosco Busan spill, responded to the beaches and have been collecting the tarballs this afternoon on the beaches. Monitoring will continue.

To report oil or tar balls on beaches please call the county’s OES department at 650.363.4790.

Mitch Woods and His Rocket 88’s are back from an world tour and will be appearing in Pescadero to benefit education and children! "One of the top boogie/blues piano men around" according to the New York Post! It will be an evening of great music, dancing, celebrating and being inspired.

A talk about "Developing Capacities for a Brighter Future" will be presented by Bob Monsen, a 20+ year Pescadero resident and founder of The Insitute of Social Renewal. "We must find ways to free education from the special interests of Big Government and Big Business and leave it’s No Child Left Behind and High Stakes Testing." The Insitute of Social Renewal is a 501 (c) 3 organization, dedicated to fostering a healthy society through supporting quality education "Accessible to All". For more infomation about the organization, go to www.socialrenewal.com

Dinner will be provided by Cindy Simms of Pescadero Country Store. An auction, including vacation getaways, works of art and more, will round out the evening. The event will be at the IDES Grand Hall, Stage Road, Pescadero. Saturday, Feb 2 at 5pm.

Suggested donation: $100.00. (larger donations gratefully accepted)

Highway 92 is now open. It was closed in both directions at 9am today because trees and power lines had fallen in to the road.

Devil’s Slide is closed. When it was closed and for how long is still unclear.

At 3pm today, Devil’s Slide was closed in both directions, according to John Cunliffe at Caltrans. Cunliffe says crews were on the Slide to remove boulders that had fallen onto the road south of the Slide. Other crews are on the Slide dealing with storm water and checking the main monitoring system.

It’s a good idea to stay off the Slide if you can avoid it, or to check the status of the road with 511.org before heading over the Slide.

UPDATE: Lt. Ken Jones at the Sheriff’s substation in Moss Beach told us 5:30pm that Caltrans is on the Slide with heavy equipment, clearing the road right now. They estimate it will take a minimum 3 hours to clear. Be sure to check before you leave.

In a letter to the editor of the Half Moon Bay Review, County Supervisor Rich Gordon suggests that the Midcoast Community Council has outlived its usefulness. Gordon’s letter was a reply to Review editor Clay Lambert’s highly critical column about the Council in last week’s review.

Given the numerous paths and methods that now exist for communication between Coastside residents and the County, it may be the case that the MCC has served its purpose and possibly outlived its usefulness in its current form. As this is an issue of critical importance to me I need to hear your thoughts regarding the possibility of disbanding MCC along with any of your ideas for new and innovative ways that we can keep in touch. Again I must re-iterate that the MCC exists today at your request, if it is no longer the form of representation you desire, changes will come from your mandate. I look forward to hearing from all of you and thank you for your support.

Click to read Gordon’s letter, and to comment on this issue.

A new documentary by a Soquel filmmaker shows elephant seals are making a massive comeback from near-extinction, reports Metro Santa Cruz.

The fattened young pups are left onshore to figure out for themselves how to enter the water, dive for fish and make a 10,000-mile solo migration that makes their species the unparalleled distance runners of the mammalian universe, outstripping even the accomplishments of the gray whale.

The 25 percent of pups who evade starvation and white shark attacks during this vulnerable period will repeat an astounding annual cycle, migrating to feeding grounds in the Northern Pacific twice each year, diving as deep as a mile for fish and for up to an hour at a time along the way. They’ll return to the rookeries of their births once in summer to molt and once in winter to pup and breed. The males, 14 to 16 feet long and weighing up to 5,000 pounds, will battle furiously for mating rights to entire harems of females, which are much smaller at 10-12 feet and 1,200-2,000 pounds. While on terra firma, both sexes will fast.

Their serial migration is a feat that never ceases to amaze Soquel filmmaker Drew Wharton.

There’s a good audio story about this on NPR’s site as well as a great photo gallery and trailer for the film at Wharton’s site.

County Supervisor Rich Gordon will discuss landslide mitigation on Jan 28 at 7pm at La Honda Elementary School. The county is proposing the La Honda community pay for about $3 million of the cost and 536 parcel owners will pay $5,600 per parcel and 13 parcel owners close to the slide will pay around $11,000. If the voters reject this in April, Gordon’s office says it is not clear what will happen.

The Cuesta La Honda Guild has posted a brief paper at the post office describing the situation and a map showing which parcels are part of the assessment district to pay for the landslide mitigation.

Supervisor Gordon’s office would like to address the following questions:

 

• Who should pay for the landslide mitigation?

 

• What will happen to La Honda if it is not fixed and the slide continues?

 

• Who should negotiate with the County?

Supervisor Rich Gordon’s office will be holding office hours at the Moss Beach Substation on Thursday, January 24 from 10am to noon.

The Half Moon Bay City Council is holding a workshop on the Yamagiwa case at Adcock Center on Tuesday night.  The meeting is scheduled to start at 7pm and have a "hard stop" at 9pm. The council plans to update the community on the appeal and negotiations with the plaintiff, as well as take input from the community.

The owner of Level Lea Farms, one of the most picturesque farms in Pescadero, sold a conservation easement for $1.27 million to a land trust, reports Julia Scott in the County Times.

Farm owner Meredith Reynolds said the deal, reached with the Monterey County Agricultural and Historical Land Conservancy, would allow her to keep the farm in her family, as it has been since her ancestor, Lafayette Chandler, bought the 190-acre tract in 1860. ...

Under the deal, Meredith and her husband, James Reynolds, gave up development rights on their farm in return for a lump-sum payment of $1.27 millionfrom state and federal agencies. They will invest some of the money in maintaining the land and paying off growing expenses associated with running a farm in San Mateo County — expenses like flood and liability insurance and building repairs.

With its rustic view of the Pescadero hills and location less than two miles from the ocean, the property would likely have proved irresistible to a developer of rural estate homes, according to Charles Tyson, manager of the state Department of Conservation’s California Farmland Conservation Program.

The land could have been split into eight new housing lots someday, according to state regulations. The state program contributed roughly half the funds toward purchasing the easement.

Current farming revenue doesn’t cover the farm’s expenses, but the easement will allow the owners to make the land available to local farmers at an economically feasible rate. Pescadero farmer Joe Muzzi and his sons have cultivated Brussels sprouts, pumpkins, lettuce and other vegetables on 90 acres of Level Lea Farm for years.