Moss Beach Park bathroom one big step closer

Scott Boyd is a member of the Montara Water and Sanitary District board.

Thursday night Montara Water and Sanitary District cleared the way for a new bathroom at Moss Beach Park.  Five years ago a broad coalition of community members came together to build the park, but at the time there was no provision for a bathroom.

Since then park usage grew, and the need became more pressing.  San Mateo County Parks and Recreation Department recently offered to fund the construction and maintenance of the bathroom with funds collected from park mitigation fees. In late April, Coastside Preservation and Recreation (CPR) brought news of the funding opportunity to the MWSD board.  CPR expressed concerns that the County needed to see that the bathroom project was reasonably free of problems and likely to reach completion or risk having the money allocated to some other project.

CPR, County Parks and Rec, and MWSD board members and staff all helped pull together a good bit of background information about the park property.  MWSD staff televised the sewer main on Virginia Avenue, and located evidence of an old connection.  In the 70’s the old school burned to the ground.  Precious little hard evidence remained, so this new find was great news.

Because of these special circumstances, MWSD’s board was able to approve a variance that will allow CPR to proceed with design, permitting, and construction of this long-awaited addition to Moss Beach Park, and to demonstrate to the County that they were right to put this project at the head of the list of worthy local projects to fund.

Video of last night’s meeting is available at http://mwsd.montara.org/?5234960