The proposed 241 private toll road that would have destroyed 60% of San Onofre State Beach Park was the subject of a very monumental hearing February 14. As the California Coastal Commission anticipated a colossal turnout at the very critical toll road hearing, the usual Oceanside City Council Chamber location was substituted for the huge space of the Del Mar fairgrounds. Just after 11pm and nearly 14 hours of presentations from members of the Save Trestles campaign, the TCA and personal testimonies from the public, the California Coastal Commission voted 8-2 against the proposed 241 Toll Road extension deciding that certain aspects of the project failed to meet California’s coastal regulations. Their vote prohibited transportation officials from creating the first toll-way to run through a state park.

It is estimated that more than 3,500 people rallied to defend the park. It was the largest turnout for any meeting in the commission’s 36-year history for what we are calling the Woodstock of our Save Our Coast movement. People of all ages and socio-economic backgrounds swarmed in and around the hall decked out with slogan-riddled t-shirts and rally signs.

 

Surfline quoted former world champ Pete Townend stating that it was great to see “these real people who recognize San Onfore State Park’s true value in their lives, not just a bunch of paid sign holders in orange shirts who look like they’ve never seen the beach.” Here Townend was referring to the small number of road workers that were forced to support the 241-extension by their union. Similar surf celebrities could be found scattered throughout the crowds showing their support to the park such as Greg and Rusty Long, CJ and Damien Hobgood, and Evan Slater just to name a few.

This victory is deserving of huge thanks to the Save San Onofre Coalition for doing such an awesome job in this long-time building movement to defend San Onofre’s scenic views, endangered species and world-class breaks. Partners involved include: the Surfrider Foundation, Sierra Club, Wildcoast, Natural Resources Defense Council, Endangered Habitats League and countless other magnificent organizations.

Thomas Margo, the TCA’s chief executive officer, said he will appeal the commission’s decision to the U.S. Secretary of Commerce. However, this is definitely the greatest victory we have seen yet, which has provided a great deal of hope for making the park’s protection permanent.

 

Cory Keen

The decisive rejection last Wednesday by the California Coastal Commission (8-2) of the Transportation Corridor Agencies (TCA) proposed 241 toll road that would have obliterated much of San Onofre State Beach Park was one of the most significant decisions in the history of the agency. The vast and overwhelming coalition that assembled to defend one of California’s most popular state parks and one of the world’s best and most famous surf spots was historic. The more than 3,000 people who assembled to defend San Onofre were the largest crowd in the history of Coastal Commission hearings.

Since the environmental movement is not accustomed to such overwhelming victories, we do not always analyze our successes or failures. But due to the scope of the landmark movement to preserve San Onofre and the diversity of the coalition that came together in the “Woodstock of the surf movement” last Wednesday, it is critical to understand why the Save Trestles-San Onofre Coalition won.

Here is a very brief and preliminary synopsis of the Super Bowl size victory:

Coalitions Matter: While the Surfrider Foundation did a brilliant job of mobilizing the masses and creating the coolest marketing campaign in the history of the environmental movement (kudos to Surfrider CEO Jim Moriarty and Matt McClain, Surfrider’s savant marketing and communications director), the Save Trestles/San Onofre coalition included the best and brightest of California’s environmental community. The Sierra Club, through the Friends of the Foothills alliance used the best tactics of grassroots organizing and direct mail to get the public to take action and organize key advocacy trips to Sacramento for grassroots campaigners (including myself).

NRDC, Endangered Habitats League, California Coastal Protection Network, California State Parks Foundation, The City Project, and a host of other organizations and consultants also provided the political and legal savvy to help derail the toll road. Additionally elected officials such as Susan Davis, Christine Kehoe, Lori Saldana, Pam Slater Price and a variety of California elected city officials provided their strong endorsement and created legislation to ensure the protection of San Onofre. Overall this was as sophisticated environmental coalition and campaign I have seen.

Diversity Counts: One of the most cogent arguments made to the Coastal Commissioners was that obliterating San Mateo Campground and San Onofre Beach State Park was an issue of environmental health and justice. The recreational users of San Onofre State Beach Park are among the most culturally diverse of any coastal state park in California. On any given day in San Onofre State Beach Park you can talk quad design with Chinese-America surfers from Irvine, admire the grace of multi-cultural cross-county high school running teams from San Clemente traversing the park’s trails, marvel at the prowess of some of the world’s best Hispanic surfers, and listen to conversations “In about four different languages” according to Pat Zabrocki of Surfshot Magazine  in an interview with Treehugger Radio.

At the commission hearing, Los Angeles civil rights and environmental attorney, Robert Garcia  and Acjachemen activist Rebecca Robles and other Native American leaders, provided a moving and passionate defense of San Onofre as a critical site for providing access to open space and recreational resources for underserved communities. The San Mateo Creek watershed is actually Panhe, a key Acjachemen religious, historical, and ceremonial site. The involvement of Latino, African American, Asian-Pacific Islander and Native American organizations in the Save San Onofre coalition only underscores the need for the environmental movement to dramatically expand its attempt to reach out to underserved communities and people of color. This is not just an issue of tactics and strategy but a moral and ethical imperative that will help us reclaim the heart and soul of the environmental movement.

The Surf Industry Flexed its Muscles: The multi-billion dollar surf industry is relatively young and just starting to flex its political muscles (please note that WiLDCOAST receives financial support from a number of surf companies and the SIMA trade association). The surf industry was an active participant in this campaign and was out in full-force for the Commission hearing. This is a very positive and welcome sign for the future of the coastal protection movement in California and worldwide.

The TCA’s Arrogance: Alex Brant-Zawadzki, a feisty writer The OC Weekly said it best in a recent blog  (“Why the Toll Road is Dead”).

..the root cause of the Transportation Corridor Agencies’ failure to gain Coastal Commission approval for their Final Solution to San Onofre State Beach: ARROGANCE.

The TCA overreached by attempting to ram a private toll road through one of California’s most beloved state parks and global ground zero of the surfing world. The secretive agency must have believed that surfers and the people of California would sit idly by while it paved over paradise. The TCA blew it.

This battle is far from over. The TCA will take it case to the U.S. Department of Commerce, but the decisive nature of the Coastal Commission decision proves that in California, it is a bad idea to mess with our state parks.

Originally published in the Voiceofsandiego.org

– SERGE DEDINA

FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES

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Park Toll Road Plan Rejected in California

Like the millions of Californians who love San Onofre State Beach Park, we were dismayed by the Guvernator’s support for the TCA toll road that will destroy a large portion of San Onofre Beach State Park. But the Los Angeles Times said it best in a recent editorial,

Maybe Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger was trying to make up for planned cuts to state parks. Otherwise, it’s hard to imagine what could have led to his recent support for the Foothill South toll road.

In announcing his change from neutral on the highway that’s proposed to take traffic pressure off Interstate 5 in San Clemente, the governor said the project was “essential to protect our environment” and could be built in a manner “that will enhance and foster use of the coast.” This is environmental doublespeak. As planned, the toll road would cut through a wilderness preserve in eastern Orange County and then traverse the length of a narrow, pristine canyon that makes up most of San Onofre State Beach, one of the most popular California state parks. The governmentSchwarzenegger heads is suing to stop the project.

Perhaps the $100 million offered by the Transportation Corridor Agencies as environmental mitigation — to be used for improvements in other state parks — enticed the governor at this vulnerable moment when he’s proposing to close 48 parks temporarily as a budget fix. But the mitigation money could not begin to make up for the damage the road would cause. It wouldn’t buy more parkland. What makes all this especially paradoxical is that the wilderness preserve and the campgrounds at San Onofre were themselves created as mitigation measures for other developments.

Both metaphorically and geographically, the Foothill South tollway would lead the state down a bad route. As proposed, it would go where few are interested in heading — eastern Orange County. Commuters on the I-5 are generally headed toward the central county; the toll road agency is betting that to beat the traffic, motorists will pay a substantial toll to drive out of their way, a strategy that has failed before.

The best that can be said is that the toll road agency worked hard to find the most environmentally acceptable route among an environmentally unacceptable set of options. It doesn’t have to end there, though. Agency officials have been loath to consider widening the I-5 with toll lanes through the congested area. This would be considerably more expensive and involves eminent domain proceedings. But toll lanes along existing freeways have proved popular. And eminent domain was used successfully to widen the I-5 through central and northern Orange County. When the California Coastal Commission meets Feb. 6 to consider the Foothill South proposal, it should disregard the governor’s attempt to make environmental degradation sound good and insist on a better path.

So join us on February 6th at the Del Mar Fairgrounds for a meeting of the California Coastal Commission that will decide the fate of one of Southern California’s last coastal open space preserves.
Serge

Desalinization projects are the newest hope for the developer lobby in Southern California to find new ways to provide water for all the new construction projects they want to build in our increasingly dry desert. The limitations of course are power, concerns about where to put these plants and their impact on the marine and coastal ecosystem (since they suck in and discharge huge amounts of water.

But the OC’s Chuck Devore, of the 70th Assembly District has an idea to get around this. He wants to build a new nuclear power plant at San Onofre to provide energy for desal for all of southern California. Here is Mr. Devore in the OCBlog:

More nuclear power = More fresh water
I introduced a bill to allow the construction of a new nuclear reactor at San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station for the purpose of powering a major desalination facility. My bill, ABX2 5, was introduced in the special session on water and would allow a new reactor to be built at San Onofre in North San Diego County. The site, which contains two operating reactors, could host a third if 20 percent of the new reactor’s power is dedicated to water desalination. Anew reactor could produce about 1,200 megawatts of power. My bill would require that 240 megawatts of that power be designated for sea water desalination. This could provide about two-thirds of San Diego County’s fresh water needs. Or, the fresh water could be piped out to San Diego, South Orange County, and Western Riverside County – all areas threatened by the tenuousness of the state’s dwindling water supplies.
All the best

Chuck–our dwindling water supplies are due to the massive development boom in Southern California, drought associated with climate change and our unsustainable H2O consumption practices. Nukes=Water. What a nightmare. How about just implementing a green water conservation strategy for California. The irony here is that Chuck introduced the bill because the goal of the energy industry to have LNG plants up and down the coast in California has disappeared.
Serge