The Coastest with the Mostest

#73, August 8, 2001

What is that? I asked my son, as we passed the strange tower alongside the freeway just south of Pismo Beach. It looked like heavy-metal mutant lily, its gray flared trumpet blossoms facing the four directions from atop a tall gray pole.

I knew it was a siren, part of the emergency warning system for the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant located a few dozen miles up the coast. Designed to wake-you-shake-you if the DC reactor core ever heads for China. I tell him we'd have one of those hooters up over Putnam Plaza, as sentinel for the Bodega Head NPP, if it hadn't have been for local hero Bill Kortum and his fellow coast protectors. Now we have only the Hole in the Head, the abandoned "future home of the dome", resting on the San Andreas fault, to remind us of how bad planning can get.

The Bodega Head project was one glaring example of the rampant development which battered the California coastline during the decades following WWII. Left unchecked, the forces of commerce paired with compliant local governments might have given us a continuous shoal of freeways, gated subdivisions and power plants erected over wetlands, dunes and bluffs, from Point Loma to the Smith River. Might have…

Like the ocean waves are drawn to the shore, Californians are drawn to their coastline. And why not? It has something for everyone. For many it's a place to live, or a source of livelihood-- growing fog-loving crops or fishing in the rich offshore waters. For some, it's a place for sport, or simply beating the heat. At a deeper level, I wonder if our beach visits return us to the fun-filled innocence of our sandbox years? Or perhaps it's a trace of genetic memory, Mother Ocean calling us home.

Whatever the appeal, there have been ever more of us wanting ever more from the coast. Interests have clashed, and for a long time privatization and development seemed to prevail. Luckily, Californian's loved their coastline enough to take an extraordinary measure. In 1972, after several years of seeing the development lobby deep-six coastal protection legislation in Sacramento, California voters passed Proposition 20, the Coastal Initiative. It chartered the California Coastal Commission to provide comprehensive planning and regulation of projects along the entire coastline. The revolutionary Prop 20 declared that the coast is "a distinct and valuable natural resource belonging to all the people."

Kortum provides a succinct assessment of the Commission's past and future in an issue of California Coast and Ocean: "The Coastal Commission has carried out the spirit of that declaration by successfully insisting on public access to the State-owned tidelands and beaches. It has also worked to protect open space, landscapes, and viewsheds that characterize the California coast, and to preserve wetlands and other wildlife habitat…. Its work has been complemented by that of the Coastal Conservancy, which has completed hundreds of projects." I hasten to add that locally, the Coastal Conservancy is providing a $450,000 grant for a Petaluma Marsh nature trail, to connect the Petaluma Marina to Schollenberger Park.

In 1972, our campaign slogan was "Save Our Coast!" But Peter Douglas, Proposition 20 author and Coastal Commission Executive Director, is quick to say, "The coast is never saved. Like any coveted geography, it's always being saved." Kortum adds, " The Commission should constantly remind itself that it protects the equivalent of a public trust created by the original grassroots initiative." And Bill sees citizens in the critical role: "They must stand watch over local and statewide decisions that are detrimental to the coastline and work for funding measures that underwrite preservation and restoration of the coastal commons for all of us."

Fortunately, the Commission's new budget, which has passed both the State Senate and Assembly, finally gives the Commission the staffing they need to continue fulfilling their mandate. If you want to help keep saving our coast, 1) ask Governor Davis (governor@governor.ca.gov) to support this budget, and 2) get involved in the Sierra Club's Coastal Campaign by sending an email to mark.massara@sierraclub.org. Tell them Bill sent you. ;-)