CoastWatcher

It appears that the Orange County TCA’s desparate attempt (over $50,000 per month on lobbying alone) to resurrect it’s dead Hwy 241 toll road project through the center of San Onofre State Beach Park may be working.

In breaking news, Jane Luxton, the General Counsel of the US Dept. of Commerce’s NOAA, announced today that the federal government would hold an appeal hearing (regarding the State of California’s denial of the project) at the Bren Center at the University of California Irvine, on July 24 and/or July 25.

Luxton’s maneuver is in direct contravention to California’s request that the hearing not be held until after Labor Day in September. Luxton’s determination serves the interest not of the public, but of TCA, in a variety of ways. TCA seeks a quick hearing in order to prevent environmental organizations from organizing and educating the public regarding the critical importance of the hearing. It also serves TCA’s desperate need to try to convince the Bush Administration to over rule California’s denial of the roadway as some sort of twisted sweetheart lame duck going out of office wet slobbering kiss gift. It also doesn’t hurt TCA that the hearing is now to occur mid-summer, when many are on vacation, and at an inland location far from the beach where all the damage and environmental impacts will take place.

So far the story of the so-called ‘public hearing’ is fishy. All the more reason for thousands and thousands to turn out, and make history, insuring that San Onofre State Beach is saved for future generations, just like Governor Reagan and President Nixon intended when they worked to establish this famous park.

More to follow as details become available….

ed note: Will Ego never Rest? The one-named artist known as “Wyland” wants to divert coastal education money from dozens of deserving childrens’ programs to his own personal foundation and use. Millionaire artist stands up for the little guy or greedy self promoter thinking people support coastal protection only because of him? I suppose Wyland will next claim people love whales only because he paints them. What a great guy…..

Artist says CA must halt use of whale tail plates

By NOAKI SCHWARTZ
LOS ANGELES (AP) — A whopper of a fight has escalated over who should benefit from the proceeds of California’s popular whale tail license plate.

Artist Robert Wyland, who created the image and gave it to the state to help raise funds for marine programs, said he would announce at a press conference Wednesday that the state can no longer use his work.
Wyland and his attorneys have been unsuccessfully demanding that 20 percent of the plate royalties go to his nonprofit conservation foundation — an estimated $750,000 per year.

“At the end of the day, it’s my art,” Wyland, 51, said Tuesday. Read the rest of this entry »

First the good news:  The City of Long Beach has approved a plan to study removal of those awful breakwater rock piles that have ruined the surf and polluted City beaches for decades.  And with California’s surfing population exploding, the decision comes not a moment too soon.

And now for the bad news:  The study will be done by the engineering firm Moffatt Nichol, a firm responsible for more marine resource and habitat destruction than any organization since establishment of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.  Make no mistake, MN will get the job done.  Our concern is our hope they don’t destroy the entire coast of Long Beach in the process!

For more information, check out Surfrider Foundation’s Long Beach Chapter website.

The surf that used to be:

Los Angeles Times

Long Beach agrees to study removing breakwater to cleanse beaches

The structure, built for the Navy in the ’40s to shield its ships, prevents waves from washing the city’s polluted coast.

By Deborah Schoch
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

June 19, 2008

The Long Beach City Council has hired an engineering firm to study the effects of removing or reshaping part of a massive breakwater that shields the city’s pollution-plagued beaches from ocean surf.

Surfers and environmentalists are cheering the Tuesday night vote, saying that the World War II-era breakwater prevents waves from cleansing the coastal sands. They have long lobbied city and federal agencies to launch a serious study of tearing down the breakwater’s easternmost segment or lowering it so waves can wash over it.

The 2 1/2 -mile segment lies directly offshore from the city’s beaches. It was built between 1941 and 1949 to shield ships of the U.S. Navy, which left the city in 1997.

“It was built for the Navy, the Navy left and let’s get rid of it,” said Robert Palmer, chairman of the Long Beach chapter of the Surfrider Foundation, a national environmental group. Read the rest of this entry »

Thursday, June 12, 2008

Pants on fire

Editorial posted by Barry Parr

Lanny Davis is not a stupid man, but he plays one on TV. Convincingly.

His job is to stick to whatever message his clients have paid him to disseminate, regardless of how boneheaded that message is. Such as the message that Hillary was not dead yet after the Indiana and North Carolina primaries. Or the smear that it was antisemitic to say Joe “Vote McCain” Lieberman shouldn’t be Connecticut’s Democratic senate candidate. Or that AB1991 won’t set a precedent.

Half Moon Bay is paying Lanny Davis (probably thousands of dollars an hour) to lead its disinformation campaign around AB1991. Lanny Davis is the man behind the city’s Truth Squid.

Read the rest of this entry »

California State Lt. Governor John Garamendi has discovered that the US Dept. of Commerce and NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) have been conducting secret meetings with the Orange County Transportation Corridor Agency (TCA), the proponent of the natural disaster otherwise known as the 241 Toll Road Highway that would bisect and destroy San Onofre State Beach Park.

In response, Garamendi has demanded that the meetings cease, and that, at a minimum, all proceedings be open for public scrutiny.

California has already rejected and denied the proposed toll road, finding that the environmental consequences and destruction of the State Park are not legal, justifiable or needed. TCA, unwilling to consider alternatives, has asked the Bush Administration to intervene and over rule the State of California’s decision, and a major public hearing this summer/fall will be announced shortly.

For Garamendi’s letter, and the latest information, go to Save San Onofre.

Off San Clemente, an artificial reef is going up, er, down

The structure, financed by Southern California Edison, is designed to help re-grow kelp forests that foster marine life. Kelp has been devastated by the San Onofre nuclear power plant.

By Susannah Rosenblatt
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

June 12, 2008

Rocks bigger than basketballs were pushed into the ocean off San Clemente this week to provide the foundation for a 150-acre reef for giant kelp — a project scientists say is one of the largest and most advanced in the world.

The artificial reef, to be made from roughly 125,000 tons of volcanic rock, is designed to anchor a swaying kelp forest, attract an array of marine creatures and help counteract the environmental destruction wrought by a nearby nuclear power plant.

After years of bureaucratic debate and delay, Southern California Edison is bankrolling the $40-million undertaking as part of an agreement with the state Coastal Commission. Read the rest of this entry »

Cig Flavor Enhancer:  (May Be Toxic To Humans)

Check out Surfrider Foundation’s “Catch of the Day” here.

It’s official: Caribbean monk seal is extinct

Only seal species to vanish due to human impacts; two other species at risk

After five years of futile efforts to find or confirm sightings of any Caribbean monk seals — even just one — the U.S. government on Friday announced that the species is officially extinct and the only seal to vanish due to human causes.

“Humans left the Caribbean monk seal population unsustainable after overhunting them,” Kyle Baker, a biologist for the National Marine Fisheries Service, said in a statement. “Unfortunately, this led to their demise and labels the species as the only seal to go extinct from human causes.”

A Caribbean monk seal — the only subtropical seal native to the Caribbean Sea and Gulf of Mexico — had not been seen for more than 50 years. The last confirmed sighting was in 1952 at Seranilla Bank, between Jamaica and the Yucatan Peninsula. Read the rest of this entry »