Good morning everyone. Welcome to the Friday session of the California Coastal
Commission. We're so excited to have members of the local government working
group with us. I know they'll introduce themselves, but it's gonna be a great day.
We'll begin with a roll call, please. Good morning. Commissioner O'Malley, present.
commissioner Escalante she on the way nice advice your heart present
commissioner Jackson present commissioner Kelly present
mr. Lopez present day commissioner Lowenberg commissioner Smith present
Commissioner Moreno present Commissioner Wilson Akki
Commissioner Nockwall present Commissioner Eckerly here
Commissioner Williams happy Friday and chair Harmon here we have a quorum
awesome thank you so now I believe we're going right into the local government
Workshop, Working Group Workshop.
Kaylin, it's very nice to see you.
We'll turn it over to you.
Testing, thank you.
Good morning, everyone.
My name is Kaylin McGee.
I'm a facilitator.
I and my colleague Megan Wiley have been supporting
the Working Group since 2019.
I'm going to do the briefest of introductions and agenda
reviews, and we'll get right into this workshop.
This is the eighth of the local government
working, excuse me, local government workshops.
Even before this working group was convened,
with some years in between, there were periodic meetings
of local government leaders and the commission.
In 2019, local leaders came with a priority list
of challenges that were impeding the updates
of local coastal programs with an invitation
and a request to focus and work on these.
and at the top of the list was sea level rise.
So since 2019, this local government working group
has been, you'll hear this,
working towards the statewide consistency
in the application of the Coastal Act
with local flexibility in land use planning and priorities
and adaptation.
The, this working group is comprised of
three city elected officials,
three county supervisors, two commissioners,
staff from local jurisdictions
and staff from the commission.
And in this way, don't mean to use a highfalutin term,
but the idea is that this is a thought leadership group.
That composition of people can explore creative ideas
to difficult and persistent problems
and have been doing so.
And so what we'd like to do today
is first review, the members themselves would like to talk
with you about the work of this group,
how we started, what our principles are.
With the help of commission staff,
we wanna talk about some upcoming guidance,
technical and policy on adaptation,
and how that has related to the work of the working group.
And then in particular, we want to present to you
for your review, and ideally your eventual adoption,
is a call to action to accelerate the pace and scale
of adaptation on the coast.
This group has come up with creative ideas
and you are aware of the many other activities going on
and California collectively would serve itself
by putting some pieces in place that allow
for more proactive planning and adaptation.
So we're gonna talk about that.
Chair, if it's okay with you, the way we'd like to do it
is presentations first with opportunity to discuss
after some of our members speak.
In the middle, we have done before public comment
right after the presentation so that then
the subsequent discussion between the members,
the open discussion with the members and the commissioners
can use the info that came from public comment.
And then we'll close and that's that.
If that sounds good, I would like to do two things
and I will stop talking.
First, I'd like to introduce the members
of the working group, and I'm gonna read a list
just in the interest of saving time,
and then I'll introduce some of our presenters.
So, here who is, here who is,
these are the people working very hard,
and dedicating a lot of time for all of us,
thinking about adaptation.
Of course, it's led by Director Hucklebridge,
and additional staff includes Madeline Cavalieri,
Kelsey Ducklow, Erin Praylor, Brittany Cuzalino,
Carrie Batha, that's how much staff
and there have been more that commission dedicates to this.
Our two commissioners serving on this group
are Commissioner Wilson and Jackson.
From the counties we've got Supervisor Bruce Gibson,
Matt Levere, and on their way in as new members,
Natalie Arroyo and Wendy Rudiskew.
Jordan Wells from CSAC.
Eric Friedman has been a dedicated member
and they are still counting the vote tallies
down in Santa Barbara.
Sue Beckmeyer from Pacifica
and Mayor Ed Wagy from Pismo Beach.
Also on their way in, Mark Enmier from San Clemente,
Andy Hall and either Tess Alden Smith from Cal Cities
and also Stewart, what's-
Amy Stewart, pardon me.
Pardon me.
Staff includes, or jurisdiction staff
that has done an amazing amount of work
includes Melissa Hetrick, Melissa Sparks-Crams,
Tyler Foltz, Scott Grahams, and finally, some past members.
Ed Spriggs from Imperial Beach.
Commissioner Harmon has served with us.
Dwight Warden, John Leopold, Jill Hardy, Carol Groom,
Linda Hopkins, and of course, Jack Ainsworth.
So these are the folks who have been working since 2019
for Creative Options, and we wanna talk about them now.
Please let me introduce Bruce Gibson, Sue Beckmeyer,
and Mary Edwagy.
Thank you, Kalen.
Madam Chair, members of the Commission,
it's as always a great pleasure to be with you.
I wanna just offer you some framing ideas
that I think will be familiar to you.
The interaction, formal
interaction between the work,
the local jurisdictions
and the commission has a long
and what's the right word,
robust history.
And I really appreciate
the review of that history that's
provided in the staff report.
It takes me down memory lane
because I've been involved
in all eight of the workshops
and seen an evolution that is
really encouraging to me.
We have introduced an idea
to you at our last workshop
that stands on the brink
of possibility here.
And I want to frame
the possibilities that lie
ahead by focusing our attention
into what we have seen
in video recordings,
both in broadcast news
and on social media,
of the situation
along the California coast,
as it is right now.
An extraordinary combination
of physical phenomenon
is upon us,
with an unprecedented El Nino
exacerbated by a Kelvin wave
matched up with the perigee
of the moon and the Earth
bringing king tides.
And we're seeing extraordinary
impacts on the coast,
even without direct storm
related action.
Simply swell events have caused
an enormous amount of damage.
And I look at that as sort
of a time machine taking us
into the 2050s.
And that, as according to quite
a number of predictions,
could be what the baseline
conditions of the 2050s
might look like.
We've talked about the impacts
of sea level rise
on the California coast
for quite a long time.
And I think one
of the reasons that we have
had eight workshops on it,
and we'll probably have more,
is the extraordinary scale
of the issue.
You start with the physical
scale, the physical scale
of changes to the Earth's
atmosphere and its oceans
and its impact on the coast,
which is, in many places,
so heavily populated,
in some places, hardly populated
at all, if at all.
You look at the economic scale
of the issues that we face,
with the simple financial,
the value of those developments
that have been placed now
in harm's way, placed
for the most part at a time
when we didn't expect
the threat that we were going
to be dealing with.
And the political enormity
of it, in the state as populous
as ours, with the complexity
of city, county, state,
government, and its interaction
with the federal government,
we have an extraordinarily
complex system.
We also have an extraordinary
range of opinions as to what
needs to be done.
But something does need to be
done seems inescapable
at this point.
And it is in that spirit
that members of the working
group have come together
over so many years to try
to find the commonalities,
the things that we can actually
propose, implement, and see
success with.
And I would sit here today to tell you,
I think we have a situation, a timeliness of doing that,
that has grown to an extraordinarily important
pivotal time in our being.
The ideas that we bring forward to you today,
we have called them the neighborhood approach,
where I think going to try to get over the hump
that we can maybe call one accomplishment today
might be to assign a permanent name to it.
Mr. Kalin McGee has come up with scaled,
we'll be talking about scaled approaches,
an acronym, Strategic Coastal Adaptation
and Local Enhancement Districts.
And the basic concept here is that in reflecting the scale
of the problem that we face
with sea level rise.
We are going to have
to expand our thinking in time
and geographically,
in time and space.
And what interests me
in recent months,
your commission has grappled
with these very issues.
And I think whether it was
explicitly noted or not,
you have made decisions
that are consistent
with our approach
under the scaled approach.
Most recently, yesterday,
as you wrestled with the very
difficult issue of the rail
corridor along the Southern
California coast.
At the other end of the state,
I happened to be waiting
for an item, and I sat in
on the Centerville Road issue
in Humboldt County
and found that fascinating
in its own different scale.
So we come today to engage you
in conversation.
It's always a pleasure to have
the chance to talk especially to those of you on the commission that are not
members of the working group and I hope that we can make some commitments to
each other to move forward with a new level of energy to actually see realize
those ideas that we've talked so long about. I will yield the floor then to my
colleague the distinguished gentlelady from Pacific. Thank you so much. Thank you.
So, I'm here to speak a bit about some of the items that Bruce just mentioned.
I like the phrasing of proposed implement and see success with, because it feels like
we have an iterative process going.
We've had an iterative process starting in 2009 with our group coming together, and that
That has been a key to bringing forward the issues that have been the sticking points
and the difficulties with local governments in trying to achieve the bigger vision and
the future attention and addressing climate change and the impacts that it has locally.
In Pacifica, we're kind of a good example and many of you were part of the recent,
relatively recent approval of our local coastal land use plan.
And Pacifica is a pretty good example of a local jurisdiction that has a very outdated
local coastal plan that maybe hasn't reflected all that we are dealing with today.
And when we're planning locally, sometimes the time horizons are shorter than the horizon
that we're talking about as we look to 2100.
We need to plan five years, 10 years, 15, but we need to look out 50 years and beyond.
That's a challenge for local governments.
The cost of doing that kind of planning is a very big undertaking.
In our case, we came along in Pacifica with the commitment to update our local coastal
plan just at the time that the commission had approved the requirement to have a sea
level rise adaptation plan first, which made so much sense, but we didn't have one.
And so we were all geared up and ready to LCP, we're going to, what, oh, we're doing
a sea level rise adaptation plan first, okay, let's get that rolling.
And thankfully, to the commission, we had a grant to help us kick that off, 400,000.
That was very important.
But what we learned right out of the gate is that there are many opinions and many thoughts
about the timescale and the impacts
of what we're talking about.
And when our community was first engaging
in these conversations,
people were bringing it very close to home.
It was my property, what is gonna happen?
It's gonna happen next year, what are you gonna do?
What are you gonna take from me?
And what I've learned in this process is that,
and I said this when we met last time,
start, if we could've done it differently,
we would've started with a very robust,
community-wide engagement in a vision plan.
Because that may have addressed some of the issues
that we needed to eventually bring forward
in our local coastal land use plan.
because we have to include science.
We had no science-based, no sea level rise science-based,
no climate change.
We did have a hazard mitigation policies,
but they weren't addressing the kinds of things
we were beginning to see.
In the time from our last local coastal plan update
to when we undertook it,
Pacifica lost 14 single-family homes
to apartment buildings.
and we are absolutely experiencing coastal erosion
all the way through.
So how do we address those realities
looking at our entire coastline
when it's so varied and so different, even in Pacifica,
from an open coastline in parts where erosion is important,
but not as impactful perhaps to structures,
to infrastructure, to water delivery.
And we felt that we really needed to look
at this neighborhood scale because we had different areas
that needed different kinds of approaches.
So sometimes it's exciting to be the first out the gate
and Pacifica in implementing a neighborhood scale approach.
For us, it's called Special Shoreline Resilience Areas.
It was exactly what we're hearing about time and space.
We have to look at our planning and anchor it
in time and space and phase it over time.
So in one example, we have a seawall,
it's protecting critical infrastructure.
It will be a massive undertaking
to move that infrastructure.
And so in a short to medium term,
we have to address the challenges in that area.
And written into our plan then,
are the coastal planning documents
that will be brought forward.
So, going back to our proposed implement
and see success with,
we're right there at proposed and moving into implement.
And with the help of the Ocean Protection Council,
under Senate Bill 272,
working on these plans,
we're able to apply for and gratefully receive
financial assistance to help us take that next step.
But it still fundamentally relies on community communication
and setting a vision for the future.
That is something that we can succeed with,
that we can achieve.
So I'm gonna stop there.
I know there's a lot more to add,
but I wanted to frame some of what we've experienced
in Pacifica over this time in the past,
what we're dealing with now and as we look to the future.
Good morning, I'm Ed Wagge,
the mayor of the city of Pismo Beach,
and I believe we have a couple of slides.
This is my mistake.
The order that we put the slides in
were to talk about the technical and policy guidance first,
and then to the call to action.
May I give Kelsey the microphone
and then come back to you to talk to your slides?
Absolutely, we are a team.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
So it'll be the other presentation, the Duck Low one.
And by way of introduction,
in a moment you'll see one of the working products
of our working group.
This is a related effort that was informed
by some of the working group efforts
and which the working group is,
some of our neighborhood scale work,
I don't know, Kelsey's gonna tell you how it worked.
We'll get there, yes.
We're gonna go over some of the guidance
and then we'll get to some of the next steps
that we'll be getting to.
So as Caitlin was noting at the top,
one of the key efforts for advancing
the scaled planning work that the commission staff
has been working on over the past year
is drafting guidance on this type of approach.
The commission received no project of special merit funding
to develop will end up being separate
but interrelated policy and technical guidance documents.
Both documents build on other commission
sea level rise planning resources
to provide more information on developing
adaptation strategies and integrating them into LCPs.
I'm gonna give you a brief primer on these documents,
but as I'll highlight at the end,
there's much more to come in the future on these.
Next slide.
Starting with the policy guidance.
As the name suggests, this document provides
recommendations for developing a scaled adaptation approach
and related LCP update, and as our working group members have already highlighted,
scaled adaptation planning refers to identifying and developing a suite of
adaptation strategies that are tailored to defined areas with shared characteristics,
reflecting the opportunities and constraints of variable coastal contexts.
These tailored strategies are incorporated into the LCP and
implemented as part of a holistic and phased approach.
So scaled planning really provides a framework for identifying options to offset
impacts and maximize resource protection across a wider spatial scale and over
time. Next slide. The policy guidance provides background on the challenges
related to sea level rise and the opportunities provided by scaled
planning. The information is broadly similar to the messages that were in the
2024 discussion paper on this topic and which informed the last local government
workshop. We know that sea level rise is putting beaches and coastal resources at
risk and while the Coastal Act supports relocating vulnerable development, we
understand that armoring will be necessary in some contexts.
At the same time, the types of reactive parcel-by-parcel responses that have historically been taken
to address coastal hazards will not adequately protect coastal resources.
We need more proactive and nuanced approaches to address sea-over-rise.
Next slide.
The real substance of the policy guidance is the new information and recommendations
for developing a scaled adaptation approach.
The guidance highlights that detailed technical and other analyses will be needed to understand
and locally specific shoreline evolution, adaptation strategy feasibility, and impacts
to resources and development.
This planning also necessitates careful evaluation of coastal resource needs and the tradeoffs
associated with different adaptation strategies.
The guidance then provides recommendations for using this information to inform the selection
of a suite of strategies, explaining that specific strategies will likely vary across
a jurisdiction and over time to address resource tradeoffs in a balanced manner that offsets
impacts and maximizes resource protection overall as required by the
Coastal Act. Lastly, the guidance covers the types of policies that will be
needed to incorporate a scaled approach through an LCP. This includes both basic
sea level rise policies that apply throughout a jurisdiction as well as the
policies that identify and implement specific strategies. It will also include
commitments to continued planning and requirements for future LCP updates. Next
slide. Switching gears to the technical guidance, as I just noted, a key part of
Other scaled planning is understanding that some coastal resources have conflicting needs
and therefore there are trade-offs associated with different adaptation strategies.
One of the major questions that arises in adaptation conversations is the implications
our decisions will have for sandy beaches.
Importantly, not all beaches have an equal ability to persist based on their natural characteristics.
In other words, some beaches may be lost with sea level rise due to back-shore geology or
sediment characteristics, no matter what adaptation decisions we make.
Those are likely to persist, but only if retreat strategies are implemented.
A variety of sediment management and other adaptation strategies may also help preserve
beaches over various timelines.
Next slide.
Of course, the answers to these questions depend on the location and may vary even within
a jurisdiction.
Understanding the inherent ability of different beaches to persist will help us better understand
where different adaptation strategies will make a difference for beach preservation and
can help us direct limited adaptation resources more efficiently.
side.
Thus, the main goal of the technical guidance is to provide more information on the methods
for evaluating beach evolution.
It provides two broad approaches for this.
The first is by assessing locally dominant processes and characteristics, things like
back shore morphology and composition, sand budgets, wave climate, and shoreline orientation.
The guidance provides background on these types of factors and how they influence beach
change along with available informational resources and data sets that can be used in
assessments.
The second approach for understanding beach evolution
is through modeling.
The guidance summarizes applicable models,
provides a practical guide to the use of each,
identifies relevant coastal settings for their use,
and lists opportunities to incorporate
local conditions and data.
Next slide.
I'm gonna end the primer here,
but I do wanna note that we expect to release
both documents for public review in December,
and we'll provide a more detailed introduction
to them at that hearing.
The public review period will likely run into February
with an eventual proposed adoption in the spring.
looking forward to those documents.
Kelsey, thank you.
This guidance, the policy and the technical guidance
are specific tools for local jurisdictions
to undergo adaptation planning and projects.
Now we wanna pull back the lens a little bit
to talk about the context in which
all of California jurisdictions are working
and some of the challenges that need to be overcome
together with some bigger solutions
that have to come from action beyond,
including but beyond this room.
So, Mayor, back to you and call to action.
Thank you very much, and I want to acknowledge
to the staff and support we have
on our local government working group.
You see them sitting over here.
They're part of our group, and they give us
a lot of technical input that's really helpful.
I appreciate that.
I also want to acknowledge that previous director,
Jack Ainsworth, was the one that proposed
the neighborhood approach.
We call it scale, it may come up with another acronym.
We're struggling to find the right term
to describe the kinds of things
that we're trying to accomplish here.
So we might work on that some more.
If I could have the first slide.
And my job here is to talk about call to action.
What are the next steps?
And how are we gonna get there?
And what does that entail?
And as Bruce already mentioned, and you're fully aware,
the current Super El Nino's had profound effects
on our California coastline.
I looked up our local Port San Luis tide gauge
and noted that the difference between what it should have been
and what it is, is almost a foot.
So the El Nino area is providing an extra foot
of sea level rise.
As Bruce mentioned, this is kind of a preview
of what we're going to face in the future.
On the first slide here is the act
why we still have choices,
and some of the large issues that we're always facing
you're fully aware of, of course, is armoring,
which has its problems, as described in this slide here,
that principle is small,
But hard arming, of course, may be acceptable in the near term,
but long term it's certainly problematic.
Some of the alternatives that we might need
aren't really fully fleshed out yet.
And of course, nature-based solutions, acquisition
and relocation, those kinds of options
need to be fleshed out some more and try
to find a way that we can put all this together.
And that's what our local government working group is
trying to do to bridge the gap between what the commission
has in front of them for the Coastal Act
and what we are facing as the local government.
Delay is not neutral.
We can't really wait.
There's numerous examples that your commission has already
noted that the problem is here and now,
we can't wait longer.
We also have the legal framework in place now,
the various legislative mandates that give us some impetus
as to the need to really move forward on these,
move forward on this whole effort.
Go to the next slide.
And call to action.
And this is my part of the presentation is to say we need to move forward now, but it's
larger than just local government and your commission, a big part of it.
But we also need action at the state level from the legislature to provide some funding
for various problems we're going to encounter during the transition, such as expand and
sustain the adaption funding, the build buyout lease back or TDR options and also make disaster
recovery funds more flexible.
Number two is the clear the path to implementation.
And if you have a project in front of you that has a nature-based solution between your
commission and other state agencies, we need a clear path forward on expediting that approval
since it's consistent with what we're trying to achieve here.
We also need to work on interagency coordination.
There's lots of agencies involved in this process.
not just those of us here, but we need to work with others to make sure we can move
forward and we've been doing so up to this point.
Plan for decisions, not just possibilities.
You've got some legislation and the scaled approach is described as possible strategies
and we've got triggers that we can put in that mix, but we also need funding.
And we also need to coordinate across boundaries.
I'm in Pismo Beach, but adjacent areas certainly could be impacted by what we do.
It could be a larger regional type of approach to try to solve some of these problems.
And finally on this item four, start the hard conversations earlier.
With a homeowner or some commercial business owner has a property, we need to talk to them
about the issues in front of them with sea level rise adaptation.
We also need to bring in stakeholders and others that are involved
to make sure we're reaching out to them so we get the information
out there as soon as possible.
And also reach people often left out.
Make sure we put the whole universe of people out there
that are going to be affected by it.
Now come the big questions in front of us.
Number one, how do we make plan adaptation credible?
It's a big challenge here.
I would like to use the analogy of trying to prepare a really nice multi-course dinner,
and we know who the invitees are.
We've got the menu ready to go.
And we set the table.
Now we need to take the next step, which is actually prepare the food.
The guest list, however, is the entire state of California.
So we've got to take care of the entire state when we move forward here and make sure that
when we move forward that this is an incredible adaptation.
And next, number two, how do we make alternatives to armoring feasible?
We've struggled with this a lot already in our local government working group, and I
think that's part of the big issue here with the scale approach is to try to make sure
that we look at how we can creatively solve some of these difficult problems.
Number three, how do we evaluate coastal protection tradeoffs?
And this is another one that we've struggled with on trying to work that out and there's
more work to be done there.
Number four, how do we prepare communities before decisions become crises?
And that kind of goes back to the need to move forward now so we can start that whole
process earlier rather than later.
And that's been something that is kind of the impetus of this entire local government
Working Group is to make sure we can have strategies that we can get the local coastal
plans approved and move forward.
Number five, what must California solve together?
That's the universe of all of us that are involved in this, to make sure we include
everyone that has a voice.
Really we moving forward the local government working group needs to continue working on
the mechanisms for strategic relocation, look at the cost consequences and trade-offs of
coastal armoring and also funding time and capacity for local planning and implementation.
The challenge here is that we have a problem, we need to move forward, we've been working
on it, but we now need to take the next step and flesh this out some more with the local
government working group, some new members that are going to be involved in that and
it's going to be a challenge, and I'm retiring so I won't be part of it, but I think we've
done a good job in getting it to this point.
And I'm confident moving forward we can accomplish
all the tasks before us.
Thank you.
Thanks, Ed.
Thanks, Mayor Wagge.
And for your service on this committee,
it's been a real pleasure for Megan and I
to continue to support this group of people
who are so dedicated on this.
The last thing I'm gonna say for now
is I wanna pick up on those last three questions
that Ed just mentioned,
Mayor Waggai just mentioned as the focus
of what this working group is gonna do next,
then if you have any comments or questions
about what we've just presented,
we can take those knowing that we have a full discussion
like an open floor discussion after public comment.
But if there's something you wanted to clarify
or really anything else, as soon as I stop talking,
and then we can do public comment.
May I have that last slide up
that Mayor Waggai was just speaking to?
the last slide of the last presentation.
So again, please consider this group
and who's on it and what it does, right?
We've got local elected officials,
staff from the commission and local governments,
commissioners.
Also, we talk to people.
We have talked to regional smart growth groups.
We have talked to coastal management advocates.
We have talked to researchers
and included them in these conversations.
In other words, this group, one of its main functions,
is to be a forum.
And these three questions here,
if we're talking about phased adaptation,
it really requires trust.
If you're saying we wanna make this decision now,
but we'll check back in later
and make sure that we're doing it right
and have room to adjust,
That involves a lot of trust on what are the thresholds?
What's the timing?
What assurances do we have?
How good is the information?
And like everything on these topics,
it will be laden with uncertainty.
Therefore, perhaps one of the most useful things
this group can do is convene fora
to get into the details,
not necessarily with a goal of consensus,
but with building understanding
because this is a game of trust
in order for us to move forward.
So three larger topics in that blue box
that this group, we could convene around these very topics.
What is the current state of mechanisms
for strategic relocation?
What funding, what flavors of funding,
how available is it, what requirements come with it?
What other barriers are there to implementation?
What is currently available?
not with the goal of answering that question completely,
but exploring assumptions in the state of reality.
The costs and consequences of trade-off
in coastal ordering, a full, it's not accurate.
I keep using the phrase full-cost accounting,
but that's not what I mean.
It's a hard look at the trade-offs,
and what it really means when you go down that road,
especially for the protection of public infrastructure,
what does that mean?
What choices does it constrain later on?
And then this is one of the biggest,
at least from the purview of this group.
And it has been the resounding message
from local governments that I've heard.
They can speak for themselves, but this is what I've heard.
We're open to a lot, and the stakes are high.
This is our coast, too, and it's costing us a lot.
We're ready to do a lot in terms of planning,
creativity, talking with our communities,
but it is extremely expensive to do so.
And if the playing field shifts,
if guidance and thresholds and direction shift,
which they will and they do,
it's extraordinarily costly on trust, money, staff time.
In other words, undoing, redoing is almost fatal
for local governments in trying to do these things.
So a really big question that we want to ask
and we need all of California's help in answering,
how do local governments fund the work,
the community discussions, the creative planning
and the projects to get this done
because they're willing but it's hard and it's expensive.
And lastly, just the message that we've seen in Pacifica,
Pismo's working on it now, we've seen success
in Santa Cruz County and other places, Humboldt County,
To the extent local jurisdictions
can start hard discussions about trade-offs
and the state of the coast
before a local decision has to be made, right?
Any local land use plan or any zoning decision
or any regional land use plan,
if that's where you're trying to have all of the sea level
rise and adaptation discussions,
if you haven't had them already,
you probably have better perspective on me
on how that can stop or impede an entire process.
But where is the money?
Where is the forum?
How do you have conversations before the conversations?
We don't know, but when we can, it goes better.
So to end, and then please let me open
for any questions you might have.
This group wants to hold these discussions
with a broader group of people
with the goal of better understanding
so that we can move forward together
and really identify what the priority challenges are.
With that, please commissioners,
is there anything you would like to ask of our presenters?
And then again, we can do this any way you want,
but the plan is to go to public comment
and then actually just open up the floor
for a full discussion.
Any comments or questions now?
Chair, may I hand it back to you for public comment?
And then, and then I'll come back for.
I would be happy to, before we do that,
I guess I would just say one of the questions
that I'd love to get feedback from,
especially our local government partners,
and I do, I have to admit, I sort of straddle both worlds,
given that I'm a city council member,
and really have a lot of empathy for the challenges
that you all are talking about.
And then in the role here,
thinking a little bit differently,
you know, you have talked about
how there are so many different contexts,
but we need to come together to find an approach.
Have you, in your sort of experience,
communication with other local leaders,
do you still believe it's possible to have sort of one,
sorry there's like a big fly buzzing right around me,
is it really feasible for us to have these conversations
in a coherent way given that the context
up and down the state is so massively different?
And I know this kind of gets to the heart
of what you've been doing over the years,
but just maybe from a philosophical level,
especially as a number of you are moving off
of the local government working group,
do you still believe in that as a possibility?
And I'd love to hear that response.
We can do it after public comment
maybe as part of the discussion.
It's up to you, Supervisor.
Yeah, you can, yeah.
Hey, my term ends at the end of the year.
I'm gonna get my words in while I can.
And Madam Chair, I guess I would respond
by saying we have to have those conversations.
Can we?
We have in isolated pockets.
I happen to work in a county of a beautiful scale,
which is not too big and not too small,
and I can interact directly with constituents
and we can convene,
and we have seen in individual projects,
we've seen this happen.
Now, what we're here is to,
We're going to keep using the word scale both as a noun and a verb.
We need to scale this to a bigger piece of the coast and the stakes are higher.
I wake up every morning an optimist and that's the only way I think those of us
in public service can do it and so I think we can because we have to.
I want to add to that and say, yes, it's possible and it's happening anyway.
it's happening because there are statewide partners
that we're working with
who want to have these conversations as well.
So we engage with Surf Rider.
We bring forward the local ideas.
Sometimes they're not well received,
but that gives us a conversation point
so that we can look at what are the issues.
And, you know, this whole us and them,
we're moving beyond, you know, armoring versus retreat.
It's not a black and white issue.
We have to look at hybrids and approaches
that can be phased over time,
because that's how we live.
We live over time.
We fund over time.
And knowing that in the end,
It's a $300 million process to...
We're not gonna get a check for $300 million,
unless, you know, we're burning game
and we're getting a trade separation thing, you know,
whatever, we're not.
And so how do we do it in small increments,
but continue the through line of the conversation?
That's what I see.
And I agree with my colleagues.
Just looking back at what our local government working group
has accomplished already, we've been reaching out,
we've been, as I already mentioned already,
we've been trying to meet those challenges
and we talked about trust earlier too.
When we first started meeting
with our local government working group,
there was certainly a lack of trust,
but over time we started trusting each other.
The conversations got better and more frank
and more in-depth discussions about what we can achieve.
And I think I'm optimistic that because of the approach we've
been making, that we'll find some solutions
to some of these vexing problems.
And it's not going to be easy.
I mean, we have a diverse state.
Northern California is far different from Southern
California, Central Coast, et cetera.
But we're, I think we've got the tools,
we've got the effort and in fact we have no other choice
but try to make it work.
We've got to move forward and we've been challenged
before and we've met those challenges.
So I'd say yes, yes we will.
Thank you.
Your perspective is so valuable
and we're all so grateful for your work.
So with that, we'll open public comment.
Chris, I'll turn it to you.
We have four speakers signed up for this we'll start with Mitch Silverstein and Jennifer Savage
And I think they requested three minutes and it's Friday we'll allow it
For four minutes
Thanks
Good morning chair harmony commissioners Mitch Silverstein with Surfrider Foundation
Surfrider has really appreciated the opportunity to engage with Kaitlyn Megan
Commissioned staff and the local government working group members on several zoom meetings over the last few months
Clearly we've been very vocal about our concerns with neighborhood scale adaptation for several years now
Namely that it could be used to expedite and neighborhood scale seawalls, which my colleague will be speaking to that said meeting face-to-face
Or virtual face-to-face with the working group really helped me and all of us
Hopefully realize that overall there's more that we agree on than what we disagree on
We all love our coast there are substantial parts of this call to action document that aligns with surf fighter mission priorities
Namely preserving our coastline for current and future generations by responding urgently to the existential threats of sea level rise to our beaches
For example, the call to action urges, California state leadership to quote fund the transition
Clearly we're for that and you know one example that comes to mind is funding buybacks of vulnerable properties and returning that land to the public
The commission's done that on several specific occasions.
But we have, the governor did veto a bill
that would have actually created a pilot program to do that,
but we have a new administration coming in.
And we're seeing with our own eyes this winter,
or not even winter yet, we're seeing with our own eyes
beachfront properties once worth millions
falling into the ocean, and that's gonna change
the conversation and also change these,
what was once an asset to a liability.
so I think the time to really revisit that is now.
The call to action also calls on state agencies
to clear the path to implementation.
That's a little squishy what that means,
but Surwriter absolutely agrees.
We need to expedite and fund
nature-based adaptation strategies
that build resilience at our existing beaches.
We support a neighborhood-scale approach
if that approach is nature-based solutions.
It also calls on coastal communities
to start the hard conversations earlier.
Surf Rider has been urging those conversations
for at least a decade, as has this commission.
So we clearly agree on that.
And the historic tide levels we're experiencing
during this super El Nino slash marine heat wave
makes the funding, the implementation
and those hard conversations around it
more urgent than ever.
A lot of the media coverage
is failing to mention climate change,
and it's failing to mention something
that everyone in this room hopefully knows,
that what we're seeing now is just a preview
of what normal conditions on the coast will look like
as soon as 20 years, 25 years.
Communities unprepared for what's happening today
are clearly unprepared for what's coming.
So SurFighter looks forward to working with local governments
to advocate for increased resources,
implementation pathways, and everything else
that we agree on within this call to action.
Our hope is that this winter's events
will shift to the conversation and make it easier
for local government electeds to talk about relocation
in their communities, among other things.
I think more and more of the public is coming around
to seeing the trade-offs.
managed retreat. You know, we may not be able to do that
everywhere, but where we can, it may be costly. But ultimately,
an unmanaged retreat will be even more costly. Thank you.
Thank you, Jennifer Savage on zoom. And then we'll come back to
Melissa Sparks kranz, Sean Sharp, NTA and Lauren wit. Jennifer
Savage.
Thank you. As Mitch said, or Jennifer Savage, California
Policy Associate Director, Surf Rider Foundation, as Mitch said,
And based on surf riders experience with Pacifica, we are concerned that the neighborhood scale
approach would allow armoring where the Coastal Act wouldn't otherwise permit it, and could
encourage broader use of the conflict resolution to justify it.
We agree with UCLA law that conflict resolution was improperly applied in Pacifica, producing
an outcome that was not the most protective of significant coastal resources.
3-0-2-0-0-B requires that conflicts be resolved through findings specific to each case. From
what has been shared, our concern is that the proposed scaled approach would signal
in advance that conflicts may be resolved in favor of armoring, which could predetermine
that outcome. On the working group's specific questions, first, phased adaptation is credible
only if it's binding. Triggers, next steps, and deadlines belong in the LCP itself where
they are enforceable, not in guidance. Temporary armoring should be limited to structures that
qualify under section 30235 with a hardened date, full mitigation, and a funded exit plan.
Otherwise phased just means delayed. Second, alternatives are feasible now. We need to
stop new public investment and hazard zones, buy from willing sellers, relocate public
infrastructure when it's due for replacement, and require hazard disclosure. None of that
waits on a perfect long-term plan. Third, trade-offs must count what the public
loses over time. Beaches lost in front of walls as seas rise, sand supply, cumulative
impacts, and lost access. Mitigation should replace what's actually lost at scale and
for as long as the impact lasts. Fourth, emergencies produce armoring.
Communities need hazard information and early discussion of triggers before the
bluffs fails. Finally, what California must solve
together, we need state funding for acquisition and
relocation and a consistent transparent method for resolving coastal acts
conflicts. Guidance should not presume that
Armoring wins. Thank you
Thank you. Next Melissa Sparks Kranz
Set on there. Okay. Thank you. Good morning commissioners
My name is Melissa Sparks Kranz with the League of California cities and we are here on behalf
We work on behalf of cities statewide, but we do specifically have a leadership committee of council members and mayors
That represent the 61 coastal cities in the coastal zone that are managing those unique circumstances
we are strongly supportive of the drafted call to action in front of you today and I'll express that support also on behalf of the
California State Association of Counties CSAC who are partners with us
our two organizations CSAC and Cal cities
We were central in supporting the formation of the local government working group to strengthen our partnership with the Coastal Commission
And we're very proud of our cities and counties engagement in the local government working group as well as the partnership
that has truly been formed with the Commission in this way we believe
there's been a lot of accomplishment as was reported out this morning by the
group to date. Just really quickly, CalCities and CSAC were also engaged in
OPC's development of the best available science on sea level rise and the
legislation of SB 272 which really does provide that framework for our cities
and counties to do the sea level rise planning. But while that planning is
is actively underway now, as we talked about,
and as you talked about yesterday, El Nino,
storm surges, Kelvin waves are already upon us.
That sense of urgency has become very real
for our cities and our counties.
We do need to continue these simultaneous discussions
as we are today, in parallel
to our sea level rise planning efforts,
to be ready with a broader statewide framework.
to the chair's question, we do see value and a need
in state framing to support our coastal transition.
What I mean by that, and I think the previous speaker
said was pathways, resources, tools, strategies,
programs, and funding, because this transition
is going to be far beyond the single budget
of any one city or any one county to manage on their own.
So we really do support that state framework or toolbox as we talk about it.
We are asking for your support to implement both near term and long term sea level rise
adaptation strategies at what's being called the scaled approach, which is really based
on various land use types, right?
And we have critical infrastructure, we have housing development, we have beaches that
we do want to protect for the long term.
And so we're asking for your support of our local adaptation strategies and efforts where
we are continuing to build that trust with our communities on the coastal transition
that's in front of us.
Thank you for considering the call to action today and for having this workshop.
Appreciate it.
Thank you.
Next, Sean Sherpentier.
Good morning.
My name is Sean Sherpentier.
I'm the city manager in the city of Pacifica and thank you for having us this morning.
I wanted to begin by voicing Pacifica's strong support
for the Coastal Commission Local Government Working Group,
the combination of local elected officials
who grapple with, address and deal with these issues
each day and Coastal Commission staff
will help us lead to workable solutions.
In terms of the critical questions for the next phase,
I do appreciate that slide and just wanted to mention
that when it talked about the focus of the committee,
there were three bullet points
and they included strategic location, coastal armoring,
the trade-offs and costs, and funding and capacity.
And I'd like to request
that those not be viewed in isolation,
but be viewed as a comprehensive package of strategies
that local governments can use if appropriate,
depending on whether the need is short, medium,
long-term. The challenges we're facing could require a mixture of those activities to protect
our communities and also the coastal access and the coast itself. And that concludes my remarks.
Thank you very much. Thank you. Next is Lauren Witt. Hi, good morning. My name is Lauren Witt.
I'm here with the Environmental Action Committee of West Marin, or EAC. We're speaking today as
a community-based organization based in coastal Marin. We've been following the local government
working group workshops for a number of years now and ultimately we think sea level rise adaptation.
We see it becoming more urgent in our community as coastal homes and infrastructure
face increasing threats and ongoing losses. I'm here today specifically to voice our support for
a phased approach to coastal adaptation as we've discussed today that includes managed retreat and
and uses best available science.
We hope to see neighborhood scale adaptation
that includes nature-based solutions
and preserves beach access
rather than neighborhood scale seawalls,
which could cost the state its public beaches
and disrupt natural coastal dynamics.
Using the LCP conflict resolution policy
to circumvent coastal actions restrictions
on coastal armoring undermines the core aims
of the Coastal Act to preserve public access,
natural resources, and generational coastal resilience.
Instead, we encourage the Coastal Commission to prioritize and incentivize neighborhood scale nature based projects like dune restoration and living shorelines and we encourage local jurisdictions to update their LCP for environmental hazards.
Thank you very much. Thank you. Next, Mike. Good morning. Chair and commissioners. I listen with interest to all of the presentation and I wanted to share some comments.
I was a County of Santa Cruz Planning Commissioner for years during the entire period about seven,
eight, nine years ago when we did the big coastal bluffs hazard update packed houses for a year of
meetings that ultimately was turned back by your commission for reasons relating to rebuilding,
allowing new homes to be built and still have coastal army protections against the Coastal Act.
But there was a lot of other really good stuff in our update, unfortunately, that's been delayed
since. And I've since been lucky enough to be working with the lead from Santa Cruz County,
planning David Carlson on the Santa Cruz County's Sea Level Rise Working Group.
And I have some thoughts and concerns I'd like to share about the process. And
We had some fantastic people working on it. The consultants are great. Dr. Lester is always in
there, but one of the things they do is they tabulate dollar costs. Sea level rise of one
foot will put this much many dollars worth of infrastructure at risk, or homes and infrastructure,
you know, another foot this much. But what's not broken out in these dollar values, which I think
makes it extremely misleading. I mean, you provide the data so that decision makers can use that data
in their decisions. But in our areas, especially in built areas, if you say that there's 250 million
dollars worth of homes at risk, the truth will be that 90% of those homes are already not existing
structures and not protected under the Coastal Act any longer for seawalls. And it skews, and they're
the most expensive homes. So you have three dozen 10 million dollar homes skewing all this dollar
So I want to make this clear that I think that using dollar data, and this is different from public infrastructure like roads and sewage lines, but for homes has to be broken out with what is not protectable because they've signed permit conditions acknowledging that they won't seek armoring.
I've had this discussion in Santa Cruz and the feedback from the development community, and I don't mean the extreme parts of it.
it. But the moderate parts even is that they view that those permit conditions were accepted under
duress and that this is where this is going to go and it's going to be a push in every area to allow
armoring. This is my concern about a big aspect of what is going on now with sea level rise plans
and using dollar values to help guide policy decisions when those dollars are misleading
because most of the money is from unprotectable structures.
Thank you for that.
Thank you.
And we were having issues with our online sign-up form for this item.
If there are any other speakers who intended to speak on this item but weren't called,
please raise your hand.
Wait a couple seconds for any hands raised.
All right, I'm seeing no hands.
Madam Chair.
Thank you very much.
Caitlin, do you want to make any comments before we open it up?
First I'd like to call your attention to a full copy of the call to action in the staff
report.
Also there's a history of the working group in there as well.
We are seeking your support on this document and towards the end of this discussion that's
going to start now, maybe we'll come to one or both of the commissioners on the working
group to say something about the call to action.
For this section, if there is a queue that needs to be managed, I'll jump up and do so.
please consider this a conversation and jump in as you like. Don't jump in too
quickly. Please catch my eye. Okay. Love it. Even better. Or maybe a queue will
develop immediately and then I'll manage it but please. And to my fellow
commissioners the call to action is in the exhibit if you're looking for it.
Okay to begin let's turn to the members of the local government working group.
with the commission members if they'd like to say something
to start us off.
Commissioner Wilson.
Sure, I have a couple notes.
Let me get to them.
Well, the first thing I wanted,
I came on to this commission, I mean this working group
a few years after it had already started.
And it was definitely started beef,
it was started and it was pretty contentious,
but I think it's definitely not that way now.
Both of the members currently from the commission side
are local government representatives
that represent Humboldt County,
and Commissioner Jackson represents Hermosa Beach.
And one of the main benefits of this working group
is not just in the products, but actually we discuss
some of the upcoming concerns and trends
that are happening in things that are coming,
that are being discussed at the commission level.
And so it's been very helpful,
I think there's been a back and forth
that's been informative and informing.
And so it's taken the temperature down quite often
and also allowed for a lot of back and forth
from perspectives.
We are more often and increasingly aligned
on the importance of the community-based planning
and for sea level adaptation.
and local governments are seeing,
there was some, I would say there was a bit of denial
at first from a lot of corners
about how quickly we need to plan for these things.
Certainly this last few weeks has dramatically changed
some of those perspectives.
I will say that the opportunity to be in Long Beach a few weeks ago, or I guess a month
ago after our last meeting, to see the damages that were occurring there, we've seen impacts
to Pacifica.
We've been talking about the importance of the rail line.
So this is happening.
It's not just the future.
It is today.
And more and more, we're feeling and understanding the squeeze that local governments are having
on this.
Because again, this is a bigger problem than just one city councilor, one board of supervisors
can do in one term.
This is beyond that, and so we have to be really cognizant of that and not lose sight.
There is, I think when we started this conversation at the commission level, it was, there wasn't
the full understanding of the pressure that local governments feel in terms of the embedded
capital and infrastructure that we're trying to manage for, and sort of the long-term transition,
both public and, I will say, some private.
There's just the embedded human egos in when we build things, the anthropogenic world.
We don't like to take out roads and dams and things like that.
We like to believe that everything we've built must be preserved forever.
We have a hard time with those changes in general.
But then there's this really practical applications of that such as wastewater treatment plants,
which were built at the bottom of a watershed, which is really feeling the squeeze.
And where do you put that?
And managing wastewater is extremely important.
And so it's important for public access management and other things like that.
So there's a whole lot of pieces of that.
And as Sue had mentioned, it's about timelines and financing.
So we've been working really hard on that.
And what we've been finding is that our conversations are still ahead of the broader conversation
at the state level, in terms of we're just kind of in the weeds with it, and we're there.
So this call to action is really the Commission and local governments reaching out and asking
that we have better coordination with all of our state agencies, and we're not just
talking about natural resources state agencies, we're talking about transportation and energy
and everybody else, that this is something that's broader than that.
We need legislation and we need funding to really address this.
And so I think that this is, we have a new administration
coming in on the governor's side,
and we have, we even see some shifts occurring
within the legislative body.
And I think this is probably a good time to circle back
and make those requests.
And so I'm just gonna be asking this board
to support this call for action
and all of us working together to get there.
So that's what I have for now.
That's probably have some other random comments later, but I just we'll get there
Yeah, I want to just say thank you to everybody who had a role in creating this document
And I want to channel somebody who I think has been very influential in the way that I see my work on this body
And that's a Fe Turnbull Sanders. And so as I look at this, I do see a few pieces missing in our callouts
Specifically about who sits at the table. And so I'm hoping that as we encourage different regions to build their tables we're
specifically calling out tribal inclusion as well as
Labor in terms of the fact that as we look at the community's dependence on
Working-class folks that often they don't live in the community
But they commute in and we want to make sure they have a seat at this table as well
And then just flat out calling out communities of color as a whole and so those were three pieces that I didn't
call that. I saw broad kind of language in the documents but never a direct call
for that and so knowing that our EJ seat on this board is really important to so
many of us. I wanted to call that out as we as local governments consider that
sometimes as was talked about earlier we start to build without thinking about
those pieces and we're forced to go back and reconsider based on that input and
so instead I would want to make sure that it's in our upfront documents so
that that gets considered early and obviously it informs any plan as we move
forward so thank you for the work done I really appreciate all everything that's
gone in and everybody's partnership and making this document get this to this
point today thank you thank you and to our colleagues at the end if you'd like
to respond to any commissioners comments just put your hand up I'll look to you
Commissioner Eckerly. Thank you Madam Chair I also want to thank everyone for
all of the work on these documents, but also all of the work over the last many years.
Where I sit in my day job, we're really thinking about this high-level statewide application,
right?
How are we making sure we've got the best available science for sea level rise scenarios?
How are we providing policy guidance for adaptation strategies and implementation?
and that's really important to have that high level consistent framing, and it's really
clear that we need to drill down to the specific local context, local expertise, local priorities
in order to do this work, so I know we've been trying very hard to do that, to strengthen
and build relationships with our local government partners, and really appreciate this venue
as a way to help me and the resources agency
in Ocean Protection Council connect those dots.
So one way that we have been trying to do that
is that we convene a Sea Level Rise
statewide leadership team that includes
not only the Coastal Commission
and Ocean Protection Council,
but the other agencies that Commissioner Wilson
just mentioned, Caltrans, the Water Board and others.
And so I think, however we decide to move forward
on this call to action, I'd like to see
and suggest a next step in bringing this document
to that body so that they can better understand
what this call to action is.
And we've actually started inviting
our local government leaders and partners
to those meetings to join us twice a year
so that we can have those connected discussions
between what's happening at the state level,
but what really, what are those challenges and needs
that local communities are having
so that we can bring those back up?
Mayor Wagee.
Thank you very much.
I just wanted to respond to some of the public comment
and I appreciate Commissioner Wilson's comments too.
I've enjoyed working with him the last several years
and it's been, I think as he pointed out,
we are trying to solve some of the most difficult problems
and as I said, we've made some progress.
on the call to action on I appreciate the comments about needing to reach out
to some people of color and labor and so forth we did have that item under four
which is reach people often left out so we're trying to make sure we're covering
everyone that's affected by the kinds of decisions we'll be making also some of
these you know the concern of course the Army is one of the big ones but we're
looking at a phased approach. We're not just saying, you know, we've the
commission's been going down this path frequently of we're not just looking at
what we can do right away. It's looking at the longer term and try to figure
out where we're going to go and how we're gonna get there and how we're
gonna phase the various kinds of things we need to do in order to adapt the
sea level rise. And also we're very mindful of the requirements of the
the coastal act obviously and we make sure we are adhering to those requirements as we
work to try to find a solution. So it's I think we're trying to address some of the
issues that were brought up under the public comment and I appreciate that comment. One
thing we are always looking for is to get that kind of feedback because we're a smaller
group as Kaylin mentioned we've been working with other groups to let them know where we're
and trying to make sure we get their input, too.
Those were my comments, thank you.
Thank you.
Vice Chair Hart.
Thanks so much, I just wanted to express my appreciation
for the incredible amount of work that's gone into this,
from you all, from commissioners
that have been part of it over time,
and I mean, it's just a huge amount of work,
and there's a huge amount of work to come.
I wanna focus just for a second,
I have a few questions regarding sort of
how equity plays into this.
And I know in several of the reports I've read,
There's a difference between what's going on
in Southern California and what's going on
in Northern California from a lot of perspectives.
For example, where I am up in Sonoma County
and north of there, the coast has been largely protected
through pretty aggressive actions.
And you know, there's consequences to that,
to local county governments and their revenue,
but yet they've taken those actions
and often incorporated into LCPs.
So, one of the things I was thinking,
and I know that this has been a topic of discussion,
but I thought it might be worthwhile
just to touch on it here,
is when it comes to funding,
which has been identified as the top priority,
how does the state funding,
how do you figure that out
when some communities are gonna need
just so much more funding
because of historical decisions?
You know, it's kind of similar to what we talked about
yesterday with the rail line.
I mean historical decisions so it led to a situation
now where you're talking about hundreds of millions
of dollars of taxpayer money that's gonna be needed
to address challenges that really,
they affect the northern part of the state
because of the state's economy and freight and all that.
But really it is somewhat localized to certain areas.
So you get where I'm going with this
and I was thinking if you could talk about that
just a little bit and also while you're addressing that,
Just a little bit more of,
with the neighborhood adaptation approach,
everybody knows that geographic boundaries
don't make any sense when you're talking about
sea level rise, just because this is where one county ends
or one city ends.
So when it's pretty clear that the neighborhood adaptation
plan will require multiple counties,
like we will put a seawall here,
this area is logical to preserve, et cetera.
how does that work exactly and I'm sure you know this has been addressed but
there's so much in the documents I thought it'd be helpful just to discuss
briefly yeah I can oh boy there's a lot to weigh in on on here but as to the
equity geographically within the state we are seeing of coalitions of counties
I think the one I'm most familiar with is Beacon Santa Barbara and Ventura
counties and their cities are taking a coordinated approach. I think that's a seed that can grow
further. I think we do also have to be sure we appreciate to what extent a wider community
benefits from the protection of a beach or the protection of a rail line. So the investment
in relocating a rail line does seem localized,
but it does ripple out in its issues.
The protection of a beach or some form of coastal access
means a lot to folks who live quite a distance
from the beach, and I see that in my community every day.
So I think that that's there.
As I was thinking about the call to action,
what seems like the easy reason to say,
yeah, I support this call of action,
is because it's asking for funding.
Who wouldn't support that as a local jurisdiction
or a state agency or anything?
I want the legislature and the governor
to give us more money.
Cool.
How's that gonna work?
What's the likelihood of that?
And I think there are things that we can do
to make the likelihood greater.
And that is to be ready to embrace hard conversations
and hard decisions.
And I think the conversation that I only
caught a tiny bit of at this commission yesterday
was one of those very difficult decisions.
And so I think building on that, if we're
willing to step up and engage our communities, all
of our communities, the EJ issues
that Commissioner Lopez brings up absolutely,
the economic interests, the social interests,
the natural interest, all of these things,
I think that is gonna be something
that is going to help give legitimacy
to this call for action,
and so demonstrating that, to me,
is top of the list things for the near future.
And I've got some thoughts on nature-based solution.
I'll say that.
I'm interested in other commissioners' thoughts.
Madam Chair.
Thank you, Chair Harmon.
I just wanted to talk to a couple of items
that were brought forward.
And one of them is the idea that solutions
are beyond what one city council or one board of supervisors
can do in one term.
And of course, the vagaries of do you have term limits or not,
et cetera.
The challenge here is really what Mike was saying, though,
is the notion of community-based planning
and how that value is not just the products
but the process and getting the buy-in
from people whose very properties are going to be affected.
So I'm just gonna use a tiny example in Pacifica
where, and this goes to Commissioner Hart's comments
about how does equity play in.
In Pacifica we have a history,
a little nice story about Lindemar Beach,
a terrible story about water quality.
We're not talking about that right now.
I'm talking about the beach itself.
Okay, we're working on that.
Okay, we're working on that.
We are.
With RC, with the resource management group
in any, we're working on that.
I'm talking about actually retreat
and how Pacifica came together
and it was led by the community.
It was led by the community-based groups, the non-profits.
It was supported by Sir Frider.
And it was a big effort moving a parking lot back,
removing a couple of structures,
building up a dune system.
All of that was huge and also fairly possible
because it wasn't in an immediate area
where the coastal squeeze was happening
with our infrastructure.
That's right up to the edge of the ocean.
So that was an easier and fabulous example.
What I wanna see in my community and in others is,
okay, now let's figure out how do we do the hard ones?
Because the hard ones involve more players,
involve more private property, that's one whole thing.
But to one of the caller's points about factoring in
or not factoring in properties that are already,
as I think he put it, unprotectable under the Coastal Act,
that was a very interesting notion to me.
I've always felt that the economic analysis
is just not detailed enough and not nuanced enough.
And the flip side of that would be true,
because there are communities in Pacific as one of them
where people who traditionally can't afford
to live at the coast really do live at the coast
in apartments that are not super nice.
I'm gonna be honest.
They're the most naturally affordable housing we have
and they're right there, right where our coastal squeeze is.
So how do we preserve that?
How do we preserve that while we plan for the longer term
that is coming?
Yes, is coming is here, the wave over topping,
the one foot above all of our title charts.
So how do we do both?
How do we preserve while we plan for the longer?
And we need the money.
Commissioner Escalante.
Thank you, Chair.
I am so grateful to the members of this working group
for all your work for so many years
for getting us to this point.
Obviously, very important for us to tackle that conversation,
even before any of these real impacts would hit us so hard.
And one of my first meetings as a commissioner
was actually the first convening of this local working group,
local government working group.
And things have really changed.
Those first meetings were full of alarm
from sectors of society that either deny climate change,
consider the term managed retreat a slur, profit,
they profit from development on the coast,
so they were very nervous about managed retreat,
and of course the elected and public officials
that were nervous about those three groups of people
in their communities.
Unfortunately though, it has taken the real time reckoning
of this climate change destruction
along parts of our coast to elevate this discussion
to broader public forum to deal with its impacts.
And however, after seeing all of the mainstream
and social media coverage that has been out there so far
about this brutal El Nino, I have developed
sort of these concerns, which is who's dominating
the public narrative about this, how the default response
is to react with emergency armoring up and down.
And of course, what the burden on the taxpayers is
and how this will be a result of poor planning decisions
and the protection of a few private property interests.
I saw a KTLA video of beachfront property owners
dropping wet cement on wet sand to stop erosion.
I saw them platforming residents who
blame the state for their predicament. I saw content creators running up and
down Southern California beaches, blaming the Coast Commission for causing these
problems and limiting the protections for the homeowners. Either the willful or
genuine ignorance being perpetuated during this emergency event is only going
to make our work harder, the work of this particular working group. So I do think
that part of our strategy aside, obviously parallel
to the policy part of it, we do need an aggressive media
and public education campaign.
We cannot sort of allow this narrative
to continue running rampant without us sort of, you know,
countering, A, educating as to what the state does
to protect people and what the public interest and trust is.
But also sort of who's gonna be at the table
of the solutions and particularly the funding.
I mean, if we're gonna have a huge chunk of the public
advocating for emergency reactions
and armoring up and down to protect this interest,
all of this work is gonna go to waste
and we will not be heard.
So I think that working on galvanizing the public on this
and really sort of educating folks on what armoring means,
what the cost benefit is of it,
and what really the reality is in a lot of parts
of this coast where managed retreat can no longer
continue being a bad word or a bad term,
but it needs something that we need to embrace with courage.
Otherwise, it's gonna be unmanaged, as we have seen.
I mean, the ocean is gonna take it down, no matter what,
and all the money that we're gonna spend up to this point
is just gonna be money test right into the water as well.
So I really hope that we can invest some brainpower.
I know Surfrider and a lot of the groups do a lot of this.
But these moments scare me because of the reactivity.
And this is the perfect opportunity
for folks to come in and take advantage of this
and lead us in the wrong direction.
So I hope that we keep that in mind as we move forward.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Would you like to respond?
Or we can go to Commissioner Smith,
and then I'll come back to you.
I'd like to hear from as many commissioners as I can as much I
Was gonna get in the weeds a little bit more about funding, but I just want to
align myself with Commissioner Escalante's comments as well, so that the
knowledge base or the sort of
responsibility of
people along the coast
To be the stewards they need to be as opposed to tossing wet concrete
during a storm event and or blaming the Commission or blaming the state for not
doing enough to hold back the ocean I think we have we have we need a
communications plan around that I agree with you on that but I wanted to talk a
little bit more about Vice Chair Hart's comments on sort of differentiations
between land use planning up and down the coast and economic impacts of that
that I fully agree with her comments and also with the idea that we are this called action
and pursuing additional funds, new funds, right, not moving existing funds around, right,
but pursuing new funds.
There are certainly models in various policy approaches across various issue areas in the
state where this has been done.
And one of the key abilities to do that has been sort of a local taxation approach, a
self-help approach in some areas.
And so in the Bay Area, we have double A for the Bay, right?
It's property tax.
It was voted on by voters.
It helps with restoration.
It can help match other grants.
And I just want to put out there, the partnership aspect of this comes with partnership and
funding.
And local governments have a responsibility, I believe, to try and match those new grants
if you want something from the state.
I want to caveat that, though, with recognition that not all local governments and communities
are created equal in their ability to pay additional levels of taxation.
So it is an intricate puzzle to put together.
But you see some communities willing to tax themselves.
You see others equally wealthy,
if not more so, rejecting tax measures
for this sort of thing.
So I think that's a component that we need to be cognizant
of if we're asking the state, as we should, to do more,
that local government has a role in that, too,
and that the communities have a role in that, too.
It's not just a state problem.
Yeah, I think a lot of really good points
being brought up here in terms of the public perception
of this, one of the key survival skills, I think,
of being in, especially local public offices,
try to push past the noise, the slop,
whether it's AI slop or human generated slop.
You know, it's a reality of it, and we
need to focus on what's real.
In conversations we've had within the working group,
we noticed there's a lot of structural and regulatory work
that can be done to help us as well.
We talked about, you know, sometimes it's
called cutting green tape.
One of the observations is a certain asymmetry in the fact
that an emergency permit to stack rocks
is a 24-hour proposition.
And a program to put sand on beaches
is a decade-long process or something like that.
So those are not directly comparable.
But I think there is a lot of work among the hard
conversations is this question of all the overlapping
regulation that makes it hard to penetrate,
for light to penetrate through the net, and we can do it.
On the matter of nature-based solutions,
let me simply observe, as I have to the group once or twice,
that nature-based solutions are not natural.
They are human-actuated solutions.
And as such, humans have to take accountability.
I've really enjoyed having Mr. Silverstein
be part of conversations.
and I agree completely with him on the thought
that from Surfrider and other environmental advocates'
perspective, I think we do agree on much more
than we disagree on.
But I want to be deliberately provocative here, if I might.
And my goal here is to help depolarize the adaptation,
the conversation around how we should approach adaptation.
And it's very much at the heart
of how we approach the scaled approach.
When we think of nature-based solutions,
we most often think of sand nourishment,
or I often think of sand nourishment,
bringing, in some cases, hundreds of thousands
of cubic yards of sand, trillions of individual
sand particles from someplace to someplace else
to recreate a protective layer and a recreational benefit
of a beach.
Let me, my provocation is that stacking three-ton rocks
is really simply a matter of the scale of that.
Rocks are natural.
They're just bigger.
And the point that I want to make about that,
because I know I can see groans.
I can see that it could be cringed.
But I told you, I was trying to provoke here.
The question is, the issue that I'm trying to bring forward,
the point I'm trying to make, is that each of those
has consequences, each of those has costs,
each of those has feasibility issues
that we need to wrestle with.
Those are the hard conversations
and the hard decisions that we need to.
So again, my goal here to depolarize it,
we're on a spectrum here.
We're not in a black-white world.
thus with the wonderful diversity of human opinion upon us we've got a lot
of got a lot of more conversations to work we've got we've got time and we
don't have time we need to engage those right now thank you
I think you've triggered some responses yes thank you I just thought that comment
was really interesting to me because when I think about nature-based
solutions. I don't think about sand replenishment, I think about dune
restoration and wetland restoration and living shorelines and so that's just
was very interesting to me and I think there's there's a ton of work and
prioritization around making sure we're using the same language about what these
things are, what they mean, the necessity of piloting these different types of
solutions, we know wetland restoration works and there are other things that we
have to test. And I also want to just kind of give us a little bit of grace,
right? We are, this is, this is so real and so consequential and we are moving as
as quickly as we can while the ground is shifting below us. Exactly. And and we are
trying to be thoughtful and innovative and I think I think this is really hard
right and so what from from my perspective the things that I've been
reflecting on over the last couple of weeks in the face of El Nino is like
this is real this is here and so we have to make some really hard short-term
decisions like the huge discussion we had yesterday while also being
incredibly thoughtful and forward-looking about what those triggers
are so that we can move towards longer-term solutions that really do
protect our resources and public access and communities. Commissioner Williams.
All right. Thank you. I just wanted to thank everybody. This has been a great
discussion today. And, you know, I think what it, I guess I'm gonna say something
equally provocative here. And, you know, just like to what Bruce was just
mentioning here, just, you know, on kind of a nature-based solution piece, there's
a project that he's probably very familiar with with Pieters Blancas,
which I would also call a nature-based solution,
where we moved a roadway inland
and allowed natural processes to be restored
and that protects our facilities and whatnot.
So those are, I think, other ways
that we should be looking at things as well.
Obviously, we can't do that in every single case,
but there's different costs and pros and cons with doing that.
But we can do those in some locations.
but of course it's a dollar issue there.
Whereas in other places we are experiencing
that coastal squeeze and from just a policy standpoint,
those are many levels I think above where we all sit
just on how we manage that managed retreat
if we go down that path versus locking ourselves in.
And doing those other kinds of nature-based,
It's also costly solutions with putting rock or sand or whatever.
Either way you slice it, it's going to cost a lot of money and time and effort.
But when it all comes down to it, I think we do need to explore more.
And I think we're starting to do some of that with Caltrans, with looking more at those
nature-based solutions and maybe in gray-green type infrastructure, putting those in the
toolbox for consideration. And we're collecting data and using it to inform and provide inputs
to our decisions moving forward. We're noting where we have repeated issues and trying to
explore how and what a long-term solution in those locations would look like. But what
boils down to I think in a lot of cases just you know we got a shift from being
reactive to proactive and and we also do need some dedicated resources to be able
to accomplish these things and execute projects that affect this kind of change
because right now we're relying on our shop program which is our state highway
operations protection program which every year as over the last five years I
I think 25% of our shop is going to emergency response,
which is over a billion dollars.
I think it's a couple billion dollars a year,
which is impacting our ability
to do regular kinds of projects.
So it's an issue that we're all facing.
So anyway, those are, I think that's where I'll end it.
But yeah, just what it boils down to, I think,
is the kind of discussions we're having here
And really taking seriously all the partnerships
and that are out there with local agencies,
state agencies to solve this challenging issue before us.
Thank you.
Commissioner Wilson and then Commissioner Jackson
and then I'll turn it back to you, Cailin,
and the members of the group.
Commissioner Wilson.
Okay, just a few more notes.
First, a thank you not to the members of the working group
but the staff of the working group.
Thank you so much, all of you, all four of you there.
And beyond, and six, I guess, we also have our
consultant crew, and I just want to thank you all.
It's been a journey, it still is a journey,
we're on it together, and I just want to make sure
that we recognize the folks that have actually
put in most of the hours putting this together.
I think we, I just wanted to respond to a couple
concepts that are put out there in terms of like the area-wide planning and there
seem to be this construct around armoring and then versus protection of
access and resources and I would and I would go further I think we should be
not just talking about protection of access and resources but enhancing and
expanding resources and access in our planning processes I think that that's
really we really should stay on that focus this is not just about protecting
but expanding.
And it's not just about sandy beaches,
and it's not just about homes.
We also have estuarine systems that are in threat
and have their own processes that are squeezed through diking
and draining of lands around there
and other things that have occurred over time,
the wetlands, the reefs, the other ecosystems
that we have to manage for and think about.
So I think that's really important.
Again, we have, as an agency, we fall into,
and like so many agencies, we have a,
we basically tend towards policy consistency,
basically under the pressure of consistent litigation.
Right, and then just everyone's been there.
That's why, typically, the policy and bureaucracy
is created under these situations.
And yet we're on a coastline that has like geography, geology,
hydrology, development patterns, population densities,
all and diversity in communities like it's just really diverse.
And we're going to also, as I think every agency,
really has to figure out ways to do that,
because we have like mitigation equations that that that may not match
what's happening in, say, Long Beach versus Humboldt County.
I think is there's just such diversity in that
and we have to really think about that.
And I don't wanna, I also don't wanna leave out
the policies that repeat our,
and we have to look at those too,
which is that where we, like with the feds,
and I'll just say Centerville Beach was an example of that.
Our county basically proposed a project
that was the funding required that we build something
in the exact same location as it was.
And so basically our emergency response often in funding
is to, the funding is only applied to rebuilding
in the dumb place that things already are built.
This happens in floodplain issues with FEMA
and it happens here at the state as well.
In this state and every agent,
it's just because our policies were built in a time
when we thought things were more static than they are.
and I think we really need to be thinking
about responding to our policies
in terms of rebuilding and our response.
With that, I just wanna thank everybody
for this discussion.
Again, I'm just hoping that we can get this
on our agenda for next month
so we can have support from this commission
to move forward with a broader advocacy
with our sister agencies and other local jurisdictions
as well, so that's it.
Commissioner Jackson.
Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you to the working group.
Thank you to the staff.
Thank you, everybody, for doing all the heavy lifting.
I'm the relative new guy to the working group
who has been MIA the last few months, so I forgive.
I am asking for your forgiveness in that regard.
I want to talk about the communication piece
that you tapped on, one of you mentioned,
in terms of how do we talk to 40 million people.
And I think Commissioner or Supervisor Gibson,
you mentioned the fact that Ventura County
and Santa Barbara County are already having discussions.
And I think that's a strategy maybe we consider
in terms of belonging on to what Commissioner Lopez said
in terms of some of the most vulnerable communities
that don't necessarily have the resources.
So maybe we look at those most impacted regions,
county by county maybe,
those are the least amount of resource
to address those issues.
And again, more work here,
but we take the show on the road.
I mean, there's the impetus right now.
I mean, saw what happened yesterday.
So imagine you go to pick your Orange LA County
and you've got a meeting with all the smart people.
And I think the approach is, hey, here's what's going on.
You guys have seen the videos, you've seen YouTube,
you've seen the news, this is what's happening.
Here are some options that are available.
So instead of prescribing as, you know,
we know it's best for you, the community has input buy-in,
they can address what their concerns are
and they have issues that we may not be aware of.
So I think not telling them what to do,
but showing what the future holds,
offering scientific options based on what's best available,
and then allowing them a meaningful voice
that then helps shape their future.
Because they may then say, all right,
maybe we need a ballot measure for this
to help fund this initiative.
Maybe we do a county one.
maybe we collaborate and we ask for a statewide initiative
for additional funding, bond measures, whatever it is.
So I think listening first is very important.
Meeting communities where they are is very important.
And the how-to, of course, is always the hard part,
is a part of our Coastal Commission meetings
where we go in a day or two before
and we have a county-wide sit-down
with all the smart people in there,
just because you're gonna have a crowd.
You know, two years ago, a year ago,
eh, we'd have a dozen or so folks.
Now we're gonna have crowds.
And we're gonna have so many of the smart people there
for the Coastal Commission already,
and if we can bring the other ancillary bodies there
to help flesh out the possibilities.
So imagine if we'd had this discussion
about the railroad down in Orange County.
And we could have said, hey, here, you've seen the videos,
here's what's going on, here are the options.
So it's a lot easier to have those conversations
at the local level well before they come to us.
Because then the community has seen what's happening,
they're all aware of what's happening,
and then the options.
Nature-based solutions, okay, what does that mean?
I know, because I've been sitting in this seat for a year,
but I didn't know that.
Nature-based solutions, what does that mean?
and rocks rocks are natural to me right but we know that part that natural based
solution is not the solution we want so I think in terms of okay what next
understanding the money and all that stuff is a higher level priority but I
think in the meantime one of the things we can start doing is going out taking
the show on the road to so to speak listening to the communities
understanding their specific concerns for their region because Humboldt
counties different than LA County different than Orange County and then
make the science understandable and then get that feedback and I think that'll
help factor into our ultimate strategy strategy moving forward and then I think
that'll help get some of the money as some of the regions then think through
their options as to how they can get money to help fix this long-term issue
Okay briefly I promise thank you when the notion was brought up about how do
we manage the media I think Mr. Escalante getting the word out the actual
word it made me think about public broadcasting about how we have ever done
this in the past with intractable problems and it made me think about
education. We have example after example. We have Head Start. We have, you know,
Sesame Street. We have things that were funded in one place that could be pushed
out to everyone. That was way before social media. Social media is now, okay,
not me, but people can do a video right now and post it before this, before I
stop talking. So what I was going to ask for is we think about bringing more
people into the conversation and our statewide partners is that we do have a
change in on many levels at the state in elected office and that we bring our
education partners. We have a community college system that is insanely far
reaching and affordable. So at every level we have an opportunity and trust
me I work my day job is at school the kids know and they're working on it and
every every student I run into who's in college now they tell me I'm majoring in
engineering and climate issues. Everything is and climate and
environmental. There's two parts to what they're majoring in because they want
And they're seeking that information.
So how do we broaden?
How do we maximize that?
Thank you.
And Caitlin, I'm gonna turn it over to you.
But first, I just wanted to acknowledge on the Zoom,
we had two county supervisors with us.
Count Supervisor Root Eskew from Monterey
and Supervisor Arroyo from Humboldt.
We very much appreciate their engagement
and their participation today.
I can't see them.
So if they wanna speak, I guess raise your hand.
But thank you for being here.
We appreciate it very much.
Kaylin.
I'll leave space for that real quick to see if they do.
And if not, I'll move towards closing,
leaving it with the director at the end.
Okay, super briefly.
Next steps with the call to action,
a thanks, a request, and then I'll hand it off.
Next steps with the call to action,
we're going to take your comments
and would like to take any more that you have,
including about justice and inclusion,
and update this document and present it back to you
in December for your support.
Thank you, we'd like to continue this conversation.
Second, in terms of acknowledgements,
I wanna double down on the staff comment,
and it is both commission staff and local government staff.
With the exception of Megan and me, Megan and I,
how am I doing?
Everyone's work on this is actually collateral duty,
including the electeds and the working members themselves.
But just so you know, this is how it goes.
We come up with all these brilliant ideas
And then we're like, okay, so who's gonna do that
and write that up?
And you know exactly where that goes.
So I wanna thank not only the staff,
Kelsey and Kerry and everybody else,
everybody else, I wanna thank you for supporting them
in their work and please continue to keep doing so.
The next thing that happens is once these creative solutions
are beginning to be drafted, local government staff
also find time to do the work and be like,
This is what this would look like
if it hits the ground in our community.
And they go through and they strengthen
and they improve.
And again, that's all collateral.
So that's the thanks and acknowledgement.
The request is, I like this roadshow idea,
it is our goal to continue to expand these conversations,
the audiences, and we're gonna need more help
than just us to have these conversations and more for us.
So the request is to go with us.
We don't know how yet, we don't know how to ask you,
but how do we continue to broaden these discussions?
I was gonna do next steps, requests, thanks.
I think I did it.
Director, thank you again.
Thank you, Kalyn, and thanks to everybody
for a really meaningful and fabulous discussion today.
I wanna take some of the,
a couple of people mentioned during the meeting today,
And I'm not sure all of you appreciate the journey
that this working group has been on.
And again, a couple people have been here for the full,
but when we started our journey
as a local government working group,
we were fighting about a lot of things.
There was a lot of disagreement,
and that was one of the reasons we formed the group.
And a huge shout out to Jack Ainsworth,
who had the vision to create this group
and bring everybody together.
And it was because there was so much disagreement
and we were just butting heads.
And we still don't agree on everything,
but I want to just appreciate the coming together moment
that we had today.
And I want to appreciate Surfrider and our NGO partners
for being a part of this conversation,
which I'm sure was very uncomfortable at the beginning.
It's because, again, these are not necessarily things
we all agree on or what the solutions are,
but it has made the conversation more rich.
And I think the outcomes from it are more valuable
and important moving forward.
So it just, I just, that was one of the biggest feelings
I had, you know, listening today was just the fact
that we agree on more than we disagree.
And we are trying to find the path forward together
as opposed to fighting and getting everybody back
in their corners, then just like who's gonna win at the end.
I just, I think that is not the right path
and I'm glad that we found our way to this one.
Clearly the work that we've done to put together
the call to action and also the policy documents
and the technical guidance, I think is really important
to set this foundation for what we need to move forward.
You know, the juxtaposition of this workshop
with our decision yesterday, I think is an example of that.
We need pathways.
We need to give people choices moving forward
that protect our communities and our resources
so that we can enjoy them and have these beaches
and things that are so important to California.
And so I think this type of work sets up the foundation
for those pathways and choices,
and so I just wanna appreciate how important it is.
I see that, and I know that, again,
it's a lot of work to kinda come together.
How are we gonna do this?
How do we find the balance?
that is what this commission does day in, day out,
but also our local government partners
in their own communities.
And if we can kind of make that,
see what the vision is together,
I think we will be more successful,
both on the policy side, on the decision side,
and on the funding side.
So just again, appreciate all that work.
I also really like to take the show on the road idea.
That, I think, was thinking a lot about that
and what that might look like.
And we have this call to action,
which I think deserves some air.
And I think we need to figure out,
I like the idea of figuring out
how to take this to a broader audience.
I don't know what that looks like yet,
but I think it's exciting and gives us a chance to,
you know, win the hearts and minds, right?
We have some work to do there in our communities to do that
because if we're gonna be making tough decisions,
and I wrote this down, be ready to embrace tough decisions.
That's what Bruce said.
This commission does that all the time,
but there are more tough decisions coming our way.
And so we need to get the understanding
of what the choices are and the consequences
and all these things, you know,
we need everybody to understand that.
So to take the show on the road idea,
I just want to double down on.
So I think with that, we'll close our workshop.
I want to thank Kalyn and Megan and the staff, Kelsey,
for speaking, but also all the work.
And Carrie was here, but maybe is she here?
There she is in the back.
Worked on the technical guidance.
It's a lot of work, and we just have such dedication
from our staff about the importance of this.
So I just want to appreciate that.
Thank you, appreciate Erin and Madeleine
for pulling us all together as well.
And this is an ongoing discussion.
Doesn't end here today.
This is a day in, day out kind of thing
we're all gonna be doing for the next forever.
So thank you, everybody, for participating.
And again, Kalyn, thanks for organizing us.
And with that, since I have the mic,
might I suggest a brief break?
Great.
So we will take a brief break and be back at 11.20.
12 minutes.
Okay, I think we're all good.
All right, so we will move back to our regular agenda
and we'll begin with virtual meeting procedures, please.
All right, good morning.
This Coastal Commission meeting is occurring
both in-person and through Zoom.
This meeting is also being webcast
and can be viewed online at cal-ban.org.
If you have internet access and wish to watch
or listen to the meeting only and not speak on an item,
we recommend you use the CalSpan website.
Those who wish to address the commission today
can do so in person through the Zoom platform or by phone.
The speaker request forms may be found
on the Commission's webpage.
Paper forms and a scannable QR code for paperless submittal
are available on the Commission staff table
just outside the meeting room.
For those on Zoom, we have posted virtual hearing procedures
on the Commission's agenda webpage,
which is a guide on providing comments
via Zoom or by phone.
Members of the public speaking
during general public comment may be given up
to two minutes to speak at the discretion of the chair.
Requests to speak during the general public comment period
will not be accepted after 9 AM on each day of the meeting.
I think we're taking it until 10 today
because of the working group.
In order to provide the opportunity
for the broadest range of public participation,
you may speak on a specific topic one time only each month.
Those speaking on an agenda item
that is not general public comment
are typically allowed two to three minutes to speak
at the discretion of the chair.
We will accept a request to speak on a regular agenda item
up until the chair opens the hearing
that particular item. If you have internet access please go to the Commission's web page and click
on the link to fill out a speaker request. If you do not have internet access or prefer to testify
by phone please call the Commission staff at 562-477-9089. Again that number is 562-477-9089.
Staff will provide you with a telephone call-in number
and instructions for how to participate
and provide testimony by phone.
We will manage speakers coming in and out of the meeting
through a meeting organizer.
When it is your time to address the commission,
the organizer will invite you to turn on your video
and microphone or provide instructions
on how to unmute your phone.
Madam Chair, that concludes the virtual hearing procedures.
Thank you very much, appreciate it.
All right, now to agenda changes, please, Mr. Hudson.
Thank you and good morning chair Harmon vice chair hard and commissioners. I will now go over the changes for our agenda today
First we do have an additional change to those listed in the agenda changes memo for today
Item 6a the CDP application by LA County Department of beaches and harbors for replacement of a playground in San Pedro is
postponed
Next item 9a is postponed
Item 10b is also postponed
Item 11a is moved to consent. That is the Ventura
Ventura County Channel Islands Harbor
PWP notice of impending development for a photovoltaic shade and solar parking structure
Item 12a is moved to consent and that is a map adoption for the city of Port Wainimi
post LCP certification permit and appeal jurisdiction map
Item 14 a is moved to consent the city of Manhattan Beach LCP amendment for housing updates and
item 15 a also moved to consent the CDP application by the Bell Air Bay Club LTC and
item 15 B is postponed that is a CDP application by the Tahiti Marina apartment and docks
LLC and
Item 15e is moved to consent. That is a CDP application by the city of Long Beach
For repairs to a seawall in addition
We have one final change to the agenda beyond those listed in the agenda changes memo and staff is recommending item
15d be moved to consent that is a CDP application by the city of Long Beach for parking rate
increases at multiple downtown parking structures that concludes the changes to today's agenda and so that brings us to item five
General public comment and with that I'll turn the mic back over to you. Madam chair. Thank you
All right
For members of the public
I'll be announcing the names of the upcoming speakers and invite you to speak when it is your turn
Each speaker will be allowed two minutes during general public comment at the discretion of the chair in
In order to allow for live video testimony on Zoom, we will be bringing you in as panelists.
As we bring you in, your Zoom will reload and this may take a moment.
To speed up this process, we will bring several people in at a time,
but please remain muted and keep your video off until we ask you to speak.
After your time is up, you will be moved back to attendee mode.
For members of the public present in the room, I will call your names in the order that they appear
in our sign up list. When you hear your name, please line up behind the podium and introduce
yourself when you process speak. There is a raise hand function that will help us find you in the
attendee list. If you're using a phone for audio you can raise your hand by dialing star 9. If you
are participating by zoom you should see a button on your zoom screen. If you have signed up to speak
for this item and are able to do so please raise your hand now. When it is your time to speak we
will invite you to unmute and turn on your camera and you can unmute yourself on a phone by dialing
star six. Today it looks like we have 12 people sign up for general public comment. We'll
start in the room with Susan Mullaney, Sarah Mennell, Bob Hall and then Julianani. Susan
Mullaney, and then please turn the mic on at the base. Thank you.
Hi, my name is Susan Mullaney. Next year the recreation and parks department will replace
the artificial turf fields at Beach Chalet, which is within the jurisdiction of the California
the Coastal Commission.
At a presentation this week by Greg Braswell,
a retired San Francisco sewer engineer,
I learned that around six times per year,
the storm events cause untreated overflow
from our combined sewer and water sewer system
into the ocean and the bay.
In San Francisco, the rainwater runoff
from artificial turf is channeled into the sewer.
It is not allowed to percolate into the soil.
This is a problem considering the artificial turf
is leaching toxins into the water.
For three winters from 2009 to 2012,
the Recreation and Parks Department
tested the rainwater runoff from South Sunset Field
near Lake Merced, a half mile from Ocean Beach.
In 2012, they found DEHP, a semi-volatile organic compound
that causes cancer and birth defects.
The department did not remediate the contamination,
they just stopped testing.
Last year, while replacing the artificial turf
at Kimball Field, they discovered lead
in the soil under the field.
They hauled 550 tons of this California class one
hazardous waste to a special landfill
in the Central Valley.
They only removed soil from a new drainage trench,
which drains the contaminated rain from the artificial turf
to the combined sewer to overflow into the ocean.
They did not remediate the soil from the rest of the field.
In addition to coastal pollution from carcinogens,
lead and microplastic, the Recreation and Parks Department
acknowledges that their artificial turf has PFAS.
San Francisco has a bad actor
in our Recreation and Parks Department.
We have brought data to the Rec Park Commission,
the Public Utilities Commission,
the Environment Department, the Health Commission,
the City Attorney, the Mayor and the Board of Supervisors
asking them to attempt to influence
the Recreation and Parks Department
to stop them from installing artificial turf.
None have succeeded.
Thank you, ma'am.
Your time is up.
We're asking the commission to not give them a permit
to install turf at Beach Chalet.
Only use natural grass like in Santa Barbara,
which you were responsible for.
Thank you.
Next, Sarah Minnell.
My name is Sarah Minnell.
I live in Mill Valley.
We recently, our Department of Public Works recently
did an almost 11-mile slurry seal project
on multiple small roads and Miller Avenue,
which is basically Bothine Marsh
with the tides right now in the Kelvin wave.
I waited and was herding herring,
or not herring, anchovies the other day.
The project came to my attention in August
when I ride my bike and hit what is called traveling,
it's little tiny bits of slurry seal that break off.
And so I immediately started learning about slurry seal.
Best management practices,
they should be wet sweeping before they put it down,
they should not be using blowers
because they're just blowing hazards into everybody's lungs.
They did regular blowers and dry sweepers.
They laid the stuff down, they never came back and swept up
the raveling aggregate that's shed.
So two months later, it was to the point
where I honestly, at one single storm drain,
was able to clean up 50 pounds of it.
And then in my neighborhood, I was cleaning several.
Driveways 60 pounds here, 30 pounds there.
It is a toxic here.
it's frequently caused by wildfires, road building, et cetera.
When it goes into the watershed,
it creates severe physical, physiological,
and behavioral hazards for salmonids.
Well, Mill Valley has five salmonid creeks.
We have a native run of steelhead,
which is still quite strong.
We had a run of coho, which is now virtually non-existent,
but one or two come back a year.
So I tried to work with my Department of Public Works.
I tried to work with the stormwater pollution people.
I tried to work with clean water and clean air.
And this stuff is still so thick,
and they did an illegal dump at Tennessee Valley.
The length of your tables?
Two feet deep.
Thank you.
I need help.
Thank you.
And next, Bob Hall.
My name is Bob Hall.
I'm asking you to take a look at what drains
from the artificial turf at Beach Chalet in San Francisco,
steps from the Pacific.
The fields connect to the combined sewers
that go to the ocean side water pollution control plant,
which discharges treated water to the ocean.
First, metals.
SFPUC, March 2024 first flush at Beach Chalet North,
found zinc at 117 micrograms per liter,
chromium 26, mostly dissolved,
copper nine, lead 3.6, and mercury .42.
Second, plastic.
I collected a large bucket of plastic grass blades
from this field and as they wear,
they shed smaller fragments.
SFPUC's own website says typical wastewater treatment
removes up to 90% of microplastics depending on size
and what remains is released with treated wastewater
into water bodies.
In 2019, SFPUC said it didn't expect to upgrade
its plants for microplastics,
and its testing of this field never measured them.
And you study in Nature found common plastics,
including polyethylene, generates free radicals in water
that damaged red blood cells in the lab.
This may be why microplastics have been linked
to heart attacks, strokes, and other conditions.
I'm asking the commission to request multi-storm sampling
that includes microplastics, hexavaliant, chromium,
PFOS, and tire chemicals as an assessment
of what the plant removes versus what reaches the outfall
and a turf fiber management plan
that the remaining life of the field.
And when San Francisco Rec Park comes to you
to permit a replacement plastic field next year,
please deny the permit as Rec Park has never disclosed
any of these harms to the public
and they are not a good partner.
They really need to get with it
and I hope you guys can manage them a little bit better
because they just consider this stuff routine maintenance,
more plastic.
Thank you, and now Julian Honey,
followed by our Zoom speakers,
starting with Diane Wolkie, Noah Suarez Sikes,
and Susan Kirk, the one and only Julian Honey.
Thanks, Chris, and I have photos which you can pull up.
Good morning, Chair Harmon and commissioners.
My name is Julian Honey, and I've been a coastal planner
in the North Central Coast Office
of the Coastal Commission for two and a half years.
Today's actually my day off,
but I wanted to come in this morning
to comment in my capacity as an individual
and as a site steward with SEIU Local 1000,
the statewide union which represents
over 100,000 California state workers,
including administrators, clerical staff,
educators, nurses, and custodians,
as well as commission staff.
As you may already know,
California state workers made history two weeks ago
when tens of thousands of us stood together on strike lines
for our first ever unfair practice strike,
demanding that the state bargain fairly
towards our next contract.
Our contract expired on June 30th of this year,
and although bargaining began with the state
as early as March, they rejected all economic proposals
on the final day of bargaining
with no substantive counter offers.
And the images on these slides just show some of the rallies
in San Francisco, Fresno, San Bernardino, and Sacramento.
We had folks as far north as Crescent City
all the way down through San Diego.
For more and more people, both in the Bay Area
across California the cost of living has risen dramatically and wages have not kept up. As of
today the median price for a one-bedroom apartment in San Francisco is $4,430 a month. At the same
time, twice in the last six years, the state budget has been balanced on the backs of state workers.
Once during the pandemic, when the state demanded a roughly nine percent cut as Californians braced
for a COVID-fueled recession and another last year in 2025, when our contractually
bargain 3% raises were revoked to balance a structural budget deficit. These cuts and low
wages force workers to choose between sacrificing quality of life and financial goals in exchange
for working to protect the places we love. I implore you all to use your platforms to support
state workers and to make it possible for those of us who choose careers in public service
to be able to forward and to live in the communities that we serve. Thank you.
Thank you. Now on to our speakers, Diane Wolkke followed by Noah Suarez Sikes and then Susan
Kirk's. Diane Wolkke. We have slides. Oh, thank you. Good morning Chair Harmon and
commissioners. Diane Wolkke board members safe healthy playing fields beyond plastics affiliate.
Synthetic turf on playing fields and parks is the tip of the iceberg in the CDP and local use
permit zones. We're asking you again to expand your policies to include all petrochemical plastic
servicing, all of it toxic, releasing microplastics, all of it with serious consequences to public
and environmental health. We are highly concerned about the proliferation of these plastics
that should have been under your purview. The recently opened Gaylord Resort on the harbor
in Chula Vista has 50,000 square feet of synthetic turf in a migratory flyaway zone. This product
is known to negatively impact biodiversity, plastic pollution and climate change. Slide.
Immediately adjacent to the resort is Harbor Park
with 25,000 square feet of used tire crumb surfacing.
On Monday of this week,
a temperature of 143, 44.3 Fahrenheit
was obtained at 12.30 PM
in a 74 degree ambient air temperature.
The surface is already setting microplastics.
They have already broken ground for a splash pad,
which may in fact have used tire crumb as well, slide.
North of the resort, another US tire crumb playground
installed in 2025 is also shedding microplastics
and showing other signs of deterioration.
Slide.
Children are playing on these overheated surfaces,
risking thermal burns,
dermal abrasion of toxic chemicals,
and inhaling methane, ethylene, and other toxic gases.
Children are known to adjust these materials as well
because of developmentally appropriate
hand to mouth behavior.
Slide.
Carlsbad is on the fast track
to install more, ever more synthetic turf.
They have knowingly avoided local use permits and CEQA
and have admitted to installation straight into the ocean.
The park high at Aviara falls within the local permit zone
and their synthetic turf is passed its best by date.
Slide, thank you for taking a pause on PVC tile installation
and postponing item F6A, thank you.
Thank you.
Next, Noah's Fire Sykes.
All right, hello folks, can you hear me?
Yes, we can hear you.
Fantastic.
All right, good morning commissioners.
My name is Noah Sykes
and I'm the lead organizer at Better Neighbors LA.
And since we've spent the morning talking about issues
strongly affecting local governments,
I'm here to urge you all to approve
and encourage hosted only STR regulation in the coastal zone.
So the commission has recently acted
to weaken strong regulation around short term rentals
that prioritizes hosted STRs.
This has been very harmful to cities' efforts
to comply with statewide housing mandates.
The state legislature has explicitly told cities
that they need to preserve housing units
within their jurisdiction,
but the commission has repeatedly acted
to make that task significantly more difficult
by opening up broad swaths of affordable coastal housing
to conversion into unlicensed hotels.
With the existing difficulty of building housing
in the coastal zone and new restrictions
on cities' ability to regulate short-term rentals,
coastal cities are doubly burdened
and put in severe danger of not being able
meet their RINA targets. There's no reason to weaken strong STR regulations. Hosted STRs
tend to be more affordable than unhosted while not removing housing units from the market.
The Commission continues to assert, without evidence, that unhosted STRs are affordable,
but in reality their average prices tend to be triple the price of a hosted STR, and the majority,
in many jurisdictions, are studios or one-bedrooms that do not provide more space than a comparable
hotel room. It's not worth kneecapping Coastal City's attempts to comply with statewide housing
mandates for these luxury STRs and we hope that the commission will act to preserve hosted only
regulation in the future so that coastal cities can comply with statewide mandates and ensure a
more affordable future for residents and visitors. Thank you very much. Thank you. Next is Susan
Kirks followed by Chely Hillkama and George Hillkama. As Susan Kirks it seems like we're
having trouble promoting you and as a panelist we're gonna keep trying. Looks like you're in
and on two devices, you might have to leave on one.
All right, it looks like you're moving in.
It looks like you're still having problems with that.
We'll put a pause on Susan.
We're gonna move on to Chely Hilkema
and then George Hilkema, and we'll come back to Susan.
Chely Hilkema.
Good afternoon, commissioners, Chair Harmon.
My name is Chely Hilkema, and I'm here to speak
as a mooring permit holder in Newport Beach,
but after listening to your commission
local government working group workshop this morning. As a person who lives a block from
Newport Harbor and a block from the ocean, I want to thank you. Thank you. Thank you
for all of your good work. I'm just I listened to the whole thing. So thank you. The city
of Newport Beach has threatened to end long established mooring permit transfer process
and raise only mooring rates three to 500 percent. Such callous changes would end access
for recreational boaters on fixed incomes in direct contradiction to the city's local
coastal program commitment to provide moorings as an important source of low-cost public
access to water and harbor. Similar stories are being told up and down our coast where
real estate has become increasingly expensive and local policies encourage gentrification
on public tide lands. The mooring fields that emerged in Newport Harbor over the past hundred
years are essential voting infrastructure for those who don't have multi-million dollar
homes with private docks, yacht club memberships, or discretionary income to pay for pricey
marina slips. And they're far more than places to store boats. They become communities of
boaters who care about each other and our shared environment. Our coastline has been
commodified and working class boaters are being priced out. There's an urgent need for
statewide policy to protect California's mooring fields as essential low-cost recreational
voting infrastructure. Voters also need reasonable user fees that promote rather than restrict
public access. It is my opinion that adopting the State Lands Commission's Category 1 Southern
California benchmark rate would be a win-win for all permitted recreational voters and private
peer owners, and especially for the city, which will eventually have to provide objective market
evidence to justify how its tight lands rates correspond to the benefits, rights, and restrictions
the user groups receive. Thank you and thank you again for your good work.
Thank you, next is George. My name is George Shilkema and I'm a Newport Harbor mooring permit
holder. On Tuesday I made a public comment at the Voting and Waterways Commission's
quarterly meeting and I'll repeat some of what I said there because it's pertinent to our user
group's need to find an advocate to help us protect public access for those of lesser means.
I was bitten by the wooden boat bug about 75 years ago in the middle of a Michigan winter
when famed sailor Irving Johnson came to my high school and told fantastic tales
of his travels at sea. I was hooked and began to dream about a sailboat of my own. After high
school I went to Marathon, Florida where I built a little sailboat and then sailed another boat
to the Bahamas. It was an exciting sea adventure for the boy I used to be and my 90-year-old
self, remembers him fondly. I eventually settled on the Balboa Peninsula block from Newport Harbor
where I moored my sailboat for 40 years. I've had the pleasure of spending much of my time
on the water where I met all kinds of sea-loving characters many of whom become my dearest friends.
Many of us who dreamed of a boat ownership had to figure out how to make that happen. We worked
overtime and saved. We knew we need places to store our boats and when we asked how we could get
mooring permits, city or county staff told us to purchase them from permit holders, had them for
sale. We learned this that by buying and by transferring our mooring permits has been done
for decades so that those of us who paid tens of thousands of dollars for our permits have had the
expectation that we could recoup at least part of what we paid. Over the decades city policies have
been biased against us. We pay higher fees and we're over regulated compared to like users.
but the city's recent severance to raise only mooringfield rates and and only mooringford
transfers suggests that it now intends to price us out of the harbor. I'm concerned
about whether or not future records will have access. Please do what you can to keep these
boaters' dreams alive. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Looks like we have Susan Kirks now. So it'll be Susan Kirks followed by Janet Rogers and
And then Margaret Molloy, Susan Kirks.
Thank you very much.
Fourth time was a charm.
Appreciate your staff and AGP
for accommodating all of us public speakers.
I did my best.
I'm only on one device,
so I'm not sure why I wasn't able to join as a panelist,
but now I'm here, I'm belated.
Welcome to the Commission for your area visit
for your November meeting.
I'm Susan Kirks, and I'm speaking today about an item
actually from yesterday's meeting,
your federal consistency determinations.
I had submitted a written comment, excuse me,
which was posted to the agenda item under correspondence,
but I did not hear any reference to answers to my questions
in the staff communication.
So I wanted to bring to your attention today
that the negative determination,
I believe the number was 0026-46 for the Gaviota Outlook
and Arroyo Hondo Preserve in Santa Barbara County
was for a four-strand barbed wire fence
to prevent cattle from encroaching
into a freshwater stream area
and a habitat restoration area.
And the bottom strand of the fence was said to be smooth wire
to facilitate wildlife passage.
The height of the fence was not described at all
in the negative determination.
And the materials used I questioned
because barbed wire can be very severely injurious
to wildlife.
For example, a mother doe and her fawn
or fawns trying to naturally move through an area.
The mother doe can jump a fence.
That's an appropriate height, say five feet
or five and a half feet,
but could be severely injured by barbed wire,
and the fawns cannot move underneath the bottom strand
unless it's 22 inches height to bottom wire.
So I would have appreciated some information
and frankly, using barbed wire is contraindicated.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Next is Janet Rogers, Margaret Molloy,
and then Wade Womack.
Janet Rogers.
Hi, I'm Janet Rogers, co-chair of the Embarcadero Coalition
in San Diego.
You will be voting on the Port Master Plan Update
in the next few months.
The update abandons public access and amenities
in the Embarcadero.
Where are our parks?
Next slide.
This map shows the parks legally committed to in the Embarcadero.
Yeah, this map shows parks legally committed to
in the Embarcadero for at least 26 years.
port is wiping out many of them. Next slide. The port is in the PMPU is in a different format
and organization than the current plan. This cosmetic difference does not allow the destruction
of content and legal commitments to the public recreation and public access. These commitments
need to be completed or mitigated before any decisions are made on the PMPU. We repeatedly
asked for reconciliation of the acreage between the current master plan and the PMPU of parks,
plazas, and promenades, but neither the port nor the coastal staff provided that information.
Where is a proper accounting? Next slide. In 2020, coastal staff referred the port
to the Commission Enforcement Division for the failure to create the Navy Pier Park after 20
years, which is mitigation for the Midway Museum. The port was doing nothing. Why didn't coastal staff
refer all the other commitments and mitigations that the port failed to deliver for the last
quarter of a century to the Embarcadero, to the Enforcement Division? Why would the public trust
the port if public access and amenities that were legally committed to for over 25 years are
are gleefully wiped out.
Next slide.
This is a short list of enforceable public assets
that are missing.
A second major 10 acre park,
a 3.3 acre park from the Grand Hyatt,
the Crescent Pier Park,
park on the Broadway Pier,
the 100 foot wide Esplanade with a 65 foot wide parkway,
a 2.5 acre water side park.
Please don't become complicit with the park
in minimizing green space and destroying parks.
Thank you.
Thank you. Next is Margaret Malloy. And then Wade Womack, Margaret Malloy.
Hello commissioners and staff. First of all, thank you all for your important work.
As you're aware on October 16, 2026 concerned Venice area community members submitted an enforcement request to the commission titled urgent coastal commission enforcement complaint.
Venice Beach bid activities on public coastal property,
private security, public access,
and potential unpermitted development.
As you know, the Venice Beach Business Improvement District
encompasses extensive areas of public beach park
and public access to the Sandy Beach
west of the private property line along
Ocean Front Walk in Venice
within the dual permit area of the coastal zone.
These areas include city-owned public property and
seven state owned city operated public properties.
The entire the bed area is within the jurisdiction
of the commission.
The enforcement complaint identifies ongoing activities,
categories of potentially responsible actors,
public coastal locations, documentary evidence
and specific coastal act compliance questions.
We respectfully requested the commission's
enforcement division to open an enforcement complaint,
assign a case number,
identify the responsible enforcement officer
and conduct an activity-specific investigation.
That's very important.
Given that ordinance 189012 provides
for a nine-year period of bid implementation,
we also requested that the enforcement review
and written confirmation be expedited.
We've received a notice from Mr. Spencer Sayer
on your staff on November 2nd that they expect
to hopefully meet with the bid representatives next week.
That's not expedited.
For this reason, yesterday, we requested you and your staff
to request that the city of Los Angeles
and the office of the city clerk
post phone execution of any contract
between the city of Los Angeles
and the Venice Beach Property Owners Association
pending the Coastal Commission Enforcement investigation.
it would not be legally appropriate for this to be.
Thank you.
And next is Wade Womack.
Hi, I have a slide to show.
Can you hear me okay?
Yes, we have your slide up and we can hear you.
Good morning, Chair Harmon and commissioners.
My name is Wade Womack.
I'm a coastal access advocate in Orange County.
Thank you and coastal staff for all you do
to protect coastal access for all Californians.
I have an idea I'd like to bounce off of you in regards to the seawall that got approved
as part of this OCTA railroad project in San Clemente.
I wonder if OCTA can include a walkway on this.
Excuse me, sir.
This was on the agenda yesterday.
Thank you.
Thank you.
We have no more general public comment speakers at this time then.
Okay.
Thank you very much.
And thank you to the public.
With that, I'll return to the commission and we'll begin with Commissioner Lowenberg.
Director through the chair director can we is the idea that contractors are
putting down slurry is that something that a contractor could be cited for is
that something that we would could is that an enforcement action is that
something I mean I know that when we put down slurry in our parking lots we were
pretty careful about it I mean we don't and we put barrier you know we put the
buffers around the drains and then clean it and I sort of is there something we
can do here so it obviously depends on the specific situation I'm not of
familiar but generally yes if it's a permit that the Commission issues we
include BMP is and a whole host of other protective measures and if those aren't
somebody just look into this one yes and then my next comment is can we have a
conversation with Rec and Park about what's going on I grew up playing on
on that field, soccer.
I played on that field for three to four years,
so I know it well, and it is right on the,
I mean, it's literally across the road, is Baker Beach.
So I would be more than happy to facilitate something
with Mr. Ginsburg, and we can have a conversation.
Thank you, I think that would be a great idea.
We'll follow up together on that one.
Thank you very much, Vice Chair Hart.
Great. Yeah, I just want to join with Commissioner Lowenberg in this concern, and I just wanted
to also thank the folks at Sunset Dunes. We had a nice visit. A few of us went out there,
had a wonderful Sunset walk, and it's all related, of course. You know what happens
at the beach, shall we? You have this really beautiful new park out there that's just remarkable
how far it's come, and so many children and people enjoying it on that beautiful
afternoon in San Francisco. So, yeah, it would be a shame to see any kind of
plastic-based alternative, to put it nicely, grass surface going in out there.
So, I'm sure you'll follow up on that. Also, with regard to the comment made by
by Susan Kirk's, I mean I share that concern.
I know it was on the calendar yesterday
and I'm just wondering if you have any response
to what she was saying with regard to the fencing.
Yes, and just to remind everyone
this was on the agenda yesterday,
it was I believe Ms. Kirk's is talking about
proposed use of barbed wire fencing
that was part of a grazing management plan
at Arroyo Hondo Preserve in Santa Barbara County,
just to give a little bit of context.
In this case, the Natural Resource Conservation Service had submitted a negative determination
for proposed financial and technical assistance.
So the concerns I think raised by Ms. Kirk centered on the potential effects of the fencing
on wildlife movement and we would just note that the proposed fencing is designed to exclude
livestock from sensitive riparian areas as Ms. Kirk's mentioned but does include design
features including the smooth bottom wire, a wide wire spacing, and a maximum top wire
Height of four feet specifically to facilitate wildlife passage
Commissioner Kelly
Thank You chair Herman. I just wanted to briefly share what a joy it's been to be here in San Francisco for this meeting
I feel like San Francisco
has played such an important vital role in
really being
progressive and how we look at some of the environmental challenges and
climate change challenges that face our state and so
To get to be here, especially in kind of a monumental week when we heard about the sunset dunes ballot measure succeeding
To preserve that park and open space along the coast and some other really exciting
Winds for our state and the country. It's just great to be here. And I think San Francisco is
Such a special place and for those of us who've had the opportunity to live here in parts of our lives
It's very nostalgic in some ways and it's also just great this time of year
especially to get to look out on the Bay and to think about you know the work
we've done in partnership with BC DC and the work ahead in partnership with BC DC
and all the counties that surround the Bay Area of which I am fortunate to live
in one of them so thank you for San Francisco for hosting us and for all the
members of the public and our staff who was able to make it to this month's
meeting it was really wonderful thank you so much okay no additional comments
excuse me we will continue on I believe we're on the consent calendar mr.
Hudson thank you we are on the consent calendar item 6 this is the consent
calendar for all districts on the agenda today as item 6a is postponed there are
three remaining items on the consent calendar staff is not aware of any
opposition to any of these matters and the applicants are in agreement with
the staff recommendations the staff is recommending the Commission vote and
approve the consent calendar thank you very much are there any ex partes any
public comments there are no speakers okay return to the Commission motion
second motion by Commissioner Jackson a second by Commissioner Lowenberg any
objections to unanimous consent see none the Commission concurs thank you mr.
Hudson thank you that brings us to item 7 which is applications to be moved from
the regular calendar to the consent calendar today also for all districts on
the agenda as mentioned during the agenda changes this morning there are
six items that were recommending be moved to consent calendar and those are
item 11 a the Ventura County Channel Islands Harbor public works plan notice
of impending development for a solar parking shade canopy.
Item 12A, a map adoption for the City of Port Wainini Post-LCP certification permit and
appeal jurisdiction map.
Item 14A, the City of Manhattan Beach LCP amendment for housing updates.
Item 15A, the CDP application by the Bellaire Bay Club.
Item 15 D, which is the CDP application
by the City of Long Beach for parking rate increases
over three years at multiple downtown parking structures.
And item 15 E, the CDP application by the City of Long Beach
for repairs to a inner harbor seawall.
I would note that there are addendums for items 14 A,
15 A, 15 D, and 15 E, which make revisions
and corrections to the staff report
and some modifications to the conditions.
I would also like to take the opportunity
to thank the City of Long Beach
for working with us to make some of those changes
to conditions on item 15D and 15E,
there are two applications,
which allowed us to move those items to consent.
I would also like to take the opportunity
to thank the City of Manhattan Beach
and their staff for working so closely with us
on item 14A, and I would like to highlight item 14A,
which is the housing update by the city of Manhattan Beach.
And although we're recommending this item
be moved to consent today, this was an especially
complex amendment that dealt with many different
important housing issues.
And this moving to consent is only possible
as a result of several meetings and substantial work
by your staff, and very close coordination
between your staff and the city staff
to resolve multiple issues
that were part of the original proposal before us.
And just to highlight some of the suggested modifications
that have been made,
that we were able to resolve those issues.
First, it's protection for affordable housing
to ensure that affordable housing
will be maintained as such and protected
for the life of development,
not just 55 years as originally proposed.
In addition, there will be requirements
that new development ensure consistency
with coastal resource protection policies of the LCP
while still allowing for the city to implement
a new density bonus incentive program
and permit streamlining procedures.
And to allow for mixed use residential
and commercial development in commercially zoned areas
with important consideration that will maintain
that commercial use on the ground floor.
And importantly, the addition of a policy requiring the city
to develop and submit a future LCP amendment,
clarifying and adding new objective standards
to protect coastal resources for housing
within the next three years.
Now, the city staff has indicated they're in agreement
with all these suggested modifications,
and there's no known opposition,
and thus we're moving this item to consent today.
So in closing, we're not aware of any opposition
to any of the other items being moved and get sent,
and thus we're recommending the commission vote
and approve this item.
I am available for questions.
Thank you very much.
Are there any expertise?
Any public comments?
We have a couple speakers across all the items.
We'll start with item 14A.
We have in the room Adam Finestone.
Again, for item 14A.
Thank you.
Morning, Chair Harmon, members of the commission.
My name's Adam Finestone.
I'm the planning manager for the city of Manhattan Beach.
I'd like to first off say, echo what Mr. Hudson said.
Regarding the work that their staff has done the work that my staff has done to get to a spot where everything is lined up
We're meeting the requirements of our housing element and doing so in a way that does protect coastal resources and
access to the coast
This has been a long effort for us to implement our housing element
There's several housing programs in our housing element that required us to update not just our municipal code
But the local coastal program as well so it's been a large effort
I do want to actually specifically call out a couple of folks that work for the Commission Mandy Ravel and
Riley Christie both in the Southern, California area. They have been an amazing resource and really great help for us
So thank you to them for for the work they do
city staff is fully in support of the suggested modifications and we believe it is appropriate to move this to the
consent calendar
Just wanted to make myself available for any questions that the Commission may have and I believe
Maricela Guillen from my office is online as well if needed. Thank you
Thank you
Moving to item 15e we have one speaker on zoom Michael bar metler
Michael you're being moved in as a panelists. You should be able to unmute
all right there you go go ahead hello good good afternoon my name is mike barmiller i'm speaking
on behalf of the property owners located at 25 through 31 vista del golfo their houses sit
immediately behind the seawall that is part of this project my comments today supplement the
letter that was previously submitted and provided to you i'll keep my comments brief though
On its face, this is a project that involves
takings of private homeowners.
Based on the acknowledgement agreement,
I believe it's as it's referred into the staff report,
addendum proposed by the city,
the owners don't believe that this fact
that it's a taking is being fully recognized by the city.
Specifically, the acknowledgement agreement
is currently drafted,
does not recognize the protections
or the rights of the property owners.
This agreement is being required by the Coastal Commission
pursuant to one of the conditions.
acceptable to the property owners. Both the acknowledging agreement and the easement will
have to reserve the applicable property owner's rights. The owners have provided comments to the
acknowledgement agreement to the city in this respect. We appreciate the city working on this
project but this needs to be resolved. So in conclusion the property owners are not opposed
to the project itself but they are opposed to waiving their rights afforded to them under law.
Thank you for your time today. Thank you. We have no more speakers but we do have those
those available for questions for all the items.
Great. Madam Chair.
Thank you so much.
Returning to the commission, comments, questions, or a motion.
I so move those items to consent.
Second.
Thank you, that's a motion by Commissioner Lowenberg.
Second by Commissioner Escalante to approve the items moved from the regular calendar to consent.
Any objections to unanimous consent?
Seeing none, the commission concurs.
On to item eight please Mr. Ed.
Thank you.
And item 8 is the deputy director's report for the South Central Coast District, which
includes two permit waivers, one immaterial permit amendment, and four immaterial permit
time extensions.
Staff is not aware of any opposition to these items being reported, and we're asking whether
three or more commissioners object to any of the items in the deputy director's report.
I am available for questions.
Any ex partes?
Any public comments?
No speakers.
three or more commissioners object to any item in the deputy director's report
seeing no objection the commission can curse ten eight please all right thank
you that brings us to item ten a which will be presented via zoom by Marlene
Alvarado a senior coastal planner in the Commission's transportation unit we do
have a PowerPoint for this item please if we could pull that up and Marlene
please take it away okay so good afternoon commissioners before I begin I
I want to acknowledge that Miles Tepper, one of our Sea Grant fellows, worked closely
with staff on this project and was very much looking forward to presenting it today.
But unfortunately, he is unable to be here, so I'll be presenting it on his behalf.
But I did just want to recognize his significant contributions and the work he put into this
particular project.
With that, item 10 A is a permit application from Caltrans for a Gaviota coast project
consisting of two components, a wildlife under crossing and the rehabilitation of approximately
17 miles of highway 101 through their capital preventive maintenance program.
The standard of review for the project is the Coastal Act with the certified Santa Barbara
County LCP providing non binding guidance.
Next slide, please.
The project will span a 17-mile segment of Highway 101
along the Gaviota Coast region,
a standing largely undeveloped and mountainous stretch
of coastline just north of the city of Santa Barbara
in Santa Barbara County.
The work would be entirely within the Highway 101
right of way between those Pueblos Canyon Road in Naples
and Gaviota Peak Trailhead in Las Cruces
within the area shown on slide two.
Although the overall project extends beyond the coastal zone,
this permit review is limited to the two portions
of the highway within the coastal zone.
While the proposed maintenance activity extends
the entire 17 mile project reach,
the proposed wildlife crossing will be located immediately
north of the entrance into the Gaviota State Park parking lot.
about 50 ft from there. Next slide, please. As just mentioned, this Gaviota Coast portion of Highway
101 is generally surrounded by undeveloped lands with rugged mountains and steep hills to the inland
and multiple state park lands, national lands and nature preserves. Highway 101 creates a barrier
between these natural inland and coastal habitat for wildlife. The first project component addresses
wildlife movement and wildlife vehicle collisions along the Gaviota coast. Work by local conservatories
and Caltrans identified wildlife crossings as a significant issue here and a Caltrans
study documented more than 100 wildlife carcasses along a six mile segment near Gaviota Pass
between March 2022 and March 2023.
KACHS has then completed a 2023 wildlife connectivity assessment for the corridor that identified
opportunities to improve wildlife passage, reduce collisions, and strengthen habitat
connectivity between protected lands.
The assessment found that this existing culvert constructed in 1952 is used by smaller wildlife
But it's too narrow and confined to adequately accommodate larger species catch is therefore proposes for placing the existing culvert shown on slide three, but they larger natural bottom wildlife under crossing. Next slide.
Thank you. A sample rendering of the proposed wildlife under crossing is shown here on slide four.
The main improvement is that the under crossing is much larger significantly wider and taller to accommodate more wildlife and larger species.
The new wildlife under crossing would replace the existing six foot wide seven foot high and 115 foot long culvert with a new culvert that would be approximately 25 feet wide 15 feet high and 110 feet long.
So more than four times wider and two times taller than the existing culvert.
The proposed large larger wildlife under crossing would improve passage for mountain lions bears mule deer and other wildlife enhancing habitat connectivity between protected state park lands on either side of highway one highway one on one next slide please.
It is anticipated that the wider and more suitable under cross. Oh, can we go back one slide. I think that's
Oh! Actually you were fine. Apologies. It is anticipated that the wider and more suitable
undercrossing will result in fewer wildlife crossings across the surface of the highway.
In addition to the undercrossing, the project also includes additional improvements to reduce
collisions for wildlife that do still cross the highway. An overview of the wildlife crossing
elements. Oh, I think our slides, my slides might have flipped a little bit. Can you go to the next slide?
Sorry, so just really quickly, this slide shows an overview of the wildlife crossing elements
and we'll go back in a second to the previous slide, but essentially it does include some
escape ramps and I'll just leave the slide for a moment here. Just shows the overall wildlife
elements which will include a half mile of new eight foot high wildlife exclusion fencing
to earthen escape ramps. So jump outs for animals to maintain wildlife passage and that way animals
do not become inadvertently trapped within the highway corridor and this element also
includes native vegetation restoration and if we can go back to the previous slide please.
So just an example, these are jump outs. They would allow animals to escape the highway corridor.
As you can, the example here on slide six. So overall, the design of the proposed wildlife
crossing and jump outs according to Caltrans was informed by the Wildlife Connectivity Assessment
and developed in consultation with wildlife experts and regulatory agencies. And the project
the project did receive an $8 million federal grant. Next slide, next slide, please. And then, yeah, thank you. The second project component is a capital improvements component to rehabilitate roughly 17 miles of highway one to one.
So this would include repavement, ramp repairs, lighting and signage improvements, guardrail upgrades, rumble strips and other safety improvements.
As part of this maintenance, two road embankments would be stabilized to address persistent slumping due to ongoing instability through the use of geofoam grout.
A high density polyurethane foam injected beneath the highway for soil densification.
Caltrans evaluated several alternatives,
including mudjacking, which is the injection
of liquefied soil or other fill material, reconstruction,
and retaining walls, but determined
that these would require substantially more excavation
and larger areas of disturbance, which would increase impacts
to reducing creeks and sensitive habitats.
Thus, geofoam injection was considered
the least environmentally impactful option subject
to appropriate safeguards.
Caltrans expects minimal environmental risk because the material would be injected beneath
the roadway and remain buried, is highly stable and hydrophobic, sits on raised highway embankments
and does not significantly interact with any waters.
In order to avoid potential impacts to groundwater, aquatic resources and accidental releases,
condition six establishes specific protective protective requirements, including limiting
use to only certified products and appropriate materials, implementation of best management
practices during the injection process, spill prevention, pollution controls, and proper disposal.
The condition also requires annual monitoring prompt investigation and corrective action.
if contamination or releases are detected, monitoring for potential interaction with
groundwater and cleanup and removal of any exposed materials. These requirements provide ongoing
oversight and a mechanism to respond to potential adverse effects to ensure that potential adverse
impacts to coastal resources are avoided. Next slide, please. In addition, no impacts to Gaviota
to Creek riparian environmentally sensitive habitat areas or California red legged frog.
Habitat are anticipated and protective measures including biological monitoring, environmentally
sensitive area exclusion fencing, construction, best management practices and habitat restoration
are proposed as part of the project and will be implemented pursuant to the conditions
of approval. There is an addendum for this item. On October 30th, 2023, the project will
the project. The project is a
concerns about potential impacts to Gaviota Creek riparian habitat and flooding and recommended the
Caltrans prepare a regional master plan and implementation schedule for future improvements.
In response Caltrans emphasized its ongoing regional efforts including the independently
funded wildlife connectivity assessment and a stakeholder process involving eight meetings since
from May 20th to August 20th.
From May 20th to August 20th,
2026 through August 20th, sorry.
Since 2021 through August 2026.
The proposed crossing location
received the assessments highest ranking
with a score of 20 out of 20
and was selected based on it's
anticipated connectivity benefits.
Catranz also explained that the project
provided a unique opportunity
to use federal wildlife crossing grant funding
That funding requires quick implementation through essentially existing projects.
So here Caltrans has had, and already had, a programed highway capital improvements project
in the area, and it could leverage to secure the other funding for the wildlife crossing
through that.
Regarding the need to develop other wildlife and fish passage projects here, we first note
that Caltrans has identified a separate project to improve fish passage and terrestrial connectivity
at two additional Gabiota Creek culverts. More generally, we agree that there should
be further improvements and hope to see that. However, we do not believe that larger needs
should prevent moving forward, should prevent this particular project to move forward when
we have the opportunity. Staff recognizes the need for continued regional planning but
years. We also believe the
assessments and plans provide a
solid basis for future
investments, and it is our
understanding that Caltrans is
committed to working further to
address the broader impacts of
Highway 101 on wildlife and
aquatic resources along the
Gaviota coast. Lastly,
regarding, actually, regarding
project-specific concerns about
the culvert raised, we note that
the crossing has been designed
to move farther from Gaviota
addendum also incorporates revisions to the staff report to address additional correspondence and
clarify the project specific resource protections and related considerations. On November 4th,
2026, staff also received an email from Lisa Stretton, the Director of Ecosystem Management
of Cheetle Center for Biodiversity and Ecological Restoration expressing opposition to the project
and arguing that other locations, particularly the geology culvert north of the Gaviota tunnel,
would provide greater benefits for both wildlife and endangered steelhead. Like the other
correspondence Dr. Stratton similarly questions Catran's stakeholder collaboration and recommends
a comprehensive regional approach. These concerns are addressed in the staff report and the addendum
And on November 5th, Candice Manneken on behalf of the Coastal Ranch's Conservancy provided a copy
of the Conservancy, two staff, a copy of the Conservancy's April 20, 25th letter
addressed to Caltrans to show that he had previously raised recommendations and concerns
about the wildlife crossing project and planning process. The Conservancy states it also submitted
the letter to demonstrate that these concerns have been raised throughout project development
and are not new issues being raised immediately before the hearing. Next slide, please.
In closing, staff believes the project combines important highway safety improvements with a
dedicated wildlife crossing intended to improve ecological connectivity along the Gaviota Coast.
Overall, the wildlife crossing is expected to improve long-term wildlife connectivity and
in public safety, and that the project as conditioned
is consistent with the chapter three policies
of the Coastal Act.
The staff recommends approval of the application
subject to 11 special conditions listed on pages eight
to 19 of the staff report.
The motion to implement this recommendation
can be found on page seven of the staff report.
And before concluding, I'd like to note
that the photo shown on slide nine here was taken
by postal staff during a site visit
to the proposed wildlife crossing.
In fact, I took the photo.
As you can see, 3D happened to be using the area
immediately north of the proposed under crossing
on the east side of Highway during the visit,
illustrating the importance of maintaining
wildlife movement along the Gaviota coast.
With that, this concludes our presentations,
our presentation and we're available for any questions.
Thank you.
Great, thank you very much.
I appreciate it.
Are there any ex partes?
Hey, Chris, to you.
Looks like we have about four speakers.
I will also note that we have what looks like
the entire Caltrans District 5 project team on Zoom
available for questions.
But we'll start with Doug Campbell,
followed by Candace Minnegan,
and then Colin Tolbert-Smith.
Doug Campbell.
Doug, it looks like you're in as a panelist.
You should be able to unmute.
If I could have three minutes, I would appreciate it.
This is a complicated matter.
Chair.
Oh, two minutes, please, sir.
Thank you for the opportunity to comment on this project.
My name is Doug Campbell.
I've worked for more than a decade
on improving fish and wildlife habitat
in the Gaviota Creek watershed.
On the Gaviota coast, we're dealing with a highway
that has a 70 year long legacy of causing the death
every year of dozens of endangered fish and wildlife.
In spite of mandates by the Federal Highway Administration,
which provides much of Caltrans funding
to stop highway related take of endangered species
and the Endangered Species Act, which says the same thing,
Caltrans has not taken the necessary steps
to remedy this situation.
And their projects too often make it worse.
This project is another unfortunate example.
How did this happen?
Caltrans has now admitted that this project was selected
by their staff at the time the grant application was made,
months before their consultant study
of wildlife vehicle conflict came out.
This selection was not the result of any scientific review,
the stakeholder process,
or consultation with the wildlife agencies.
It was not created as a result of what was learned
from their 18 month long, $500,000 consultant study.
The decision was instead made by staff,
and they now tell us that the project
could not have been changed once the decision was made,
because of some technical issue
with the source of the matching funds,
which come from SHOP.
So all those stakeholder meetings were basically a charade.
We are now stuck with a project that once built
is not going to save the lives of any endangered species
killed as a result of this highway.
At best, it improves the likelihood
that some deer may use the new culvert
instead of a smaller culvert that is there now.
But should we really spend $10 million
on a marginal improvement
when we have so much carnage taking place
just a short distance up the road
north of the Gaviota Tunnel?
Multiple mountain lion deaths have occurred there,
one just over a month ago. This is where we need to act. The Caltrans says they have no
choice but to build this project at a location where it's not needed. Because of their own
self-imposed funding constraints. Thank you. Next is Candice Minnegan, followed by Colin
Tolbert-Smith and then Susan Kirks. Candice Minnegan. I had indicated that I had a presentation.
Um, can I share my screen?
Uh, if you had a presentation, it would have needed to be submitted, uh, have been
submitted to us, uh, we unfortunately don't have it on our end.
Okay.
Um, I can go ahead.
Don't worry.
So if you're ready, you can go ahead and make your comment.
We just won't be able to show your presentation.
All right.
So, um, formed in 2003, coastal ranches commission, uh, ranches conservancy's
This mission is to support nature conservation, restoration and education along the 76 miles of the Gaviota coast.
We initiated work on Gaviota Creek watershed in 2015 and in 2018 had been convening stakeholder meetings, which identified 13 fish passage barriers that are owned by Caltrans on Gaviota Creek for Southern California Steelhead, which is federally and state listed.
CRC were the first proponents to recognize the document with high volumes of road kill
yield with 200 to 300 individual mammals of all sizes being killed. In 2021, Caltrans
went on to do their ICF study, investing $500,000 in an 18 month effort. Essentially, at the
time of the grant application, we knew that Southern Steelhead was endangered under the
Federal Indigenous Species Act. There was SB857 by Sheila Kuhl which requires Keltranz to consider
fish passage in their transportation projects. Trout Unlimited has been advocating for fish
passage removal on this creek since the 1970s. When I was with Keltraut and the Vice Chair of
the California Fish Passage Forum, we prioritized these fish passage barriers on a statewide
prioritization process through regional fish packs. Keltranz was part of the fish passage forum at that
time and drove those fish pack processes. In 2022 AB 2345 also requires that wildlife be considered
and Fish and Game Code is clear that that includes fisheries such as Southern California Steelhead.
Sites number 30 and 24 are opportunities for wildlife and fish passage improvements.
They also received 19 out of 20 and 20 out of 20 out of 20 scores in the ICF report.
The misrepresentation of collaboration in identifying which process should go forward
is disingenuous and we just asked that we get a master recreation plan as a condition
of the approval of this project so that we do not undermine the efforts of decades of advocacy
and administrative policies that require that these please wrap up your thought. Thank you.
Next is Colin Tolbert Smith and then Susan Kirk's Colin Tolbert Smith.
Good afternoon, Chair Harmon and commissioners. Thank you for the opportunity to address you today.
I'm Colin Tolbert Smith. I'm speaking in support of the proposed Caltrans-Gaviota Wildlife Crossing.
I have two reasons. First, the under crossing will reduce danger to drivers on
Highway 101 near Gaviota State Park. 2020 Coastal Ranches Conservancy, UC Santa Barbara study,
found that the Gaviota Pass area among the top 15 percent of roadkill hot spots in California,
and UC Berkeley data shows at least four people have been injured in vehicle collisions with
animals in that area since March 2024. One of those injuries occurred less than a half-mile
from the proposed under crossing. Larger animals like mule deer pose particular risk to drivers,
and the more spacious under crossing and the proposal would make it easier for them to reach
both sides of the road without encountering vehicles. Second, the under crossing would reduce
deaths of mountain lions, which keep the local ecosystem functioning and providing services for
people. Mountain lions are among the animals that have been killed in collisions with vehicles near
the proposed under crossing. There are already candidates for the California Endangered Species
act and subject to regulatory protection as apex predators, mountain lions, balanced
predator and prey populations that affect animals and plants throughout the food web.
And their role in that region in particular is important because it's an area of convergence
between multiple eco regions that are at high risk for loss of plants and animal populations.
To conclude, I'm asking the commission to approve the Caltrans-Gaviota Wildlife Crossing
because it will reduce dangers to drivers
as well as to mountain lions
that maintain ecosystem health in the area.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Next is Susan Kirks.
Thank you.
Good afternoon again, Chair Harmon and commissioners.
I'm Susan Kirks, and for contacts I'd like to share,
since 2014 I have participated
in a statewide wildlife corridor working group
with many organizations and agencies in the state
assisted by a consulting firm in Sacramento
who helps us advocate for legislation
to support wildlife connectivity, wildlife corridors,
and also funding for the same.
Looking at, I'm speaking on my own behalf today, however,
but just to let you know of my experience,
I want to support the opposition correspondence
and communication to this project,
primarily because there's a lot of human-centered thinking
that has occurred here.
In fact, making this culvert wider, higher, and higher,
and the length that it is,
may or may not attract larger wildlife into the culvert,
but what it will do is make the culvert used now
by the smaller wildlife more dangerous for them.
Some of the wildlife species going through the culvert now
are prey for the larger animals.
And if they catch the scent of a larger animal
or even they're in the culvert and a larger animal enters,
they could lose their lives as a result of that.
So not only is the project seeming to be contraindicated
with some very strong needs,
otherwise for the larger wildlife who,
if you have listened as I have,
are killed at a stunning rate,
over 100 wildlife killed on that highway stretch.
Not only will it not really serve them,
it will cause a problem for the smaller wildlife
who are using the smaller culvert.
All right, thank you.
We only had one other speaker that we weren't able to find,
Mark Rockwell.
Dr. Mark Rockwell, if you're on Zoom,
please raise your hand.
Arc Rockwell.
All right, I'm not seeing any hands raised.
Madam Chair.
Okay, thank you very much.
With that, we'll close the public hearing
and I'll return to our staff
if they'd like to make any comments or response.
Thanks, we have an addendum that I think
responds to most of the concerns raised.
I'll just quickly summarize.
This is a chance to move one of these wildlife crossings
identified in the assessment to move it forward.
We think it's a good project.
It's one of the highest rated projects crossings in that score sheet of the assessment you've heard about.
As Marlene mentioned, it's tied to federal funding which means it's sort of limited to the project Caltrans has before us,
which limits it to that footprint, you know, yes, there are other wildlife crossings that would be great to advance,
but they're not in the footprint of this project and not in the project that's before us today.
Real quick on the steelhead passage issue that was just raised that I don't think we did identify that one in the addendum
Obviously those are important to move forward to but they're not part of the project before us and they're there a different
You know different type of crossing to consider and you know
We partner with Caltrans on their fish passage
Improvements throughout the state and that those you know in general those will be ones that we'll be looking forward to so thanks
We're ready for questions. And as you know Caltrans is on hand if you have questions for them
Thank you very much that I'll return to the Commission
comments
questions
Well, I'll just say
Briefly as a comment so I grew up in this area so live in this area and seeing that initial photo on the slide
Just reminds me so much of my childhood going through that tunnel. You all have to lift your legs
Lift your arms hold your breath close your eye. I mean it's a hole to do
You know and so anyone from Santa Barbara County knows exactly what him, but hopefully drivers don't do that. Yeah
but I just this is such I with great respect to the commenters and I agree there are many areas that would be and
so benefited from wildlife crossing projects, but
This one is a fantastic one and I'm so excited and so grateful that it's happening and it's a quarter that it's desperately needed
It really is so I strongly support it unless my colleagues have any comments
I'm happy to make the motion though. I have to admit I don't have it up. So just give me it quick
quick second here
If anyone has it open you can I can make the motion please I
Moved that the Commission approve coastal development permit number four dash two six dash zero six five zero pursuant to the staff
recommendation I
Will second that that's a motion by Commissioner Smith. I've seconded. We're asking for a yes vote any objections to unanimous consent
Seeing none the motion carries. Thank you very much
All right. Let's continue on please. Mr. Hudson
Thank you
And that brings us to item 13 the deputy directors report for our South Coast District which this month includes nine permit waivers
One immaterial permit amendment for emergency permits and one emergency waiver
In regard to the five emergency actions being reported today, I would note that each was in response to damage caused by the current El Nino event.
The first was an emergency waiver by LA County Department of Beaches and Harbors extending a previously approved 300-foot-long seasonal berm at Dockweiler State Beach by an additional 1,300 linear feet.
I would note this work preceded the governor's recent order
exempting exactly this sort of sand berm construction.
So we authorize this work through the commission's
emergency permit waiver process.
In addition, an emergency permit was issued
to the marina shipyard in the city of Long Beach
for replacement of a single broken pile,
which supported their marina shipyard dock.
An emergency permit was also issued to Alan Vaught
for replacement and kind of two broken concrete piles
supporting a private residential dock in the Naples Island community in the city of Long Beach.
And finally, two emergency permits were issued to homeowners along the damaged boardwalk in the
peninsula neighborhood in the city of Long Beach. That was for foundation and primarily patio repairs
to their residences. I would note that as many of you have likely seen in news coverage
that the public boardwalk fronting these two properties was itself damaged by intense wave
of entitled action as a result of the current El Nino event and then a separate emergency
permit was also recently issued to the City of Long Beach for those in kind repairs of
that boardwalk.
Now that emergency permit will be reported in my next month's Deputy Director's Report
with additional information.
Staff is not aware of any opposition to any of the other items being reported today and
we're asking whether three or more commissioners object to any of the items for which action
is needed in the Deputy Director's Report.
is available for questions thank you very much any expertise any public
comments no speakers great thank you do three or more commissioners object to
any item in the deputy directors report seeing no objection the commission
concurs thank you and that brings us to item 15 C which will be presented by
Seth via Nueva a coastal program analyst in our south coast district we do have a
PowerPoint for this item if we could pull that up please and Seth please take
it away. Good afternoon commissioners. Item 15c is a CDP application by Vianney Monampore
for the conversion of existing detached carport and storage structure associated with a multifamily
apartment building into seven accessory dwelling units or ADUs. Next slide please. The project
site is located in the western portion of the San Pedro community within the City of
Los Angeles. The subject area is popular with visitors, its proximity to coastal bluff trails
The standard of review for this item is the chapter 3 policies of the Coastal Act with the Certified San Pedro Land Use Plan providing guidance.
Next slide, please.
The proposed project is for the conversion of an approximately 1,772 square foot detached nine space carport and storage structure located near the center of the existing 36 unit apartment complex into seven small studio-style ADUs that would each be 245 square feet in size.
square feet in size.
Following coordination with staff, the applicant revised the proposal to include the addition
of four replacement parking spaces on site and 12 new bike parking stalls immediately
in front of the proposed ADUs.
No changes to the primary 36-unit apartment building are proposed as part of this project.
The Commission is aware that the state has an affordable housing crisis, and this issue
is only more acute in the state's coastal zone.
To address this critical need, the state legislature has enacted a number of housing laws in the
last several years designed to eliminate barriers to the provision of housing and to help foster
additional housing units, particularly critical needed affordable housing units where they
can be appropriately accommodated by adequate public services and where in the coastal zone
they will not adversely affect coastal resources.
Next slide, please.
The proposed project includes the construction of seven new residential units in the form
of ADUs given their small size of only 245 square feet per unit will likely provide relatively
affordable housing that helps bring the city closer to achieving its housing goals.
The residential parking standards of the city's certified San Pietro
LUP would typically require the existing apartment building to provide two parking spaces
per residential unit and one guest space for every four units. Thus, the existing 36-unit
apartment complex, which is only 36 parking spaces on site, would be considered a legal
non-conforming use as it was constructed prior to the effective date of the Coastal Act.
In this case, the proposed project would result in the net removal of five parking spaces
on site, which would reduce the number of spaces available for the existing residential units from
36 to 31, thereby increasing the degree of non-conformity with the parking requirements
of the certified LUP. When private residential parking needs are not accommodated on site,
it can lead to increased use of public on-street parking and thereby reduce the availability of
on-street parking to the general public. Next slide, please. As proposed, no additional off-street
parking spaces would be provided for the seven new ADUs. However, state ADU law does not require
replacement parking for a carport to ADU conversion. The nearby Shoreline Park Access Trail is a popular
public recreational trail located approximately 0.4 miles from the project site. Public street
parking is available along west 25th street from the trail to the project site. The nearest public
transit stop is 0.7 miles from the project site. As can be seen on this aerial photograph of the
subject site and its surrounding area, the project site is several blocks inland of the shoreline.
However, given the presence of nearby trails which lead to the beach, displacement of public
on-street parking by residential uses may still result in potential impacts to public access.
Although state law would preclude the commission from requiring replacement parking spaces for
ADEs in this case, the commission may still impose other mitigation measures to avoid it or minimize
impacts to public access. In this case, staff worked closely with the applicant to evaluate
all feasible alternatives to minimize potential impacts to public access. As a result of this
coordination the applicant worked with the staff to revise the original proposed project
to add new vehicle parking spaces and bicycle parking facilities on site to help offset the
loss of available parking for residents. The project as revised now includes installation
of four new vehicle parking spaces on site which staff believes given the limited space on site is
the maximum number of new parking spaces that could be accommodated on site. In addition the
applicant has also agreed to install new bike parking racks with spaces for 12 bicycles.
Given the limited area on site for additional parking and bike facilities, staff believe this
is the maximum number of replacement parking spaces that could be feasibly replaced on site.
To ensure the applicant's proposal to revise the project to incorporate the additional vehicle and
bike parking facilities are adequately implemented, Special Condition 1 requires the
the permitting to maintain 31 parking spaces, which includes the retained 27 of the existing
and the four proposed replacement parking spaces, and the proposed bike parking stalls
on site for the life of the development in order to mitigate potential impacts to public
access to the maximum extent feasible.
An addendum was posted for this item to address two correspondence letters that were received
for the proposed project. The primary issues raised in correspondence related to the parking
burden imposed by the project, the density of the proposed development, as well as concerns
with the management of the property. Staff acknowledge these concerns, though note that
some fall outside of the standard review, which is Chapter 3 of the Coastal Act. Under
the state's ADU laws, ADUs are accessory uses that do not count towards a site's density
limit. Additionally, and as previously noted, state ADU law does not require replacement
parking for accessory structure conversions, so the revisions the project provided that
The project provide partial replacement parking and bike stalls were deemed sufficient by staff to alleviate public access concerns generated by the proposed project.
Next slide please. In closing, staff believes that the proposed project as conditioned will serve to minimize adverse impacts to public access and that the project performs with both the chapter three policy of the coastal act and the development policies of the certified San Pedro LUP to the extent feasible.
Thus, staff recommends that the commission approve the proposed project subject to the four special conditions listed on pages four to six staff report. I would also know that the applicant is in agreement with all the conditions of approval.
The motion to accomplish staff recommendation can be found on page three of the staff report. This includes staff presentation, staff surveilled, or any questions.
Great. Thank you very much. Are there any ex partes? Okay. We'll open the public hearing and I'll turn to you, Chris.
All right, we have the applicants online
and available for questions.
Isabelle Giraldo.
And then we have two speakers.
We'll start with Cynthia Quintero and then Bridgette Kood.
Cynthia, give us a moment as we're moving in as panelists.
Cynthia, we need you to accept being moved in as panelists.
Okay, I see that Cynthia is in now.
We have your presentation and you can go ahead.
Hello everyone, my name is Cynthia Quintero
I'm here to express my opposition to the item F-15C.
Quality of life is already difficult at this apartment complex
due to high density and lack of effective maintenance and upkeep.
Approving the project would only make everyday life more difficult
for the current tenants and nearby residents.
I'd like to ask for consideration for our predicament.
I have major concerns about hiding seven units
that will potentially add 14 additional individuals on site
and removing existing amenities such as parking
does not raise the density of the property.
Current conditions are already terrible
and failing consistently,
such as the existing main sewer lines,
they are already over capacity
and we the current tenants are frequently burdened
by raw sewage backups into our units
along with the laundry room flooding
if more than one washing machine is operating at a time.
We report these conditions to no avail
and consistently get told by management
that a permanent solution is above the budget
of the owner is willing to spend.
It is hard to believe that he will abide by the conditions
maintaining construction responsibility
and respecting the construction BMPs
when his current tactics regarding the maintenance requests
are not above cutting corners
and providing unpermitted solutions to save a dollar.
I ask that we make sure to enforce the parking mandate
per the residential parking standards
of the certified San Pedro LUP,
which required two parking spaces per unit
plus one guest space for every four units.
I urge you not to encourage non-compliance
to parking regulations.
Simple trail proximity does not add additional parking.
It is parking for anyone visiting the trails
during daytime hours.
The claim that it would provide parking
along West 25th Street is not factual.
And the fact of the matter is that
there are multiple parking restrictions
that do not allow for overnight parking
or any parking at all.
I have attached photos of all these signs.
It is important that we understand the full picture
because the surplus amount of public parking
that they depict does not match the reality
of the situation.
To accept public parking, we would be accepting
the high risk of stolen catalytic converters,
broken in vehicle windows.
Thank you.
Next is Bridget Kood.
Hi, thank you.
My name is Bridget Kood.
Good afternoon, and I'm a current resident
of 2126 West 25th Street.
I would like to strongly oppose this proposal
and add some additional context that is not clear
in the exhibits attached to this application,
where the exhibit has a 232 square foot storage unit labeled.
This is actually a laundry facility
housing three washers and dryers
that is heavily used by our community.
There is currently no plan to replace this facility.
The exhibit also does not fully depict
the proximity of the proposed building wall
to an exterior resident window.
The gap is less than three foot six inches
from the exterior window of my own unit.
This application does not reflect
the immediate effect of air quality for residents as well.
Residents rely on open windows
and fresh air for ventilation in our community
because there is no HVAC system in our building.
Many residents are elderly, have chronic conditions,
and residents in immediate vicinity
include a child with special needs
and a senior resident with emphysema.
The demolition and construction debris
will cause an undue burden on many residents
in this community, including the air quality.
It is also our belief that the landlords
are not building these units in good faith,
but rather as a way to reduce resident amenities
and decrease the quality of life
even more than he has already done
in an effort to push out current residents
and flip the apartments for new tenants
who are willing to pay a much higher rent for less.
Thank you.
Thank you. No more speakers Madam chair.
Hey, thank you very much. I'll close the public hearing and return to our staff.
Thank you chair.
Just to respond to more of the comments made about the availability of overnight parking on West 25th street.
Staff did modify the findings in the staff report per the addendum to reflect that West 25th street does not provide overnight parking.
Though the neighborhood streets at the cross direction of South Anchovy Avenue, as well as other neighborhood streets do provide overnight parking and the lack of availability of the overnight parking on West 25th Street does not affect the impact of or the avoided impact of the development on the access to the trails west of the proposed site.
Turn over to Mr. Hudson for any other comments.
Thank you, Seth. I just like to add a very just quick overarching observation as well.
And first, thank the members of the public, the residents who spoke. And while our staff
understands the concerns raised by the residents and sympathize, I would note that this is
a case that's not isolated. We've seen these sorts of conflicts in terms of other conversions
of parking facilities, garages, and carports in order to provide for new ADU projects.
And the way we've approached this, the way your staff has approached this is our attempt
to harmonize the Coastal Act requirements, protection of coastal resources, and harmonize
those requirements with other state laws, and chiefly the laws that allow ADUs without
replacement parking.
Now while there is a legal carve-out in that law for the Coastal Act, your staff has sought
to harmonize the intent of all these different laws and to allow for new housing in order
to address the housing crisis whenever feasible, but in a way that still protects coastal resources.
We've worked with the applicant in this case to provide those additional parking resources
to the extent feasible, so the additional parking spaces and the additional bicycle
spaces.
believe that in this case this project represents a balanced approach and would
be the the best balanced approach possible so we continue to recommend
this item be approved today and with that I'll close my comments and just
note that we are available for any questions. Okay thank you very much I'll
turn to the Commission and we'll begin with Commissioner Lowenberg. Just for the
record the comments that we heard really probably should have been addressed to
the building department, a lot of them within the city,
as opposed to the things that are in our purview.
A lot of those things just aren't in our purview.
If they're taking, if you have diminished services
that you're building, if there's a rent control board
or the city building department,
you need to take it up with them.
It's just, unfortunately, we can be sympathetic to it,
but it is just not within the Coastal Act
for us to opine on.
So with that, I will make the motion.
Well, somebody can.
I don't have a computer.
All right, page three.
I move that the commission approve
coastal development permit number 5-26-0356
pursuant to the staff recommendation as for yes vote.
Thank you.
That's a motion by Vice Chair Hart,
a second by Commissioner Lopez.
Any objections to unanimous consent?
Seeing none, the motion carries.
OK, quick thank you.
Of course to our staff, AGP, you guys are the best.
And before we adjourn,
we've got to recognize our chief counsel.
It's her birthday, and I'd like you all to join me
in a round of happy birthday.
♪ Happy birthday to you ♪
And we have some cupcakes outside to celebrate,
so we can all have a little treat with Louise.
See you next month, meeting adjourned.