Be alert! Read and be careful! Help! Watch out for a giant gorilla stomping up and down our front yard. This once widely revered animal still looks cute and promises beauty and entertainment. But it is out of control too often.
This gorilla is embodied as the California Coastal Commission LUP for Malibu. It is used to trampling in rural coastline areas in Santa Barbara, Ventura, Los Angeles and San Diego Counties. More will get hurt if the Commission keeps imposing “my way or no way” unreasonable requirements one home and one lot at a time. Using a divide and conquer approach, this large gorilla bullies many recent home builders into bowing to extremist conditions in order to build, remodel, add a garden or even a horse, corral and pasture.
The ringmasters, Gov. Gray Davis and our California legislators, probably haven’t heard from enough citizens about the gorilla’s damage. We need to inform each other, then inform our political representatives so they can help redirect the Commission. This giant gorilla wants our yard to be changed so the coastal environment only fits its particular needs and desires. In its LCP, if you have a house built before 1976, don’t plan on being able to repair your home if the repairs extend the economic life of your home without a coastal permit. And if you happen to have ancillary structures such as a granny house, tool shed, horse barn, corral and pasture, tennis court, workshop, greenhouse, and/or pool cabana, the gorilla wants you to rip all but one of these old improvements out. You choose! By the way, since when is a pasture a structure?
This gorilla really gets upset at seeing vegetable gardens, nurseries, greenhouses, shade houses, fruit tree orchards and particularly any vineyards more than a hundred feet from a home no matter how large the lot. Never mind that the Coastal Act is supposed to preserve and encourage coastal agriculture, the Commission staff believes this only applies to areas like Oxnard.
As an enterprising gorilla, the Commission wants to expand its yard. And it is not sending out public notices about which home and lot owners that they want to be in newly defined “Environmentally Sensitive Habitat Areas” (ESHAs) and adjacent buffer areas. Nor is it supplying scientific field surveys to justify adding another lot or home to these areas where they can place the most restrictions and demand the most mitigation fees and planning costs.
If you have any native plants or canyon habitat (for example in Point Dume) on a small portion of your lot, then you are in jeopardy of being hurt by the Commission’s plan. You are likely to fall prey to more unreasonable rules if you plant more native plants. This has to be one of those unintended consequences. The gorilla doesn’t like fences. If you and your children or pets live in or along “ESHAs” by a canyon, on a bluff or hill, you have to have fencing that is permeable to human intruders, bobcats, mountain lions, and the like.
The gorilla also prefers coastal scrub to a regional park. It wants to chase thousands of kids from all over Southern California away from Bluffs Park and stomp out the ball fields. But the Commission’s plan does like people to use new hotels, restaurants and shops. The Commission wants to force the city to increase the build-out of the Malibu Civic Center to more than 50 acres of so-called visitor serving areas. Never mind that this urbanization would increase more runoff pollution to get more visitors sick at the adjacent world famous Surfrider Beach.
Never mind that millions of visitors come already to Malibu really for its surfing, beaches, bikeways, horse facilities, hiking and fishing. Never mind that a new hotel is already approved next to the Civic Center. Never mind that many shops and restaurants regularly fail here particularly in off tourist seasons. And never mind that the gorilla’s drum would lead a larger crowd into Pacific Coast Highway where visitors already complain of congestion, and paramedics and lifeguards report delays and hazards trying to navigate to and from emergencies and the hospitals.
The gorilla counts on drumming up support by promising more access to and along the beach. Never mind that many of the mapped access paths can never be legally or physically accomplished or be safe for public passage. Don’t question the cookie-cutter logic of requiring homeowners every 500 feet to deed access as a requirement to rebuild a storm damaged garage or deck, even if the access is not as safe as one close by. Never mind that many of Malibu’s beaches are impassable at medium to high tides or that safe or convenient parking is not available. The Commission should not be grandstanding or offering phantom beach accesses out of lack of local knowledge. At the public hearing, we fit the old adage of partially blindfolded people seeing parts of the possible damage from a misguided large gorilla.
What we all saw in common was the current extremism of the California Coastal Commission in what it is doing and planning to do to rural areas like Malibu. We saw that the truly rare and beautiful areas of the environment will likely not get their proper attention; the Commission is over-stretching its limits and boundaries. Backlash and unintended consequences will be likely. All of this has been done in an atmosphere where the Coastal Commission has not had to really respond to the local knowledge and environmental spirit that Malibu City officials, residents and visitors can give. It’s time to unite, read, and listen to each other and then communicate to make a difference. Only then will the California coast, its residents and visitors be truly blessed.
Jeff Harris