Here are some questions that probably aren’t keeping you up at night:
Why isn’t the Hearst Ranch a golf resort?
Why aren’t we still arguing about whether Los Osos should have a sewer system and how it should work?
Why wasn’t a seismic survey allowed to devastate our local fisheries and marine wildlife with underwater sound cannons?
Why is the fence that used to prevent public access at the top of the trail from Pirates Cove to Ontario Ridge no longer there?
Why isn’t the coast from Cambria to Pismo Beach chockablock with luxury villas and high-rise hotels, a la Florida?
Why don’t people like Donald Trump and Elon Musk own the entire coast?
The answer, in every case, is the California Coastal Commission.
Here’s what should be keeping you up at night: The president of the United States has announced his intention to kill the Coastal Commission.
The enemies of the Coastal Commission are many. (As Victor Hugo put it, “You have enemies? Why, it is the story of every man who has done a great deed or created a new idea. It is the cloud which thunders around everything that shines.”) Donald Trump and Elon Musk are on record as two of them. The commission has survived the wrath of budget-slashing governors who get upset over the commission’s refusal to do their bidding, attempts by the Reagan administration to block its authority to prohibit offshore oil operations, and the attempt of the first Trump administration to do the same thing.
Here’s the catch this time: Trump is preparing to make defunding the commission a condition of California receiving federal wildfire relief funds.
In Feb. 21 remarks to the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, Trump’s special envoy Richard Grenell, speaking on the strings the administration may attach to that aid, suggested that disaster relief for the LA fires is an opportunity to defund the Coastal Commission. “I think squeezing their federal funds, making sure they don’t get funds, putting strings on them to get rid of the California Coastal Commission is going to make California better,” he said.
A lot of people don’t like the outrageous things the Trump/Musk combo is doing to the country but feel there’s not much they personally can do about it. If you live in California, here’s something you can do: Tell your state senator and Assembly member you don’t want Donald Trump and Elon Musk to repeal the law that has protected our coast for the last five decades. For the full breadth of all the ways in which the work of the Coastal Commission has made California better, go to coastal.ca.gov/history.
Next year, we will be celebrating the 50th anniversary of the California Coastal Act. It should not be a memorial service. Δ
Gordon Hensley writes from San Luis Obispo and is a SLO Coastkeeper at Environment in the Public Interest. Write a response for publication and send it to letters@newtimesslo.com.
This article appears in Mar 6-16, 2025.