The county of San Luis Obispo and the state of California should be outraged at the snow job the “special master” and OHV (Off Highway Vehicle Division of California State Parks and Recreation) have dumped on our health-threatened citizens on the Mesa and Oceano beach. If you believe that air you can breathe is more important than riding off-highway-vehicles on our beach and dunes, get informed and fight back. Speak out and support the Air Pollution Control District (APCD) at the County Government Center in San Luis Obispo on Monday Nov. 13 at 9 a.m.
Nell Langford
Pismo Beach
This article appears in Nov 2-12, 2017.
If you really thought that dust blowing from the dunes was a real health problem, you would have moved away. You just don’t like the people who go out there.
The outrageous claims from some concerned citizens about the dust coming off of the dunes is largely embellished and at times simply lies. I have found very few facts to backup claims in the Tribune about the degree of poor air quality on the Mesa and the health effects. Additionally, there are many places in California that have way worse air quality then the Mesa so maybe money would be better well spent there. I monitored the websites and collected data on the quality of the air on the mesa for months and found very little evidence that there is a problem at all there. Perhaps that’s why CA parks doesn’t want to spend any more money on this “issue”.
I for one would like it if OHVs continued to have access to a portion of our local dunes. But lets be REAL about some of the FACTS about the loss of vast swatches of tall and dense dune stabilizing native chaparral in the dunes having been wiped out by Off Road Vehicles. There has been some planting of grasses in the region since then, but that in no way equals what was once there prior to the massive numbers of OHVs that swarmed the dunes in the 1970s and continues to this day.
Anytime someone makes the claim that “the dunes have more vegetation on them now than they did before people started to use them for recreation” they are misleading you. The area in the dunes now used exclusively for off road vehicle recreation was densely vegetated at one time, but after OHVs took over the area, the area was denuded of vegetation. All there is there now is sand, but photographs from the 1930s through the 1950s show vegetation so dense and tall that cabins built there by the Dunites couldn’t be seen from a distance. Check out Norm Hammond’s book The Dunites for facts and photos that disprove the claims by Ian Tanner and Kevin P. Rice.
Rice, in particular, continues to spread the lie about the OHV area in the dunes. I personally was in the OHV area in the 1970s and 1980s and even at that time there was considerably more vegetation there than there is now. But even at that time it was sport among some off road enthusiasts to drive straight into and onto the vegetation, grinding it away until it was little more than dust. Before the OHV explosion in the 70s and 80s there were forests of native vegetation in the current OHV area that were so dense that OHV riders created tunnels through them that they would ride through (crushing the roots and eventually killing the mighty and tall chaparral that helped retain sand in the dunes. That is now long gone
I don’t want to see OHVs eliminated from the dunes, but there is a point when we have to call out all the lies that some people spread that make the ridiculous insinuation that off road vehicles in the dunes have somehow made the natural habitat there more healthy and vibrant with new bushes miraculously springing forth under the nurturing wheels of dune buggies and motorcycles.
In fact, vast swatches of tall and dense dune stabilizing native chaparral in the dunes has been wiped out by Off Road Vehicles. There has been some planting of grasses in the region since then, but that in no way equals what was once there prior to the massive numbers of OHVs that swarmed the dunes in the 1970s and continues to this day. Where there was once forests of chaparral standing taller than the tallest man, there is now nothing but sand.
Very little respect was paid to the environment in the dunes by the OHV drivers. Shrubbery and chaparral were little more than obstacles to be run up and over and ground down with big rubber wheels. THAT is the truth. It’s no wonder there have been problems environmental problems in the dunes ever since.
http://www.bob2000.com/pismo.htm