The Oct. 26 article on the APCD notice of violation (“County APCD, state parks headed to hearing over dust control violations”) failed to mention an important part of the Special Master report. On pages 4 and 5, Dr. W.G. Nickling wrote:
“More ‘natural’ types of solutions are preferable to engineered solutions (e.g. fences and straw bales) given the areal extent of the problem. Engineered solutions are often unattractive and not in keeping with the Parks vision for maintaining the quality of the park experience. Natural solutions might include severely restricting rider activity, reducing the areal extent of rider activity, especially near the top of the tidal zone to allow the re-establishment of the foredunes that were formerly present at the site. Inoculation or fertilizing of sediment to foster biological crust development might also be considered as part of this suite of approaches. In my opinion, the most effective approach would be to extend the amount of vegetation cover at the site.”
The APCD executive director and the public have been asking for the foredunes to be restored and to increase vegetation cover for the past six or seven years. The dunes self-restore very quickly when they are left undisturbed. This is proven every year when the snowy plover nesting area is protected by fencing from March 1 to Oct. 1. That area has very low dust emissions.
Perhaps you should ask Matt Fuzie if he agrees with that part of the report too.
Rachelle Toti
Arroyo Grande
This article appears in Nov 9-19, 2017.
The dunes have more vegetation on them now, than they did before people started to use them for recreation.
Your assumptions about what areas make more and less dust are interesting, please show us your study. LOL.
Be honest, you just don’t like the type of people who have fun out there.
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 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.
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.
http://www.bob2000.com/pismo.htm