Guadalupe likes Oso Flaco Lake the way it is, and the city is taking an official stance against a recently proposed project that it says would turn the quiet slice of nature into an off-roading hub.
At a meeting on March 9, Guadalupe City Council voted 4-1 to formally oppose State Parks’ draft public works plan for the Oceano Dunes and Pismo Beach, which State Parks released in December 2020 and includes several proposed development projects at Oso Flaco Lake aimed at increasing camping and parking access. Through what it calls the Oso Flaco Improvement Project, State Parks hopes to install a campground with up to 200 RV sites, 100 tent sites, 20 cabins, scores of day use parking spots, and a southern entrance to the Oceano Dunes State Vehicular Recreational Area (SVRA) for off-highway vehicles.
Guadalupe Mayor Ariston Julian said his fellow community members didn’t settle down in Guadalupe, which sits just about 6 miles south of Oso Flaco Lake, to live at the entrance to an off-highway vehicle playground and tourist destination.
“They moved there for the environment,” Julian told the Sun, adding later, “We want to draw people to Guadalupe because of the environment.”
Oso Flaco Lake and the Rancho Guadalupe Dunes Preserve as they are now are both serene and quiet spaces cherished by Guadalupe residents, Julian said, many of whom are low-income farmworkers who can’t afford to travel far. A campground and off-roading entrance would likely degrade important habitats in Oso Flaco, he said, but it would almost certainly bring swaths of weekly visitors into the area, making it harder for locals to access and enjoy.
Narrow roads around Guadalupe, which weave through acres of surrounding farmland, are heavily trafficked by farmworkers headed to and from work each day. Peak travel times often lead to bumper-to-bumper traffic.
“Then you add visitor traffic to that?” he said. “It’s going to be a nightmare.”
Eugene Costa Jr. was the lone dissenter, but several other City Council members agreed that development at Oso Flaco should be avoided.
“Oso Flaco is a natural jewel and habitat and preserve,” Councilmember Gilbert Robles said at the March 9 meeting. “I’d like to see it that way.”
The council also voted to support a California Coastal Commission staff recommendation to strengthen sensitive habitat conservation efforts in the Oceano Dunes while eliminating off-roading and most street-legal vehicle access in the park by 2026.
The Coastal Commission plans to consider the recommendation at a meeting on March 18, and if passed, off-roading and most street-legal vehicle access in the SVRA would be phased out over the course of five years, a process that staff said could start as early as March 19 of this year.
It’s a plan that both the Pismo Beach Chamber of Commerce and Grover Beach City Council took issue with in early March, stating it would hurt businesses in southern San Luis Obispo County that rely on off-roading tourists. Although Grover Beach avoided taking a hard stance on the plan as a whole, the Pismo Beach Chamber hosted a protest of the potential elimination of off-highway vehicle access on March 14.
This article appears in Mar 18-25, 2021.