There’s a sea change happening at Santa Barbara County parks, as county officials relax several long-standing watercraft regulations, aiming to expand recreational options and draw in more visitors.
It all started earlier this year at Cachuma Lake, when the county completed its Resource Management Plan with the Bureau of Reclamation and decided in April to add canoeing and kayaking to the list of allowable activities for the first time ever.
More recently, the county approved the use of stand-up paddleboards at Cachuma for a six-month trial period, which began on Sept. 9. The testing phase was suggested by paddleboarders through the management plan’s public comment process, and makes Cachuma one of the few freshwater opportunities for the activity in Southern California.
So far, according to Interim County Parks Director Brian Roney, public response to the changes has been ”tremendous,” and has led some people to ask the question, “What took so long?”
“A lot of it is our focus on parks where people are paying to get into them,” Roney said. “We haven’t done that in the past, and I think that’s kind of a new direction we’re taking as a department. If you’re paying to get into a park, we’re going to have some amenities and some more things to do.”
Moving from a strict no-body-contact rule to allowing incidental contact is all part of a process of rethinking the Parks Department’s business model, Roney said, as the county takes a fresh approach to providing more for the money at parks requiring a paid admission.
County Parks’ Mid-County Operations Manager Sherman Hansen, who manages Cachuma Lake, said the rule changes have been well received by visitors and allow previously ignored recreational avenues to open up.
“We’re 10 minutes from Solvang and Santa Ynez, the middle of the wine country,” Hansen said. “In 20 minutes, you’re in Santa Barbara at State Street or at the beach, so we’re trying to make improvements to attract more visitors and become a vacation destination, where people come here and go hub out and visit other areas in the county.”
Like canoeists and kayakers, Cachuma paddleboarders are required to pay $5, in addition to the $10 park entrance fee, for the privilege of taking their boards out on the water. The paddleboards must also pass a Quagga mussel inspection and conform to all park regulations. If visitors play nice, department officials said, the activity could become a permanent fixture.
“We’re just going to look at the overall program from the rangers’ feedback based on what they’re dealing with,” Roney said. “We hope they self-police themselves, kind of like the canoes and kayaks. We hope we don’t have any enforcement issues or body contact issues, because if we did, that would certainly seal the fate of the trial program.”
According to Hansen, though the incidental contact rules will be strictly enforced, it won’t mean people won’t be allowed to make mistakes.
“What we’re looking for is for people that are either doing it maliciously or don’t have the abilities to do it,” Hansen said. “Someone is occasionally going to slip and fall in the lake, but if we see them do it multiple times, they’re going to be subject to citation or rejection.”
If those options aren’t enough to get you off your couch, there’s more in store on the horizon at Cachuma. The county is currently building a marina café at the lake’s launch ramp and is in the process of studying the feasibility of building a new small-scale waterpark near the front entrance gate. The park currently has two swimming pools, built in the 1960s, which are now unfit to accommodate the crowds of visitors looking for a way to cool off.
Using Bureau of Reclamation grants, the Parks Department has also installed new cabins and additional camping yurts, added upgraded restrooms, repaved certain areas of the park, and recently ended the ban on having dogs in boats.
All the efforts to be more accommodating to guests appear to be working. Despite the lackluster economy and gas prices keeping many would-be travelers close to home, county parks have seen a five percent increase in annual visitors this year over last, though concession stands are reporting less in revenue.
“We didn’t see any downturn in the last year, so we’re actually doing very well,” Roney said. “We saw the same amount of folks, but they just spend a little less money in the park.”
On the other side of the county, at Jalama Beach County Park, officials have added seven cabins for visitors to rent, which have reportedly been booked solid. The county has also repaired septic systems and hopes to direct more funding to repair the park’s aging infrastructure, including the parking lot.
“The parking lot hasn’t been touched in 30 years, and it’s showing its age through wear and tear,” Roney said. “We’re just trying to direct what funding we can find to some of these parks.”
Please avoid body contact with Staff Writer Jeremy Thomas. Contact him at jthomas@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Sep 15-22, 2011.