Members of the local activist group Safe Beach Now believe off-highway vehicle activity at the Oceano Dunes State Park is negatively impacting air quality on the Nipomo Mesa.
The environmental organization is urging Nipomo and Arroyo Grande residents to attend the Jan. 25 meeting of the South County Advisory Council to demand the issue be placed on the council’s next agenda.
“I’d like to see it on the January meeting agenda, but everyone seems to be dragging their feet on this,” Safe Beach Now member Nell Langford told the Sun.
According to the group’s website, safe beachnow.org, off-highway vehicle activity is forcing sand and other pollutants into the air over the mesa. Such particulate matter has been found by the Environmental Protection Agency to cause serious respiratory health problems.
Langford also cited a particulate matter study done by the San Luis Obispo Air Pollution Control District as evidence of “dangerous threats to the mesa’s air quality.” Safe Beach Now delves further into the topic in a coll-ection of 30-minute documentaries posted on safebeachand dunes.org.
The Air Pollution Control District, however, has yet to release the report. In a release to the media, district representative Aeron Arlin Genet said the study is currently undergoing “peer review” and will be available to the public sometime in February. The district originally planned to release the report in December 2009 during a string of public workshops, but those workshops were canceled. According to a press release, the district is expected to reschedule the workshops before presenting the study to the board in late March.
In an interview with the Sun, Air Pollution Control District director Larry Allen said the study does show off-highway vehicle activity is a factor in the area’s particulate pollution levels.
“We’ll be prepared to discus that more when the study is released,” he said. “I don’t want to get ahead of the report and make a statement on something that people can’t read.”
The South County Advisory Council meets the fourth Monday of the month at 6:30 p.m. at the Nipomo Community Services District building, 148 S. Wilson St., in Nipomo.
For more information about the Air Pollution Control District, including updates regarding the particulate matter study, visit slocleanair.org.
—Amy Asman
This article appears in Jan 21-28, 2010.