The sand trap at Oceano’s Pier Avenue ramp proposed by the settlement between State Parks and SLO County Air Pollution Control District (APCD) is going to make our beach and community even uglier and noisier than it already is. The ramp itself should not even be there. It is illegal. It has been illegal for more than 30 years, since the Coastal Commission gave State Parks a temporary permit (18 months) to drive on Pier Avenue and the beach while it found another entrance. Parks has never cared to find or build another entrance and it has been out of compliance for that long!
Parks has a back door entrance to the beach from the highway, between Grand and Pier, where its headquarters are, through the Oceano Campground. That’s the way cars should go in and out, if they have to drive on our beach at all. The sand trap is one more layer of trash on top of a trash pile. Our properties on Pier Avenue have been de facto condemned for Parks’ sake, and without compensation. This settlement with Parks is totally unsatisfactory. It is a fiasco.
This article appears in Mar 22-29, 2018.
