The City of Laguna Beach (City) voted 4-1 in favor of Agenda Bill, No. 17 (Bill), Tuesday evening, June 17, 2009. The Bill was published here before the meeting:
http://www.lagunabeachcity.net/gover...16PDF/A-17.pdf
In brief, the City Council told the State of California (State), the California Department of Fish and Game (DFG), and all other parties involved in the Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) process that it wishes the entire City coast from Abalone Point to the rocky point south of Three Arch Bay and to a distance three miles offshore (3x7 Area) to be declared a State Marine Reserve (SMR). Although the City itself does not have the authority to establish a protected area - the MLPA is a State law - its support will certainly be taken into consideration by the State decision-makers in the MLPA process.
The City Council meeting started at 6:15 PM and ended around 10:30 PM. The public comment session for the Bill started sometime after 8:00 PM and ran to the end except for final comments by the City Council members, the Mayor, and the vote. It was hard to assess or approximate the numbers of attendees supporting and opposing the SMR. My guess is that it was close to 50-50, maybe a few more opposed because many opposed like me came from out of town. Being an opponent of the City’s proposed SMR (but not opposed to the MLPA), the time before the public comment session allowed me to talk to many like-minded people opposed to the SMR.
Of all the people I talked to, opposed to the SMR, including: recreational and commercial fisherman, commercial passenger fishing vessel operators, fishing charter operators, spearfishermen, lobstermen, etc, no one told me they had received notice of the planned vote on the Bill any sooner than one day before the City Council meeting. During the two hours I waited outside for the Bill to come up, I even asked several passers-by, City residents, if they knew about the important Bill on the agenda that could potentially affect usage of the entire beach. None had even heard of the Bill. That bothered me because the author of the bill, City Council member Toni Iseman, indicated that she had in fact attended several MLPA meetings. The MLPA clearly states that the process should involve all stakeholders in the relevant marine resource. If not for a post by a fisherman on a fishing Web site that covers the MLPA process extensively on the morning of the day of the meeting, I would not have known about it at all. You would think that everyone in Laguna Beach would know about it, at least.
Although the City Council might not have been legally required to involve all stakeholders in the City’s decision making process, it cannot claim that the request to be designated a SMR was relevant to City members only, or that it’s failure to involve more stakeholders in the process did not violate the spirit of the MLPA. The City Council meeting and vote were not formal parts of the MLPA process, but the City’s coast does not belong to the City alone, and insofar as a City bill requesting the designation of the coast there as a SMR becomes a factor taken into consideration by the State and the parties who are a formal part of the MLPA process, stakeholders who were disadvantaged by the lack of notice deserved an opportunity and a period of time to speak to the residents of Laguna Beach directly before the vote. Indeed, many City residents were also disadvantaged by the lack of notice. One might ask why a matter that could potentially affect the usage of the entire City coastline was not better communicated to City residents as well, some of whom were quite upset by the late notice. My public comment that City should have put the issue on a City wide ballot was met with silence by the City Council.
A State Marine Reserve is the most restricted protected area afforded under the MLPA Act. From the California Department of Fish and Game (DFG) Web site:
State Marine Reserve [36700(a) PRC]
A "state marine reserve," is a non-terrestrial marine or estuarine area that is designated so the managing agency may achieve one or more of the following:
1.protect or restore rare, threatened or endangered native plants, animals or habitats in marine areas;
2.protect or restore outstanding, representative or imperiled marine species, communities, habitats and ecosystems;
3.protect or restore diverse marine gene pools; or
4.contribute to the understanding and management of marine resources and ecosystems by providing the opportunity for scientific research in outstanding, representative or imperiled marine habitats or ecosystems.
Restrictions [36710(a) PRC]: it is unlawful to injure, damage, take or possess any living, geological or cultural marine resource, except under a permit or specific authorization from the managing agency for research, restoration or monitoring purposes. While, to the extent feasible, the area shall be open to the public for managed enjoyment and study, the area shall be maintained to the extent practicable in an undisturbed and unpolluted state. Therefore,
access and use (such as walking, swimming, boating and diving) may be restricted to protect marine resources.
Allowable uses [36710(a) PRC]: research, restoration and monitoring may be permitted by the managing agency. Educational activities and other forms of non-consumptive human use may be permitted by the designating entity or managing agency
in a manner consistent with the protection of all marine resources.
The wording of the City’s Bill clearly stated the author’s expectation the City would be able to continue using and policing the beaches in a business-as-usual-manner at minimal cost, except that all forms of fishing and marine life extraction would be prohibited, and
a complete ban would be cheaper to enforce than permitting regulated extraction:
“A State Marine Reserve would
allow normal use of Laguna Beach’s coastal areas but would prohibit consumptive take …
While some MPLA alternatives suggested in the MLPA Initiative process may be proposed with commercial and recreational fishing along Laguna Beach, the enforcement of these
intricate and detailed regulations (including type, size, number, and method of take) would require extensive sea and land resources.
The cost of this kind of enforcement, to be effective,
would be beyond the resources of the City of Laguna Beach, even with current state support. In contrast, effective enforcement of a Marine Reserve may reasonably be achieved within the current City and state resources, without increased costs, since
any observed fishing can be readily identified from the shoreline, reported and more easily enforced. Thus, a consistent marine reserve along the entire coast would be the lowest cost burden on the City.”
Comments in favor of the bill, including comments by City Council members, touted the desirability of a SMR by putting an end to the burden of writing tickets for violations of a an existing patchwork of marine protected area laws, by reducing the risk of accidental spear injuries (despite no evidence of spear injuries for 30 years, except for anecdotal evidence of a single case where someone shot himself in the foot), by enhancing the reputation of the City as an “eco-tourism” location, by raising property values City-wide, particularly beachfront property, and all this at no cost! High sounding rhetoric about pollution, overfishing, and depleted fish stocks in world oceans were not matched by scientific evidence in possession of the City Council concerning the waters covered by the proposed reserve. The author of the Bill admitted she had no such evidence in possession at the meeting.
Expected cost savings, or at least the expectation of no cost increases, indignation over violations of existing regulations, and expected increases in property values were consistent refrains. The City maintains a sewer pipe toward its south end near Aliso Creek. Extending the sewer pipe farther offshore to prevent discharge directly into the proposed reserve was deemed too much of an expense by the cost-conscious City Council, even to help “save the oceans”. The plan they recommended involved gerrymandering the reserve around the existing sewer outfall to permit continued dumping into the 3x7 Area and to avoid potential lawsuits over polluting an SMR.
A resident presented a plate of two dead Garibaldi and a dead baby leopard shark, claiming they were speared by a delinquent spearfisherman. She was apparently so uninformed about the Fish and Games codes that she did not know
mere possession of the dead fish was a multiple count violation. Roger Healy, president of Dana Cove Fisherman's Association noted that with a single marine protection officer (who lacks a boat), "The area will be a poacher's paradise and exclude the legitimate fishermen."
The advantages in increased property values from eco-tourism were apparently expected to be so great that divisions would arise among residents unless the SMR was uniformly established from one end of the City to the other. Except I suppose, near Aliso Creek where residents would understand about the City need to do nothing about the sewer and would not resent being left out of the bonanza.
Costs imposed on recreational anglers from outside the City, commercial fisherman, commercial lobstermen, and even City residents enjoy fishing and spearfishing locally were perceived differently. The City Council felt sorrow, but stakeholders to be left completely out in the cold needed to understand, the City was trying to save or make money, er, save the oceans. No one needs to quit fishing. They just need to go “somewhere else”, you know, like a pier in some other city or the supermarket. Hey, it’s not permanent.
Supposedly after five years, the City could re-assess the situation, and if the area has “recovered”, the reserve restriction could be lifted. Nice. I’m sure the ten year with his fishing pole who testified that he is third generation in his family learning to fish for halibut locally and the young woman from the 50 year old local spear-fishing club appreciated the statements of concern and reassurance. It is a long walk from Laguna Beach to Newport or Dana Point. Not to mention that no such lifting of restrictions on marine protected areas in California have ever occurred, or that the State would decide that, not the City.
Despite my disappointment with the City Council and the vote, the meeting was very educational for me. Much good information was presented in the public comments. Testaments by both sides were sincere. Longtime “extractive users” testified concerning the healthy state of the local marine ecosystem (with the exception of the sewer area) and touted the contributions of their businesses and recreational activities to the local economy and the State via licenses, taxes, and other fees. Local conservationist and preservationist supporters of the SMR expressed concerns about global marine issues, the unhealthy state of local marine ecosystems, and the need to draw a line in the sand at Laguna Beach. What was missing from the specific claims about the ecosystem by both sides was the “best available science”.
A supporter of the Bill and City resident explained to me outside before the meeting how the local beaches were not terrible, but they were still “not what they used to be when he grew up”. I believed him. He agreed recreational anglers were probably not the problem, yet marine protected areas are experiments worth trying. Even though I attended the meeting in opposition to the City’s specific SMR proposal, I agreed with him about the need for ocean conservation. With almost no exception, every fisherman I know feels the same way. Although there have been success stories in recent years, what is currently being done is still not enough. The two of us could agree that we could still fish in many local areas, not just near Laguna Beach, and catch large numbers of sand bass and calico bass, but most of them almost exactly twelve inches long (the legal size limit), and although it is true, sandies and calicos are not endangered, such large numbers of “teenage” fish are not normal or necessarily reflective of a healthy ecosystem either.
My disagreements with the specific Bill were several:
1) The SMR would be too restrictive. Some level of less extractive use might better serve all stakeholders, at least at present.
2) The City Council apparently did not make the effort to involve the whole city in its decision-making process, or to involve all stakeholders.
3) If the City wants to establish a reputation as a leader in marine conservation, it should not be so transparently motivated by money: it is not a given that property values would rise, it should extend the sewer, and it should recognize that there might be unexpected costs associated with the establishment of such a large and restrictive SMR. Otherwise, any claim to leadership strikes me as self-serving and insincere.
4) The City should not be so confident that it would be able to continue what it now considers “normal” use of the beach and local waters – unlimited walking, swimming, surfing, boating, and diving. Potential lawsuits down the road could change all that.
5) The City implied an SMR might be “temporary”, five years only. Not only does history does not support that, but once the State gets control its unlikely the City would ever get control back.
6) The City should not take on responsibility and obligations that it does not have the financial resources to support or enforce. Otherwise, it invites even more disrespect for and violations of the fish and game laws and regulations.
Mayor Boyd was the voice of reason during the City Council’s closing comments before the final vote. Strongly opposed, he cited the unfairness of the Bill to disadvantaged stakeholders and correctly identified the City and States’ current huge debts and budgetary problems as insurmountable obstacles to the support and enforcement of an SMR as proposed. "We all know what the economic stimulus package did for us. Now we're going to stimulate these people by taking their livelihood away? We're not looking at the overall picture. Who the hell is going to enforce it? So now we're going to go seven miles long, three miles out, with the state $24 billion in debt, Laguna $800,000 in debt, and we're going to enforce? I don't think so."
But, it was all for naught.
After vote on the 45 minute drive back to my home town of Long Beach, I could not help thinking how many supporters of the SMR had conflated world marine problems with SoCal and local marine problems. Laguna Beach has not been untouched by the same problems that afflict marine areas elsewhere, however, the greatest challenges to marine conservation everywhere remain destruction or change of habitat or severe over-fishing of select species caused by: pollution, factory/industrial fishing, and climate change, not recreational or even commercial passenger hook and line fishing or spearfishing.
Yes, there were sincere supporters of the SMR, but the vote was not determined or motivated solely by: the best available science, equity for all stakeholders, or the ability to fund monitoring and enforcement as required by the MLPA, but largely by: petty prejudices, provincial attitudes, greed, and the dreamy notion that a Laguna Beach restored to a Galapagos Island style pristine condition can co-exist with current “normal” use, provided that we can get rid of the damned fisherman intruding on OUR beach.
My mind wandered to the tactics of politicians and environmentalists, who get on my last nerve. In March, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has signed legislation transferring $29 million from the Harbors and Watercraft Revolving Fund to the state’s General Fund. The Department of Boating and Waterways uses money from the fund, derived mainly from boaters via the state fuel tax and vessel registration fees, to construct and maintain recreational boating facilities. The transfer will result in the fund going into deficit beginning in fiscal year 2010-11 through at least 2013-14. The Governor says his goal is to consolidate and streamline State agencies, but many in the boating community think his real goal is to divert this money from recreational boating facility projects to other uses.
A few weeks ago, members of the South Coast Regional Stakeholders Group participating in the MLPA process were instructed to vote on four of five proposals to narrow options. External C was a proposal calling for 47 marine protected areas or about 33% of the Southern California coastline to be designated as marine protected areas. It received the
fewest votes. But the MPLA Initiative's “Blue Ribbon Task Force” chose to
disregard the vote and place all proposals back on the table, thus violating the ground rules it had established itself because it did not like the results. It was not lost on anyone, least of all the recreational and commercial fishing stakeholders, that a conservation organization, the
Resources Legacy Fund Foundation, is funding the process. It did not escape my notice that a major objection to External C revolved around how to handle the Laguna Beach area. A firestorm of criticism caused the leader of the task force to backtrack but damage to the attitude of trust and cooperation was done.
I am now deeply suspicious of the Resources Legacy Fund Foundation, City Councilperson Toni Iseman, and all the “preservationists” involved in the MLPA process. My impression of their tactics and motives are that they are focused simply and foremost on influencing the legislative process and are not interested in the best available science, equity for all stakeholders, or paying for the consequent enforcement of the law on an ongoing basis. In other words, their goal is to get restricted areas enshrined in State law, keep them there indefinitely, and not fund the science necessary to evaluate their effectiveness. Sorry folks. Distrust as well as trust … is earned.
To those for whom this decision went against, you need to get involved earlier and do more, and not just to obstruct and complain about the environmentalists. You need to become: even more responsible, even better stewards of the marine environment, even more to prevent pollution, even more honest followers of existing fish and game laws, even more vigilant reporters of violations, even bigger supporters of new regulation if based on good science, and do even more to publicize your work and contributions. You cannot just be defensive and complain. You need to meet your opposition … somewhere in the middle.
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