By Neil Farrell ~
A split Morro Bay City Council voted 3-1 Tuesday not to support a proposed marine sanctuary off the Central Coast, deciding in the end that they didn’t have sufficient information, questions answered nor concerns addressed to change the City’s long-time opposition.
The motion was made by Councilman John Hedding and seconded by Mayor Jamie Irons, to not comment anew on the application for the Chumash Heritage National Marine Sanctuary and let stand a previous Resolution in opposition and passed in 2012 (Res. 18-12) as the official City position.
But to also invite someone from the sanctuary program, which is under the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), to come to Morro Bay and lead an educational workshop.
And then come back at a later date for an official City position, whether in support or opposition. So the motion, while not acting in time for the Oct. 5 cutoff for a 60-day public comment period on the proposal, won’t likely be the last time the issue is heard.
Harbor Director Eric Endersby explained that this first round in NOAA’s process if approved would simply place the nomination onto a list for future consideration and possible designation, which has to get Congressional approval to succeed.
He outlined three areas of concern that led previous city councils to oppose a sanctuary on four previous occasions. They were: conflicts with fishing and possible increased regulations; conflicts between harbors and sanctuary management over things like maintenance dredging; and the loss of local control to a bureaucracy in Washington.
He asked the Council to either write a new Resolution or letter in opposition; write a letter of support and rescind the previous Resolution; or take no new actions and let Res. 18-12 stand as the official City position.
Among the threats to local waters listed in the application were ocean outfalls for a sewer treatment plants such as Morro Bay’s and two in the South County; the discharge from CMC’s wastewater treatment plant down Chorro Creek, through the estuary and bay and eventually to the sanctuary waters; also, the Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant’s seawater cooling system (which is already under pressure to greatly reduce or outright cease from the State Water Resources Control Board).
Councilman Noah Smukler commented that in 2002 as a member of the Surfrider Foundation he supported expansion of the Monterey Bay NMS into local waters. But in 2012, he was a Councilman and he didn’t feel that concerns about local impacts had been addressed, so he voted to oppose it at that time.
That application was deemed incomplete by NOAA and sent back for more information, with an invitation to resubmit. With added support from groups like the Sierra Club and Surfrider among others, the Northern Chumash Council, led by Fred Collins, re-submitted a more than 80-page application in June.
The 60-day comment period started Aug. 5 and the application has gotten a slew of support from a wide variety of individuals, cities, agencies and organizations.
Mayor Irons noted that the State Senate had introduced SB-788, which would prohibit further offshore oil and gas exploration off the whole California Coast. Though that bill died in committee, he said the author planned to resurrect it next year, so there could be further protections put in place by the State in 1 year and not the 3-4 years it would take for a sanctuary to be established.
He also noted that 3-years ago, he and Smukler, with help from the Sierra Club had organized meetings to explore a sanctuary. What he learned was that the Monterey Bay NMS was not working well and the fishermen in that Sanctuary had lost trust when the management changed.
He proposed that the federal law needed to be changed to address the fishing issue and other concerns before one was brought here. He suggested formation of another marine interest group to further educate on sanctuaries and lobby for the changes that should be made in the federal law.
Councilman Hedding said he didn’t have enough information on whether a sanctuary would affect commercial fishing and whether local protections — in both a City muni code and a County ordinance passed in 1986 — were enough to prevent oil and gas exploration here.
Chevron purchased mineral rights to several offshore lease sites from the federal government back in the early 1980s but has never moved to exercise its rights. Some of those are directly offshore from Morro Bay.
That was the main reason for much of the support, as some said this was the best and indeed only way to ensure that such exploration doesn’t happen ever.
Councilwoman Christine Johnson said she did not have enough information or time to digest the dozens of emails she’d received as well as several new papers and documents — including a letter from NOAA — that she had been bombarded with over just the past two weeks.
“It would be a disservice in my opinion,” she explained, “to make a decision tonight.” And, “There are a significant number of people in our community who support this and a lot who do not.”
In the end though Johnson voted with Hedding and Irons for the motion and it was Smukler who dissented.
During one of the longer public hearings in recent memory, lasting about 3 hours, the Council heard from a split audience with about 15 speakers in favor matched by a similar number in opposition. At times the discussion turned a tad nasty as one speaker noted this council was probably the first in 20 years that was “intellectually capable” of making this decision and another characterized past councils as having a “lack of vision.”
But overall, despite passions running high on both sides, the discourse remained respectful, which was something the Mayor had called for before opening the floor to the public.
Words in support included: “This is a golden opportunity to protect our coastline,” and the City has “an illusion of local control.” And, the sanctuary “would be the best thing to happen to the Central Coast in our lifetimes.”
One man said he was a commercial fisherman and a descendent of the Chumash and was offended that their name was being used to promote this. It was offensive to the whole history of Native Americans in this area, he said, to hand over control of the ocean to the federal government. He spoke of unintended consequences as causing a greater problem. “Once you give up local control, you never get it back.”
Local fisherman Tom Hafer, who sits on the Harbor Advisory Board that voted 7-0 against the sanctuary, said this sanctuary would mean having marine sanctuaries for more than 200 miles of coast — from Pillar Point to Point Conception.
The proposed Chumash Heritage NMS would span some 140 miles of coastline — from Santa Rosa Creek in Cambria to Point Conception off Vandenberg AFB — and from the high tide line out to the Santa Lucia Bank, an undersea range that has some of the best fishing on the entire West Coast and runs north-south about 12 miles out to sea.
