Q: What is your current role with the Surfrider Foundation?
Co-lead, along with Jim Jaffee, of the Beach Preservation Committee.
Q: Why and when did you get involved with the Surfrider Foundation?
My husband and I moved to Solana Beach in January of 2011, and we were looking for a way to get involved in the local community. We had done a couple of Surfrider Beach Cleanups in Northern California, so we decided to look for some Surfrider events in San Diego. I did my first beach cleanup with the San Diego chapter in 2011 at Moonlight Beach, and helped out with the beach cleanups there for several years. On a side note, the Moonlight Beach cleanup happens monthly and is led by Alessandro Fraschetti.
Since I was on the Surfrider email list at that point, I noticed some requests for Solana Beach residents urging the city to finalize its work on its Land Use Plan, an important part of its Local Coastal Program which outlines the rules and regulations around coastal development. As part of this effort, I joined the Beach Preservation Committee around 2012 or 2013. The committee educated me about the negative impacts that sea walls have on the beach, and I was hooked. After a couple of months with the committee, I became the Secretary and then took over as co-lead in 2015 when Tom Cook stepped down.
Q: What are some environmental issues that are affecting your local community?
The destruction of our beaches, bluffs, and coastline through irresponsible and reckless coastal development has been an ongoing issue for decades. Our committee pushes back against bad coastal development with the very, very long-term goal of restoring our coastline to its natural, unarmored state.
Q: What Surfrider projects have you worked on?
Most of what we do is around submitting public comments in front of Planning Commissions, City Councils, and the Coastal Commission concerning bad coastal development.
Q: Are there any specific project(s) that you have worked on that benefited your community? If so, can you tell us about that?
One of my first activities with the Beach Preservation Committee in 2013-2014 was to ensure that the City of Solana Beach developed a Land Use Plan, an important first step toward completion of its decades-overdue Local Coastal Program. Despite the city’s efforts to bow to private property owners when it comes to rules regarding blufftop redevelopment, our efforts helped to ensure that the Coastal Commission held the city accountable and this resulted in a pretty strong LUP for the city.
As part of the development of the LUP, the city of Solana Beach also implemented a Recreation Fee that takes into account the loss of beach space due to the construction of sea walls. The city wanted to ridiculously undervalue its beaches to reduce the fees that private homeowners would have to pay for their seawalls. We fought that effort and won in front of the Coastal Commission. The fees are still too low in my opinion, but not as bad as it could have been.
Within my first two years on the Committee, I worked with Tom and Jim on the Army Corps of Engineer’s 50-year Storm Damage Reduction Project in Encinitas and Solana Beach to ensure the project included rigorous surf monitoring and that the plan will respond if negative impacts to surfing are observed. Additionally, our actions resulted in a reduced amount of sand placement in Solana Beach, as the enormous amount of sand originally planned would have totally smothered local reefs, destroying a precious ecological and surfing resource.
From 2015-2018 I served as the ‘public advocate’ on the city of Del Mar’s Sea Level Rise Technical Advisory Committee. In the face of repeated hostile attacks by climate change deniers and private property advocates, I stood by Surfrider’s principles of protecting the public’s right to the beaches, and advocated for managed retreat as the ultimate option in light of sea level rise and climate change. Despite being in the minority on this committee, I provided constant public comment during the meetings and in front of both the City of Del Mar and the Coastal Commission regarding the city’s disastrous proposal to redefine ‘existing’ development and gut the basic premises of the Coastal Act. Eventually the city withdrew its proposed update to its Local Coastal Program as it became clear the Coastal Commission would not accept their amendments, partially because of our repeated opposition to the city’s proposal.
Over the years I have led three King Tide Bike Rides and Walks to discuss the future of our coastline given the reality of sea level rise. Through these events we educated our local community about why coastal armoring and other protection of private property comes at the expense of the public’s beaches.
I helped the Environmental Coalition of San Diego accept an Offer-to-Dedicate from the Coastal Commission in La Jolla, at Princess Street, that will result in the reopening of a public beach access that has been illegally closed for more than 40 years.
I have been an active advocate for the relocation of the train tracks from the bluffs of Del Mar to an inland location for over five years, working with the city and SANDAG to keep pushing on this important managed retreat project. As part of this activity, I was an important part of the effort to fight back against the North Coast Transit District when they attempted to bypass all environmental and regulatory review for their seawall proposals via the Federal Surface Transportation Board. Eventually the STB dismissed the action requested by NCTD, so the NCTD must go through standard environment review for its projects.
A lot of what our committee does is fairly reactive - we see bad coastal development or seawall projects, and fight them on the planning commission, city council, and Coastal Commission level. I honestly have lost track of the number of letters I have written over the years, but here is a partial list of the projects we have commented on. While we didn’t often prevent the development entirely, we usually got some wins in terms of better conditions imposed on the project, and some of them we prevented from happening. Each address is a project where we fought against unsafely cited development and/or sea walls:
- Oceanside: We have provided a lot of comments about Oceanside these last few years, but credit mainly goes to Mitch Silverstein for these letters.
- Encinitas:
- 100 and 120-136 5th Street
- 132, 216, 444, 522-524, 808, 836/838, 1316, 1470, and 1520 Neptune Avenue
- Beacons public access stairs
- Solana Beach:
- 135, 675, 825 South Sierra 197-201
- 211-231, 255, 235-259, 249-311, 325/327, 341, 341/347/355, 347/459, 517/521, 532-525, 529, and 533 Pacific Avenue
- Del Mar:
- Four years of comments regarding the railroad tracks
- Four years of comments regarding a proposed hotel
- Two years of comments regarding the proposed amendments to their Local Coastal Program
Q: What has been the highlight of your Surfrider experience?
There have been multiple times we have opposed projects in front of the Coastal Commission that have otherwise been rubber-stamped by city councils of Oceanside, Encinitas, Del Mar, and Solana Beach. In those instances, the Coastal Commission has outright denied projects, much to the shock of the applicants and their well-paid lawyers.
Victories aren’t usually as clear cut - often it's more subtle, such as hearing the Coastal Commissioners talk more and more about the need for managed retreat, or seeing Coastal Commission staff impose better and more stringent special conditions on projects in the hopes that at some future point we will see the restoration of our coastline.
Q: Do you have any personal experiences or campaigns/issues you're passionate about where the social justice and environmental movements intersect? If so, can you tell us about them?
I think generally the fact that private property rights are being protected while the rights of the public to access the beaches that we all own together is a social justice issue. Someone needs to be the voice that speaks for the majority of us that do not live in that last line of coastal development that has been unsafely cited and is resulting in the armoring of the coastline.
Q: What can Surfrider do (or continue doing) to foster an inclusive and welcoming experience? Do you have any examples from your experience where this is successfully happening?
We need better talking points and media outreach to educate the public about how their beaches and coast are being sacrificed in the name of the protection of private property. The loudest voices in most of the meetings we attend are the very wealthy property owners and their lawyers. I fear the public will not know what is being taken away from them until the armoring of the coastline is complete, sea level rise accelerates, and our beaches are gone. My hope is that if we could better communicate this issue to the public, maybe we would see more voices speaking in opposition to bad coastal development.
Q: What is the most important thing you tell others about Surfrider?
In terms of what the Beach Preservation does, I think we are one of the few watchdog organizations in the county that is specifically focused on fighting bad coastal development to protect our ocean, beaches, and waves.
Q: Why is being a part of the Surfrider ocean conservation community important to you?
I see firsthand in my city, Solana Beach, how seawalls are destroying the natural beauty of our coastline and will eventually mean there is no beach left for the public. It breaks my heart to see how private development is being prioritized over the protection of public property.
