SAVING THE COAST 

The Trump Administration is taking aim at the California Coastal Commission, and according to a recent New York Times article, the President may have an ally in California Governor Gavin Newsom. The Times headline states “Trump and Newsom Find Common Ground Attacking California’s Coastal Agency” raised new alarms in the conservation community.

President Donald Trump dislikes the Coastal Commission so much that he threatened to make dismantling it a condition of federal relief money for the Palisades Fire disaster zone. Trump’s personal feud with the Coastal Commission goes back to the 2000s, when he tangled with the agency over his golf course development in Palos Verdes. During his first administration, he was critical of the Commission’s role in enforcing restrictions on the oil industry on the California coast. 

Trump’s unelected advisor, Elon Musk, has also fought with Coastal. Last year, the commission voted to limit the number of Starlink Falcon 9 rocket launches at  Vandenberg Air Force Base on the Central Coast, out of concern over the environmental impact. Musk sued. 

It’s easy to see why the agency is receiving the ire of the President and his advisor, but The Times article states that, “Democrats have increasingly rebuked the agency as they have sought more housing construction to address the state’s soaring cost of living. Housing activists say the state desperately needs more homes in coastal cities.”

This is despite the fact that only the immediate coastline falls under the Coastal Commission jurisdiction in urban areas (1000 feet from the ocean), and less developed areas like the Santa Monica Mountains are protected by the coastal act because they are ecologically sensitive and often geologically unstable.

The California Coastal Commission is tasked with protecting coastal resources within the designated Coastal Zone. It’s the only state agency created by a direct vote of the people of California. Its job is to protect coastal resources and ensure that they are available to the public.

The Coastal Act includes specific policies that address issues such as shoreline public access and recreation, lower cost visitor accommodations, terrestrial and marine habitat protection, visual resources, landform alteration, agricultural lands, commercial fisheries, industrial uses, water quality, offshore oil and gas development, transportation, development design, power plants, ports, and public works.

The Coastal Commission is supposed to be the final arbitrator for development in the coastal zone and it also administers a wide range of programs from grants to sea level rise guidance for the state. There is a lot of misinformation about what the commission does and how it does it. 

Newsom claims the commission has “too much power.” Following the Palisades Fire, he borrowed a page from the President’s playbook and used an executive order to exempt fire rebuilds from the requirements of the Coastal Act and the California Environmental Quality Act—CEQA.

“The governor emphasized that rebuilding in the fire zones was exempt from the Coastal Act. [Newsom] blamed the Coastal Commission for issuing ‘legally erroneous’ guidance about whether homeowners needed agency approval to rebuild — an unusual public rebuke of a state agency by a Democratic governor,” the New York Times article states. 

Newsom directed the Coastal Commission not to issue guidance or take any action that interferes with or conflicts with his executive orders. The governor has stated that his executive order was intended to make it easier for residents of the Coastal Zone who have lost their homes in the fire to rebuild.

While the executive order may eliminate some of the complexity of getting a rebuild permit, the issue is complicated, especially for the beachfront properties that burned along the four-mile stretch of coast in Malibu.

A house built decades ago above the mean high tide line (the average location of the high tide) may now be located almost entirely on the wet sand. The governor does not have the ability to waive the federal sea level rise requirements set by FEMA. The FEMA flood map for Malibu shows some properties and even parts of Pacific Coast Highway that are already completely within the wave up-rush zone, although it varies greatly from one property to the next. Rebuilding houses in the areas mapped with the highest flood risk will be challenging. In some places it could involve moving them as more than ten feet above the projected flood level. The Caltrans right-of-way was also not part of the waiver and it further complicates the issue, since some houses reportedly are partially built on that right of way. The biggest obstacle to rebuilding for many isn’t the permitting process, it’s the high cost. 

This stretch of coast is a dynamic environment, one that is impacted not only by sea level rise, but by erosion, landslides, wildfire, and flooding. The owners of these properties do not have to abide by the Local Coastal Program or CEQA but they still have to replace seawalls, supports, and onsite septic systems—elements governed by state building code. Timber piles that have propped up many beach houses for decades are no longer allowed; and even many concrete and steel caissons will have to be replaced due to fire damage. Conventional septic systems are also no longer permitted under state building code, even if they survived the fire undamaged. 

Many of these infrastructure elements are extremely costly and the fear is that they may force out longtime homeowners who are not wealthy or whose insurance is not adequate. 

Critics charge that Newsom’s free pass to avoid environmental laws at the beach is a gift for the uber wealthy instead of something that will help actual residents to rebuild. Many of the houses that burned on Pacific Coast Highway are investment properties, some are owned by corporations. There’s a reason Carbon Beach is called “Billionaire’s Beach.” 

Beach properties present the greatest rebuilding challenge, but residents on the steeper slopes of the coastal zone away from the coast also face challenges with wastewater treatment and issues like geology and the potential need to replace slab foundations with caissons. The rebuilding process will be costly and time-consuming for everyone, with or without CEQA requirements. 

The Palisades fire revealed how vulnerable coastal communities are not only to wildfire but to the aftermath of fire: costly losses and crippling damage to infrastructure road closures that continue to impact residents and local businesses. 

The Palisades fire has forced rapid change, and necessitated quick decisions, but as sea level rises, flooding, land slippage, and the omnipresent risk of wildfire remain concerns throughout the coastal zone. Eliminating the Coastal Act’s protections will not remove the underlying issues that necessitated them in the first place. 

The Coastal Commission has faced many problems during its first half century, but it has been a key part of the battle to restrain out-of-control development and preserve public open space along more than 800 miles of coastline. It is also involved in the planning process for hazard mitigation on the coast.

The California Coastal Commission was established by the Coastal Act, Proposition 20, in 1972, and later made permanent by the Legislature through adoption of the California Coastal Act of 1976. The catastrophic 1969 Santa Barbara oil spill that helped spark the environmental movement lent urgency to the issue of protecting the coast, so did plans to build oil platforms in the Santa Monica Bay and other ecologically sensitive areas and plans for freeways, housing tracks, marinas, golf courses, highrises and entire new cities. 

The Commission has also played a role in trying to clean up the damage caused by the pesticide DDT, lead and mercury from leaded gasoline, and the sewage and industrial waste that was being dumped untreated into almost every waterway in the state before standards were set and laws put into place—laws that are now being discarded.

The Coastal Commission was created to plan and regulate the use of land and water in the coastal zone along the entire California seashore. To facilitate that process, all cities and counties in the coastal zone are responsible for developing a Local Coastal Program—a land use planning document—that is then certified by the Coastal Commission. These aren’t static documents, they change and evolve.

The local battlefield has always been the Santa Monica Mountains and coast. The Santa Monica Mountains Coastal Zone is the unincorporated portion of the Santa Monica Mountains west of the City of Los Angeles, east of Ventura County, and south of the coastal zone boundary, excluding the City of Malibu. It includes most of Topanga and encompasses approximately 81 square miles. Malibu has its own coastal zone.

The Commission is quasi-judicial, and is supposed to be independent. The twelve voting members are appointed, four each by the governor, the Senate Rules Committee, and the Speaker of the Assembly. Half of the voting members are locally elected officials, and half are appointed from “the public at large.” Three additional ex officio (non-voting) members represent the Resources Agency, the California State Transportation Agency, and the State Lands Commission. 

The Coastal Commission meets in different communities up and down the coast throughout the year. Every month, the commission and its staff, and all the project applicants and their legal counsel and consultants and lobbyists, and the activists opposing their projects and their experts and advisors and lobbyists, and the local officials and their staff, and all the concerned members of the public, gather in one of the coastal cities for the monthly meeting, moving up and down the coast throughout the year. Meetings take place in city halls or hotel conference rooms. 

While the commission makes the decisions, the commissioners rely heavily on their staff to review plans, and make findings and recommendations. They also rely on the public to bring issues before them, through appeal or public comment. It’s not a perfect system by any stretch of the imagination, but it has helped to protect coastal resources.

A 1970 Los Angeles Times article warned that the County of Los Angeles was determined to fully develop the Santa Monica Mountains and coastline. “A population of 150,000—12 times what it is now—is planned for the Malibu area,” The Times reported (by Malibu area, the Times meant Malibu and Topanga, frequently described at the time as the “Malibu Mountains”). “With it will come the traffic, school and other problems which plague the more populated sections of the county.”

The article pointed out that of the 26 miles of coastline from Ventura County to the Los Angeles city limits, only “about six are publicly owned.”

Two years later, the people of California passed the Coastal Act. 

The key thing the commission is charged with is protecting the coast and the public’s ability to access coastal resources. One of the responsibilities of the first Coastal Commission was drafting a priority acquisitions list for beach and coastal property the state should earmark for purchase. Locally, it included the Point Dume Headlands and the Malibu Lagoon. The Point Dume Natural Preserve was slated to become a hotel; the lagoon, a marina. 

All coastal zones have a Local Coastal Program that is certified by the Coastal Commission. They also have a Land Use Plan (LUP) and a Local Implementation Plan (LIP). In the Santa Monica Mountains Coastal Zone, these are components of the Los Angeles County General Plan. All coastal zones also have a zoning consistency program to implement the LUP. The goal is to ensure that zoning designations for properties are consistent with the land use categories of the plan. The LCP isn’t a static document, it can be amended and evolves over time.

In 1979, the decision was made to include the entire Topanga watershed into the coastal zone for unincorporated Los Angeles County, with the goal of preventing what environmental activists called “Creeping Valley Disease.” The LCP for Topanga includes special provisions for this community’s unusual neighborhoods, that include narrow streets and small lots and prioritizes the community’s unique rustic character. The Malibu LCP has special rules for beachfront houses—the ones now suspended by the governor.

The appeal process is a tool used by activists and the public to contest controversial projects. It’s often a court of last resort. Thanks to the grassroots effort that gathered the signatures and passed the Coastal Act, the California coast belongs to the public, not to the corporate interests and wealthy individuals who would otherwise monopolize it, but that law is constantly under attack. There’s a Russian billionaire in Northern California who has battled with the Commission for almost 16 years in an attempt to prevent beachgoers from accessing a historically public beach, and that’s just one example.

The Coastal Commission hearing process can be complicated and time consuming, but anyone who has enjoyed a long beach walk anywhere on the California coast or a hike in the coastal mountains owes that experience in large part to the California Coastal Act and the California Coastal Commission. It’s not perfect, but it has helped to preserve at least some of the things that make this place special, and that’s true up and down the coast, from the redwood groves of coastal northern California to the Torrey pines of San Diego, to the oak trees and canyon views right here in Topanga’s backyard, and that troubled stretch of beach in Malibu that is at the center of the current controversy. 

A big part of the commission’s success isn’t what’s here, it’s what isn’t: oil drilling rigs, highrises, marinas, freeways. But just because those victories were won doesn’t mean the coast and its resources aren’t still at risk. 

If the Coastal Commission is dissolved, what is the potential for all of the things generations of Californians have fought to save to once again be at risk from extreme development pressures? That’s a question that has to be asked, as one by one, the federal protections on water quality, air quality, and the environment are eliminated. The late Peter Douglas, former executive director of the California Coastal Commission, famously stated that “the coast is never saved, it’s always being saved.”