Coastal Commission Also in Line on Camping Issue

• Bluffs Park Look

BY BILL KOENEKER

The California Coastal Commission is expected to consider the revised findings for the Local Coastal Program amendment proposed by the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy that includes overnight camping in the coastal canyons and at Bluffs Park.
The coastal panel meets this month in Oceanside. The commission had previously approved the request, which involved several last-minute revisions, including the Bluffs Park that was not a part of the original application.
The Bluffs Park is an 84-acre open space owned by the conservancy adjacent to the city’s Bluffs Park, which includes the ball fields. The ocean blufftop location is suggested as a potential alterative location for future campsites within Malibu. (See article on this page.)
“The executive director of the applicant [Joe Edmiston] agreed that the area was appropriate for camping and formally amended the proposed LCPA at the hearing to include this area,” a CCC staff report states. “The commission approved the LCPA with the revisions proposed by the staff in the staff recommendation and the addition of Malibu Bluffs Park to the overlay as proposed by the applicant.”
Coastal Commission procedures, according to a staff report, require a majority vote of the commissioners who were both on the prevailing side and who are also present at the October meeting, when the revised findings are adopted with at least three of the prevailing members voting. “Only those commissioners on the prevailing side of the commission’s action are eligible to vote on the revised findings,” the staff report goes on to state.
Commission officials have been quick to point out that the procedures undertaken during the LCPA hearing, which included a competing LCPA sought by the City of Malibu that did not include overnight camping, “differed from most LCP amendments in that an entity other than the local government itself was making the request.”
The law allows such amendments because it is the Coastal Commission’s role to apply a regional or statewide perspective to land use debates where the use in question is one greater than local significance.”
The proposed park plan approved by the coastal panel is described as an opportunity to increase access to park properties and enhance recreation, including hiking trails and campsites in Ramirez Canyon Park, Escondido Canyon Park, Corral Canyon Park and Malibu Bluffs Park.
The plan is also described as a means to increase the level of accessibility for disabled visitors at all properties and also addresses the administrative and public outreach program uses at Ramirez Canyon Park, where the SMMC is headquartered, that were issued by the Coastal Commission in 2001, but subsequently set aside in 2005 by a court order, after neighbors complained the conservancy was involved in activities not authorized by the CCC permit.
The furor by the public focused on the overnight camping issue and overshadowed the conservancy’s request for its headquarters property.