Posted: June 13th, 2008

“At the commission hearing, Los Angeles civil rights and environmental attorney Robert Garcia and Acjachemen activist Rebecca Robles and other Native American leaders provided a moving and passionate defense of San Onofre as a critical site for providing access to open space and recreational resources for underserved communities. The San Mateo Creek watershed is actually Panhe, a key Acjachemen religious, historical and ceremonial site.” Visit www.savepanhe.org

Saving Trestles: A broad coalition of activists saved San Onofre State Park - for now
June 12, 2008 by ocvoice
By Serge Dedina
Special to the OC Voice

“Abuelita,” the eager grom asked his gray-haired grandmother as they saw around the campfire at San Mateo Campground after a long day surfing a late-season southern hemi at Uppers. “Tell me again about how you saved Trestles. Tell me about Big Wednesday.”

The abuelita smiled. She could still see the thousands of people at Wyland Hall. Still feel the tug of the hand of her youngest daughter as they watched the crowd with awe. She could still hear the excited voices and screams of joy as the Coastal Commissioners overwhelmingly voted to protect San Onofre State Beach Park and Trestles. It was one of the best days of her long and joy-filled life.

In the annals of surfing history, there has never been another day quite like Feb. 6, 2008. That is the day when more than 3,000 surfing pioneers, media celebrities, politicians, bureaucrats, biologists, bird-lovers, Native Americans, surf-moms, grommets, pro-surfers, surf industry CEOs and abuelitas from East L.A. Came together at Wyland Hall at the Del Mar Fairgrounds to stop what Mark Massara, the Sierra Club’s Coastal Program Director, calls “the devil child of all coastal development projects.”

Massara was referring to the plan by the Transportation Corridor Agencies (TCA) to build a toll road that he said, “would have destroyed San Onofre State Park, Trestles, Native American sacred sites, a public campground, a wildlife conservation refuge, an entire watershed, creek, wetlands and a dozen endangered species.”

The decisive rejection on Feb. 6 by the California Coastal Commission (8-2) of the proposed 241 toll road was one of the most significant events in the history of the California environmental movement. The more than 3,000 people who assembled to defend Trestles made up the largest crowd in the history of Coastal Commission hearings.

During what the media called the “Woodstock of the surf movement,” you could feel, “the energy in the air-a booming resonance of civic duty,” said Stefanie Sekich, Surfrieder’s Save Trestles Campaign Coordinator. “Seeing thousands of people come together in an orderly, positive fashion made me feel hopeful for the future.”

At 11:20 p.m., when the Costal Commissioners voted to stop the toll road, it was “a cathartic moment of validation,” wrote Surfrider’s Matt McCain.

Although the Save Trestles battle is not over, it’s critical to learn from the victory in Del Mar to help preserve other endangered waves in California and throughout the world.

Surfers Can’t Fight Alone

While the Surfrider Foundation did a brilliant job of mobilizing the masses and creating the coolest marketing campaign in the history of the environmental movement (kudos to Surfrider’s CEO Jim Moriarty, and to Matt McClain, its marketing and communications director), the Save Trestles coalition included the best and the brightest of California’s environmental community-most of whom can’t tell a left from a right, a mushburger from a barrel, or a beachbreak from a reef.inst development and ruination-whatever the cost. . . .

Surf free or die.

Serge Dedina is Executive Director of WILDCOAST at www.wildcoast.net. This article was origially published in Surfshot magazine. Read the rest of the blog post.