Resaving California's coast

Thought for the day

I have long been a fan of L.A. Times columnist Steve Lopez. If, for some reason, you don't remember, Steve's stories about Nathaniel Ayers, a musician who developed schizophrenia and became homeless, eventually were turned into the feature length movie "The Soloist" starring Robert Downey Jr. and Jamie Fox in 2009.

So that was then and this is now. In today's column, Steve has turned his attention to "resaving" California's coast because, as he sees it, current threats “bring to mind the passage of Prop. 20 in 1972." In short, that's when people banded together to prevent the coastline from being overdeveloped, ecologically diminished and irreversibly privatized. Sadly, reading between Steve's lines, this is exactly what people in Washington want to dismantle now.

All of this is a major “blast from the past” for yours truly. That's because 40 years ago this August, I was retained by the Orange County Board of Supervisors (plus the cities of San Clemente, Laguna, Newport and Huntington Beach) to coordinate public opposition to the Reagan administration's plan to open the coast to massive offshore oil drilling.

My team and I were given less than 30 days to implement our plan (which included gaining the support of more than 20 GOP mayors throughout Orange County). Believe it or not, most of them showed up to a meeting chaired by then-Interior Secretary Donald Hodel and publicly denounced the Reagan plan. Long story short, this was the single most important political event I organized in my career.

Today, we face many of the same headwinds that were blowing back in 1972 and 1985. Here's how Steve closed his column today. It's a quote from the late Peter Douglas. He said that if we want the coast to be there for our children, "then we have to keep fighting to protect it. In that way, the coast is never saved, it's always being saved."

So true. So very true. As always, feel free to send me your thoughts. Lastly, if you can’t find Steve’s column, let me know. I’ll email it to you.

-DF