Land use studies to address climate change along the Mendocino Coast open up opportunities for policy changes

MENDOCINO Co., 7/19/24 — Peter McNamee, of the GrassRoots Institute’s Mendocino Vision Working Group, describes what one may better term a nightmare than a vision. “Look at the trailer parks along the coast,” he says. “They’re at near sea level. We could have a king tide at the same time as a Pineapple Express storm that dumps 10 inches of rain during the night. There could be half a dozen breaches of State Route 1, the highway that people rely upon for emergency response. Some of those trailers could be washed out to sea. A local emergency response can’t manage a 129-mile coastline.”

This and other issues, such as climate refugees flooding the Mendocino Coast, the Blue Economy, water regulations and zoning changes, are what the county, cities, and the California Coastal Commission (CCC) are examining in a series of studies meant to update what the commission terms Local Coastal Programs (LCPs). These land use regulatory and management mechanisms were created after the California Coastal Act of 1976 was implemented in  1977. Some have been updated piecemeal, but the latest iteration is the first time the LCPs have been looked at as a whole in Mendocino County.