SeeCalifornia.com

If you visit the Central Coast and stay near Oceano State Vehicular Recreation Area, your temptation to want to buy a home along the dunes can quickly dissipate after you’ve experienced a day of wind, dust and sand beating against your skin. Regardless of whether the dune recreational vehicle activity kicks up the dust or not, the haze is nearly always in the air as a fact of life along this wind-swept coast.

That’s why the mayor of Grover Beach, one of the area’s dune cities, is circulating a petition asking for the San Luis Obispo County Air Pollution Control District to repeal their new regulation fining landowner of the dunes, California State Parks, $1000/day for dust mitigation.

Dust blows onto the Nipomo Mesa from the beach, part of a natural dune process. However, Air Pollution Control District determined in a study that vehicles on the beach are causing the dust to blow onto the Mesa. This agency issues many press releases with air quality warnings  aimed at 10,000+ residents of the unincorporated town of Nipomo.

Similar to the Southern California beach bonfire issue in which that area’s South Coast Air Quality District may decide the fate of a popular tourist attraction, the Central Coast’s popular beach dune buggy riding  is in the hands of politically-assigned decision makers.