Letters to the Editor

Downtown parking

Regarding the decrease of free downtown public parking near Oceanside pier:  In reducing free downtown beach parking I feel that the Oceanside City Council has very little concern for the senior citizens and the handicap.

Now for access to the beach and pier for their needed exercise we have to pay for it!  My husband and I are in our early 80s and have been enjoying the free parking behind Wyndham Oceanside Pier Resort.

We are not handicapped enough to obtain a handicap parking permit.  Now if we want to get some exercise on the pier we have to park further away and walk that much further to the pier and beach.  I feel the decrease of free downtown public parking will detour a lot of senior citizens from going to and enjoying the walks on the pier and beach.

And all for the almighty dollar!

Viviana Sini,

Oceanside

 

Seawall tour

The front page article “Surfrider Foundation to host seawall tour” (The Coast News June 5, 2015) quotes a Surfrider news release, “Man-made seawalls diminish public coastal access, limiting residents and tourists from experiencing one of San Diego’s most fundamental draws … the beach.”

As a 33-year Leucadia resident who surfs, walks and runs these beaches I was nterested to go and take the tour “aimed at educating the public”  about seawalls.

The “walking tour” turned out to be a press conference where only reporters were allowed to ask questions.  Only after they were done and packing up were others allowed to speak.  I pointed out that if it weren’t for man-made seawalls and stairs at Grandview (which we had all just used to get to the beach), Stone Steps, D Street and Swami’s, the only public beach access from the bluffs in Encinitas would be at Beacon’s (and we will lose that if the Coastal Commission doesn’t  approve the city’s plan to save it.)

I then asked Surfrider’s Mark West if he would feel safer walking close to a seawall or an unprotected bluff.  He refused to answer, saying it was a hypothetical question.  It wasn’t hypothetical to the young woman who was killed a few years back when the bluff collapsed on her south of Stone Steps.  Throughout human history and around the world man has built seawalls to protect himself from the sea.  Would those who oppose  seawalls on our bluffs also have the Netherlands get rid of their dikes ans let the North Sea flood their nation?

Should we remove the levees from The Mississippi and let the cities and farms along its banks be flooded?  “Letting nature take its course”  isn’t always the best choice.  Seawalls help protect the bluffs and beach users, and only keep a tiny amount of brown “sand” from ending up on the beach.

Gerry Rahill,

Leucadia