Opposite:
1. Hearst wants to build a golf course here.
2. San Simeon Point
3. Old San Simeon Village
4. William R. Hearst Memorial State Beach
5. Staging area for Hearst Castle
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Opposite: |
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HEARST RANCH RASA GUSTAITIS MIDWAY BETWEEN LOS ANGELES AND SAN FRANCISCO, San Luis Obispo County's north coast still looks much the same as it did over a century ago. Along some 20 miles of glorious shore, the view from two-lane Highway 1 is open in all directions, almost entirely free of manmade structures. |
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See Five Dollars a Flush? |
Lush coastal terraces extend to eroding bluffs, rocky headlands, and sandy beaches. Dolphins and sea otters play offshore, elephant seals loll a few dozen feet from the road. Inland, cattle graze on rolling hills and rest on hot days in the shade of large oaks. While the coastline elsewhere is more and more crowded and developed, here clear streams flow freely from the rugged, forested Santa Lucia Mountains to pristine lagoons where juvenile steelhead prepare for adult life in the ocean. Up to a million tourists visit Hearst Castle each year, but few stay for long. Between San Luis Obispo and Carmel, some 130 miles north beyond the steep wilderness of Big Sur, the biggest town is Cambria, population 5,600. |
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"An unspoiled shoreline with hundreds of coves, dozens of uncrowded beaches, rocky headlands and clean blue water stretching to a far horizon unmarked by oil rigs or air pollution . . . one of California's premier natural wonders."
- Coastal Commission Staff Report
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So great is the natural and scenic value of this stretch of coast that in writing the Coastal Act of 1976 the California Legislature extended the Coastal Zone five miles inland here (as it did in the Santa Monica Mountains) to include entire watersheds and ecosystems within a 100,000-acre area.
About half this expanse - 48,000 acres - is part of the 77,000-acre Hearst Ranch, which reaches from the ocean's edge to the watershed divide of the Salinas River Basin and includes 16 miles of the shoreline between San Luis Obispo and Ragged Point, the southern gateway to Big Sur. Even the strip of ground under Highway 1 is Hearst property, with Caltrans holding an easement. The Hearst Corporation, which owns the ranch as well as a media empire, has proposed to build a resort complex with three hotels, convention center, blufftop golf course, dude ranch, restaurants, and shops. With more visitor-serving units than the combined total at the Pebble Beach and Spanish Bay resorts in Monterey County, this proposal has sparked what may well be the coastal battle of the decade. The fight is not about whether development should be permitted; it is about the size, character, and location of the proposed Hearst Ranch Resorts. Can they be built without undermining the values the Coastal Act was designed to protect - without, that is, setting into motion a chain of events that would lead inexorably to more and more development, degrading fragile ecosystems and driving out agriculture? The Hearst proposal cleared its first big hurdle in November 1996, when Mike Ryan, with the support of development interests, narrowly defeated David Blakely in the county Board of Supervisors election, shifting the Board to a three-to-two majority favoring more growth. The County had just completed the first comprehensive update of its 15-year-old Local Coastal Plan (LCP), the framework within which permits are issued. The outgoing Board adopted the update, a product of eight years of work and many public hearings, but in June 1997 the new Board made changes that matched the expressed wishes of the Hearst Corporation and another developer, who hopes to build a 365-unit project, the East West Ranch, on agricultural land at the edge of Cambria. Later that month, 300 people gathered in Cambria's town hall and formed the North Coast Alliance, "dedicated to stopping this potentially disastrous development." On January 15 the Coastal Commission unanimously rejected the County's LCP update and voted for extensive revisions recommended by its staff asking that the Hearst complex be scaled down from 650 to 350 units, that these be clustered at one site rather than built at four separate locations, that the blufftop golf course be disapproved, and that environmental and other constraints, notably the scarcity of water, be taken into account. Regarding the proposed East West Ranch, the Commission found that it could be considered only if Cambria's public utility district agrees to annex it - an unlikely prospect, given Cambria's severe water shortage. The Commission's action, taken almost exactly 25 years after the Coastal Act went into effect, was a major milestone in the continuing struggle over the future of California's 1,100-mile coast. The Commission directed its staff to work with the County toward a plan all could live with. The County has until July to come back with revisions of its LCP update, and can ask for another year's extension. "The coast is never saved. It is always being saved," Peter Douglas likes to say. What eventually gets built along this unique shoreline will depend on many factors, including the next election, which could again change the makeup of both the County Board of Supervisors and the Coastal Commission. The January 15 hearing was one round - an important round - in a battle that continues. 
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