An environmental group is pushing for changes that would keep vehicles off a stretch of the Oceano Dunes.
A little more than two miles of sand off Pier Avenue in Oceano is at the center of a campaign by the Surfrider Foundation to keep off-road vehicles off the beach.
Charlotte McWhinney said she travels from Nipomo to enjoy the dunes.
“I think it's a terrible idea," McWhinney said. "It's wonderful to be able to drive down on the beach and have a picnic from your car. Yeah, it's great.”
Forty-four years ago, the California Coastal Commission designated the stretch between Grand Avenue in Grover Beach and Pier Avenue in Oceano as a temporary entrance into the Oceano Dunes State Vehicular Recreation Area while a southern entrance was to be built closer to Nipomo.
Four decades later, there’s still no southern entrance.
“I think that they were overly optimistic in the beginning that we're going to be able to get a quick fix and get a southern entrance in," said Charles Varni, the chair of the local Surfrider branch and an Oceano resident. "They were trying to do that. They got resistance and pushback from people.”
Varni said Surfrider’s campaign is all about putting pressure on the commission, county officials and State Parks to take action and deliver on that “temporary” promise.
"They'll be able to go to the beach at the VRA as long as there's an entryway to get into that," he said. "We're not seeing that as like our problem to solve right now. We're asking the people that created it to solve it."
Varni believes requesting just 2.2 miles of vehicle-free beach would be a compromise that people on both sides of the issue can agree upon.
However, Jim Suty, the founder of Friends of Oceano Dunes, does not agree.
“They float these ridiculous ideas all the time," Suty said. "It's self-centering and we will continue to fight.”
Suty said environmentalist groups have tried to kick vehicles off the beach at least three times since Friends of Oceano Dunes was formed in 2001. He said off-roading in Oceano is a unique experience worth saving.
“This is the last beach in California where you can actually drive out and camp on the beach," he said. "It draws people from all over.”
Ron McWhinney said he, like many people in San Luis Obispo County, can see both sides of this debate.
“All these vehicles around here kind of takes away from the serenity that the ocean has as far as waves breaking and the birds and everything like that," he said. "You can look at it from both perspectives, so I'm not sure which one I would prefer."
Varni said they’ve set a deadline of 2030 for the various agencies to come up with a project and the funding for it.
