there they go again

THERE THEY GO AGAIN

this is a picture of goleta beach i took 5 years ago 
goleta is the town that butts next to santa barbara on the san francisco side
montecito is on the los angeles side of santa barbara

i say goleta is the stepchild of beaches in this area

that building in that picture above is a restaurant that has been renamed and redone
alas this last storm damaged it so it wont get to open on time

that area on the other side of the palm trees is where they dump tons and tons of debris from the floods and mudslides that happen here
why dump it here i ask

you can see the shadow on the beach of the pier that goes out aways out onto the ocean
a lot of folks pier fish from the peer
sometimes the fishing is good if they wouldnt dump junk on the beaches from other sites

at the top of the picture above is the start of the bluffs that ucsb sits on
a beautiful popular university
just below the bluffs is a popular surf site 

dumping all that junk there messes up the beauty of this place

a well known boat captain in this area wrote an article linked here about this beach
he feels like i do about it
he says the county is turning it into a lifeless dump

years and years ago the chumash had encampments here
there was an abundance of fish and wildlife
there was an inlet that allowed some ships to move back and forth from the ocean into a large bay of water
now its just a small size 
the airport here is where part of the bay was
it got all covered with sand and soil to build the airport

so in years years past this was a beautiful site
now every flood and debris flow it gets shut down for months
tons of stuff is dumped here
ruining and contaminating this beautiful quiet beach area
i dont think i would surf out there if i were those students

on that early sunday morning 5 years ago i stood at the end of that long pier 
looking up at the bluffs looking out to sea looking back on the beach
wondering 
why do we ruin this beautiful peaceful site

below are my two blogs i wrote in 2018

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2-12-2018

A MUDDY BEACH

i read about this in the online paper
and
saw it on the local news

you know when you hear things
sometimes
you just say
that doesnt seem like the right thing to do

now
i am an outsider here
having lived here for only 7 months
and
not having had gone through this history of mud and fires
around here like folks have who lived here for years

still
i think it gives a different perspective on things
when you are new and fresh to things
you sometimes see things differently

so
it was with me

there it was truckloads of mud slide muck being hauled
down to the beach near here
the goleta beach
to be dumped right on the beach
not just a few truckloads
tons of truckloads stuff

now
granted from what i read
the stuff is trucked an hour or so south
so the debris in there like metal and rocks and logs etc
are removed
then
off to the goleta beach it goes
to be dumped
to be washed apparently over and over again
by the waves coming in on the beach
you know like when you do a sand castle on the beach
and
the tide comes in and eventually washes it away

now i saw this big ole dumpster there on the dumped on beach
that was partially full of all kind of stuff

no the beaches are not white
they are a mud grey color

one of the justifications for doing it here is
the mudslide stuff is destined by nature to eventually end
up in the ocean anyway

now
when we made our long long trip north then around the mountains
to get to los angeles for my last infusion
we passed what seemed like hundreds of dump trucks in a long
long line waiting to dump this stuff into a quarry up north

the goleta beach i think is sort of a poor mans beach
i havent really read that before
its just seems thats the way it is
theres no tourists here

so i wanted to see all this for myself
so one sunday morning before my wife she woke up
i drove over to see for myself

there was all this yellow and red like tape around the dump areas
warning signs were up
dont swim in this water
its contaminated
worse i think with human bacteria

this beach sits in a cove just south of the ucsb campus
you can see the building of the school on the small bluffs close by
i saw several what looked like students walking and biking
on nearby trails

i walked out on the wharf or pier that goes out quite a ways
i would say over a quarter of a mile
there were a lot of folks even this early
as the sun had just popped over the horizon
fishing off the pier

you cant swim here but you can fish here
seems like
not right to me

i looked back over to see the dark spot in the distance
where the dumpster was and big ole heavy machinery was sitting
i guess they all get sunday off

i then walked back to the shore
climbed down off the pier
onto the shoreline
i guess you call it the beach
a dark grey mud colored one

i walked along the edge of the surf as it wiggles back and forth
sometimes catching my feet off guard
getting them all wet
and
i guess
contaminated

i then walked up to the marked off area
the tide was low so i just walked along the waters edge
into and on top of that dark grey mud colored beach
it didnt sink in
it didnt stick heavy to my shoes like mud
but it felt and looked a different consistency
the beach if thats what you call it
didnt feel right as you walked on it
if i took my shoes off
that wouldnt be sand between my toes

i walked up the beach to the machinery
one of those big monster things
you might see in a quarry

i turned and looked back into the sun at the pier
at the beach not affected yet
there was only one other person beside me walking on it
i was the one that broke around the barrier

so after reading about all this
reading about the bacteria counts
reading about how its not chemically contaminated
i dont believe that one
knowing how things work in this world

all i could think
was
why dump that stuff here
i dont understand why

07-11-2018

A MUDDY BEACH REVISITED

5 months ago i wrote this blog a muddy beach about a beach in nearby goleta called the goleta beach
i think it as a poor mans beach
i guess thats why they dumped hundreds of big truckloads of mud and debris and junk and who knows what else in this beach
by digging a deep hole and filling it up so the ocean as the tide would come in and the waves would wash over this what smelled like a cesspool to me
the waves and tide would pull whatever was in that cesspool out into the ocean
the hope was that over time all that stuff would be pulled out to sea and the water around the beach and the beach itself would return to normal

well
it didnt quite worked as planned
why would they dump all that stuff here
i think it was some deal made years ago

this beach has been closed since the first truckload was dumped there
its been closed about 6 months now

if you could look to the left of the above picture
up on a bluff sits the university of california at santa barbara campus
just below the campus and the bluff is a walkway down to the ocean
you can see paddle boaters and surfers and beach activity going on

not far way
just to the right in the below picture
sits that cesspool at goleta beach


ive been there twice
once when i wanted to see for myself what it looked like and smelled like
the second time i brought my wife she with me
we walked out onto the wharf where fishermen were catching fish even though it said no fishing allowed since the water may be poisoned or should i say is poisoned
from there we walked by the cesspool beach
ms b would have said that smells bad  pyoo  wee
from there we wandered up the path around and through the campus to a great lookout over the ocean

this site of the ucsb was once a marine base that was closed
it was shelled by the japanese during ww2 by a sub that surfaced below the cliffs and started shooting away
yes the japanese attacked the mainland during ww2

good thing they werent doing it today they would probably get sick from the water

when you look out over the ocean from there sometimes you see dolphins sometimes whales a lot of kelp beds
way in the distance you can see the menacing oil platforms that caused that disaster that almost destroyed the santa barbara tourist industry

we saw no one swimming at all in the beach area
the smell would be enough to keep you from the water
i did worry about the poor folks that caught fish off the wharf and ate them

all that debris and mud and juices with who knows what from the thomas fires and the montecito mudslides getting dumped there
good for montecito
bad for goleta

now over 6 months later they have decided to reopen the beach
the biggest problem was the bacterial counts wouldnt go down
well lets see 100s of big dump trunk loads of $&!(  just got dumped there
sure that areas contaminated
and
it was and probably still is

the day the reporter that wrote this latest story was there
surprise
there was no one swimming in the water even though it was ok to do so

you know
we arent stupid

i sure hope this area recovers back to where it use to be
its a beautiful location just below the campus
it could be a secret place a lot of folks dont utilize

heres hoping for a full recovery

i still dont understand why they were allowed to dump this stuff on this beach
just down from a campus where 25000 students attend

i thought this was a green environmentally sensitive county and state
a definite black spot on its record
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we can do better than this 

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