Trashy 4th of July holiday: Half Moon Bay, Tunitas Creek Beach

The Mercury News/San Mateo County/Aaron Kinney, 7/7/16. "Half Moon Bay: Shocking amounts of trash mar beautiful beach." 

July 4th overnight party, no facilities. 

Volunteer clean-up at Tunitas Creek Beach.

"On July 4, several hundred people celebrated America's birthday by trashing a gorgeous and secluded San Mateo County beach, a chunk of which appears to belong to "Wicked Game" crooner Chris Isaak. ....  Unfortunately for local nature lovers, it's the latest of many overnight parties since 2015 that have left Tunitas Creek Beach, a wild expanse of sand just south of Half Moon Bay, looking like a stadium parking lot after a drunken tailgate party.
 
  .... San Mateo County and Caltrans have taken steps this year to curb the slovenly and often lawless behavior -- posting no-parking signs at the intersection of Highway 1 and Tunitas Creek Road, for instance, and picking up some of the trash bags that visitors dump by the roadside -- but county officials now recognize the need for even tougher measures at the beach, which does not have any facilities.  'It's extremely disheartening,' said Brandy Chenoweth, a citizen who is leading the effort to restore the beach. Her volunteer group, known as the 'TLC locals,' coordinates monthly cleanups in partnership with the Pacifica Beach Coalition. 
 
....  The parties at Tunitas Creek Beach started to get crazy last year, Chenoweth said, when unusually warm and fog-free weather drew big crowds to the coast. Word of the events began spreading on social media. ...."  Read article.
  
Related, reprint article.  Santa Cruz Sentinel/Bay Area News Group/Aaron Kinney, 7/7/16, "Half Moon Bay: raves and booze fests trash beautiful beach." ....  "Edmundo Larenas, chairman of the San Mateo County chapter of the Surfrider Foundation, said he finds himself in an ironic position. Though his organization has advocated forcefully for public access to the coast — including Martins Beach, a private property less than a mile north of Tunitas Creek owned by venture capitalist Vinod Khosla — he supports cutting back on access to Tunitas Creek Beach. 'When it’s a beach that’s far away from scrutiny, there’s folks with bad habits that ruin it for everyone, so in my opinion you need some control,” he said. “It’s why we have State Parks and park rangers'."

Reference, TLC locals Facebook, about: "TLClocals is a movement to strengthen our local communities through community projects, fundraising, small business support, and local classes & workshops."  Related, past Tuntis Creek clean-up article.  Pacifica Beach Coalition, 12/23/14, "Tunitas Creek, all cleaned up!" "Right before the rain, 11 volunteers joined us on a short notice to clean Tunitas Creek before the rain. Unfortunately, because of the high tides, a lot of the trash was covered in sand when we arrived but we still cleaned up ~400 LBS of debris. From office chair, to ropes, beer cans and broken glass, our courageous team did not let one piece of litter behind. It was the first time that Pacifica Beach Coalition hosted a beach cleanup that for South – We are expending our territory and it feels great! Special thank you to Nicole David who got the idea and tremendously help organizing this event."  Beach Cleanup in Half Moon website, (Pacifica Beach Coalition).

Note  photographs of Tunitas Creek Beach are from the Aaron Kinney's Mercury News article update (7/8/16), 14 slides: picking up trash by Alex Weston, slide 1;  after the overnight party trash (7/6/16), by Karl Mondon/Bay Area News Group, slide 3.

Posted by Kathy Meeh