Santa Monica Mountains to (Possibly) Allow Camping

Click on a label to read posts from that part of the world.

Please get your facts straight.

There are numerous places in the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area, in and near the City of Malibu, where camping is legal and allowed.

Malibu Creek State Park, Circle X Ranch, Thornhill Broome Beach, La Jolla Canyon, Malibu Beach RV Resort, and Sycamore Canyon are SOME of the locations reachable by car for camping.

Backpackers are allowed to hike along the Backbone Trail.

The issue here is NOT camping. It is Joe Edmiston, the director of the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy, expanding his little fiefdom. This is the guy who got Barbara Streisand to donate her 5-house compaund to his agency for an environmental think tank back in the 1980s. No think tank ever developed, sop Edmiston started renting it out for corporate events and weddings, with hundreds of people attending.

Only one problem: the compound is at the end of a private road. Residents along the narrow, rural lane suddenly found thousands of people driving up their driveway every weekend to what had become a restaurant.

They sued, and won. Edmiston was blocked.

Now, he's proposed putting a campground up there. This is at the end of a driveway, in firetrap of a box canyon. By the way, this canyon is already overburdened with urban runoff and septic issues ... the beach below (Paradise Cove) is already burdened with too much runoff.

The City of Malibu has offered several alternatives, places where parking, access, santiation and fire dangers are less.

Malibu hosts 17 million people to its beaches every year. It is not right to increase pollution on the beach to accomodate Edmiston's edifice complex.

If you really had spent any time hiking or camping in our mutually-shared back yard, you would know that Malibu is laced with camping sites and trailheads leading to unregulated backcountry.

Why dodn't you come out sometime and learn about it, before you spout off with inaccuracies?

Add your comments

Your comments:

Remember me

E-Mail me when someone replies to this comment

Please keep your comments relevant to this blog entry. Email addresses are never displayed, but they are required to confirm your comments.

When you enter your name and email address, you'll be sent a link to confirm your comment, and a password. To leave another comment, just use that password.

To create a live link, simply type the URL (including http://) or email address and we will make it a live link for you. You can put up to 3 URLs in your comments. Line breaks and paragraphs are automatically converted — no need to use <p> or <br /> tags.