Malibu Residents Protest County Plan for RV Parking at Zuma Beach

Malibu-area leaders say they have mailed petitions signed by nearly 1,000 people to county Supervisor Deane Dana and the Department of Beaches and Harbors to protest the county’s plan to build a major recreational vehicle park in the Zuma Beach parking lot.

The proposal was approved in concept Thursday by the California Coastal Commission as part of the Malibu-Santa Monica Mountains Land Use Plan. However, state officials said they will not approve a coastal permit for the park unless they are satisfied that it will increase--not decrease--public access to Zuma Beach.

The proposal, which county officials had predicted would not generate controversy, is opposed by the Malibu Town Council, Malibu Parent Teacher Assn., Malibu Park Homeowners Assn. and Malibu Task Force.

County officials said the park would produce revenue and reduce the high operating deficit in county parks.

Mitch Maricich, a field deputy for Dana, said his office also believes that a vehicle park would enhance the beach, “make it more tranquil than it is now” and provide needed campsites for RVs. He said that while Dana is considering other sites, “this one looks very good to us.”

But residents say the RVs would obstruct emergency evacuations in brush fires, that the park’s proposed convenience store would tempt children to cross busy Pacific Coast Highway to buy snacks and that the reduced Zuma Beach public parking lot would exacerbate summer parking problems.

The park would require the removal of 500 of Zuma Beach’s 2,100 parking spaces to provide year-round campsites and installation of sewer hookups and shower facilities for about 135 recreational vehicles. County officials say they plan to charge $10 a day for the campsites.

County officials say a consultant found that the park would attract 100,000 more people to Zuma Beach annually, largely because it would be open in off-season periods.

But Marie-Claude Ranes, one of the residents who led the petition drive, said that if the county reduces parking spaces “it is really going to impact all the summer visitors from the San Fernando Valley who come here and won’t have a place to park.

“This proposal has us really worried. We in Malibu are accused often of wanting just our beach, and that’s not the case. We want it to be open to everybody.”

Patti Von Sternberg, another resident who gathered signatures, said people she spoke to “were appalled that public access to the beach would be taken away from those who own cars in favor of people who own RVs.”

Steve Scholl, the Coastal Commission’s lead analyst for the Malibu land-use plan, said the county must prove that opening an RV park will bring more people to Zuma.

“The only reason we even thought it was a worthwhile proposal was that the county seems to think it can achieve (increased public access),” Scholl said.

However, Kathleen Zeitsoff, legislative chairwoman for the Malibu PTA, said the proposal “will cause so many problems that the PTA is writing a separate letter to the county to spell them out.”

She said the PTA is most concerned that the park will create a hazard for children.

Malibu Park School for kindergarten through ninth grade and the Malibu Methodist Church nursery school are across Pacific Coast Highway from the proposed park, she said.

The PTA objects to a proposed convenience store because schoolchildren may try to cross the highway during their half-hour lunch period, she said.

“Children will find it a wonderful treat, especially during lunch, to sneak away from school, go down Morning View Drive, cross the highway and go to the store,” Zeitsoff said.

“How do I answer that?” Maricich said. “It’s illegal for kids to leave school during the day, for one thing, so it’s a matter of policing the facility and making sure kids don’t do it.”

But Zeitsoff said it is “nearly impossible to control kids all the time, and even good kids will try it once or twice. It’s just too close.”

She said the PTA is also concerned that the presence of dozens of RVs during the brush-fire season could exacerbate problems in evacuating residents.

“A year ago in October, I had to rescue my kids at 1 p.m. because we had fires on either side of the school, one in Decker Canyon and one in another canyon,” she said. “PCH is the only evacuation route, and we certainly don’t need dozens of RVs trying to get out at the same time. You can imagine what it would be like.”

However, Maricich countered that the park will reduce the parking lot by 500 spaces, which, he said, “will cut down congestion out there, not increase it.”

Zeitsoff said children walking in or near the park would also face the risk of not being seen by drivers of the large vehicles, which have to travel several blocks once they enter the existing parking lot to get to the RV park.

“We feel small children encountering large vehicles is a very bad idea,” she said.

The PTA also objects because campers in recreational vehicles could be allowed to drink alcohol inside their vehicles unless the county prohibits it, she said.

“You’re not going to put up a wall between the beach and the park, and a lot of the people who use the beach are kids. That’s why we feel it’s just too close to the beach. Even if the convenience store doesn’t sell alcohol, people are going to drink it.”

Manes, one of the petition gatherers, said she hopes residents can convince the county to look elsewhere for a site for an RV park.

“This is just a little drop in the bucket for them--the revenues from an RV park at Zuma,” she said. “Why do they have to disrupt so much for so little?”