VENTURA : Report to Delay Volleyball Courts

Despite pleas from about a dozen beach volleyball players, the Ventura Parks and Recreation Commission endorsed a staff recommendation to wait on an environmental impact report before deciding whether to reinstall six volleyball courts in the Pierpont Beach area that were removed earlier this summer.

But the commission also recommended allowing temporary courts to be erected until a solution is found--a compromise that seemed to satisfy most of the sports enthusiasts who attended a commission hearing Wednesday.

The city’s beach volleyball problem began June 5 when city workers unexpectedly removed two courts from a city-owned beach strip at the end of Bath and Weymouth lanes.

The problem was further compounded July 19, when state parks workers removed four more courts on state-owned property on Pierpont Beach. The state owns the portion of the beach that lies beneath the mean tide line, which is about 40 feet from the beachfront property line. The city owns the rest.

City and state officials said they removed the nets because the nets violate a policy banning permanent privately owned structures from public property, such as the beach, and because they feared that the volleyball enthusiasts could destroy the dunes that keep sand on the beach.

City officials also said they had received complaints from beachfront homeowners claiming that volleyball players were kicking sand into their back yards.

The city has commissioned an environmental impact report to determine which sites, if any, could sustain permanent volleyball activity with minimal damage to the dunes and the beachfront homes. The report will be completed in about six months, said Jim Walker, city superintendent of parks.

“This is just volleyball, not an environmental-impact deal,” said beach-goer Mike Dyer. “The only issue is with a few homeowners who knew all along when they bought their properties that they’d have sand blown into their sandwiches.”

After the hearing, the commission voted unanimously to recommend waiting for the environmental report before installing any permanent courts.