Coastal Commission Rejects Permit for Reef Built 9 Years Ago

Nine years after he created an artificial reef off the Balboa Peninsula out of 1,500 tires, the Coastal Commission has denied a French aquaculturalist the permit for the project he should have applied for.

“The commission found the development to be inconsistent with the resource protection policies of the coastal act,” said Chris Kern, a program analyst for the Coastal Commission, which took the action at its meeting this week in Huntington Beach.

Rudolphe Streichenberger, who began constructing the reef in 1988, could not be reached for comment.

According to Kern, the future of the reef has yet to be determined. Among other things, he said, the commission voted to hold a workshop in August to discuss artificial reef and marine habitat research projects.

Streichenberger, founding director of the Marine Forests Society, built the reef as a habitat for mussels, which he believed could be grown as a cheap source of food. In addition to the tires, the artificial reef was constructed from 2,000 one-gallon plastic jugs covered with plastic mesh, 100 20-foot sections of PVC pipe, nylon fishing net, plastic, Styrofoam, iron rods and polyethylene mesh.

Contrary to Coastal Commission regulations, however, the aquaculturalist never applied for a coastal permit. The commission only learned of the project in 1993, Kern said, after Streichenberger sought to expand it.