California Coastal Commission vs. Fourth of July – Latest News
The California Coastal Commission is infamous for making life troublesome alongside the in any other case spectacular Pacific Ocean. But its latest determination to dam a fireworks show for the Fourth of July in Long Beach — on the 250th anniversary of U.S. independence, no much less — is a new low.
As The California Post reported, the “Big Bang on the Bay” has been a widespread occasion in Long Beach for 15 years.
The Coastal Commission needs the organizers to make use of drones, as an alternative of pyrotechnics — at 5 instances the price. Their purpose: Fireworks trigger air pollution, apparently.
Fireworks explode within the sky between the Queen Elizabeth, left, and the Queen Mary in Long Beach. MediaNews Group through Getty Images
Long Beach is a port metropolis, the place cargo ships blow smoke and leak oil on a every day foundation. Those impacts dwarf the small quantities of ash, smoke, and different supplies which can be left over after a quarter of an hour of fireworks. It’s not as if these are being launched every single day, or for long.
The Coastal Commission says that it instructed organizers to stop utilizing fireworks after 2025.
Really? So the grand American custom of Fourth of July fireworks might be celebrated on the nation’s 249th anniversary, however not on its 250th?
No surprise the Coastal Commission has a popularity for ruining enjoyable. It causes more distress in California than the air pollution it claims to fret about.
The metropolis will nix its annual July 4th fireworks show, named “Big Bang on the Bay,” for the primary time in 15 years after the state denied an appeal to host the show in its conventional kind.
WireImage
The Coastal Commission was created in 1972, by way of a poll initiative — not the primary or final time voters have been satisfied to back an thought that’s good in principle however horrible in follow.
The objective of the Coastal Commission was to stop personal builders from blocking entry to the seaside. Now the Coastal Commission itself is stopping people from having fun with the shore.
The Coastal Commission additionally blocks helpful initiatives like desalination. Though it finally permitted a plant close to Dana Point, it blocked a desalination plant in Huntington Beach in 2022.
There was nothing fallacious with the latter’s proposal to make use of salt water from the open ocean. One suspects there was politics at play within the vote, given Huntington Beach’s conservative streak.
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Even Gov. Gavin Newsom, who has by no means met a regulation he didn’t like, understands that the Coastal Commission could be a main ache.
That is why he signed an govt order after the Palisades Fire to limit the Coastal Commission’s authority within the rebuilding areas. It was one of the few interventions by the state that made a distinction, and that was welcomed by all.
The Trump administration has additionally recognized the Coastal Commission as a main obstacle to rebuilding.
It seems the Coastal Commission can be a severe impediment to having a good time.
It makes all the environmentalist motion look unhealthy, like little more than scolds.
Americans fought a revolution in opposition to the British Empire to be free of fixed taxes and petty interference of their lives. The Coastal Commission has, inadvertently, reminded us of the kind of factor our Founding Fathers fought in opposition to. It has pitted its “green” bureaucrats in opposition to the pink, white, and blue — actually.
There continues to be time for it to rethink its determination, and it ought to.
