An eroding California beach and the fight over driving on the sand

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Set us as preferred For Dylan Feierabend, there are few things more life-affirming than fishing for redtail surfperch and smelt at Centerville Beach in rural Humboldt County.His favorite spot, where the Eel River meets the Pacific Ocean, is a few miles from the main road — too far to walk with fishing poles and an ice chest in tow.

He instead gets there by driving a side-by-side, a small off-road vehicle, right onto the sand.He might not be able to do so much longer.If the California Coastal Commission has its way, vehicular access will soon be nixed at Centerville Beach County Park outside Ferndale — one of just a handful of beaches along the state’s 840-mile coastline where driving is allowed.

This month, the Coastal Commission approved a request from Humboldt County for a coastal development permit to rebuild a 0.17-mile segment of a storm-battered road adjacent to the fast-eroding beach — but only if the county stops people from driving on the sand.California From Carlsbad to Malibu to Santa Cruz, erosion is already remaking the maps of popular beaches in dramatic ways.Coastal Commission staff, in a 78-page report, said motorized vehicles threaten both sensitive vegetation and critical habitat for the federally threatened western snowy plover, a small, white-bellied shorebird.

“California’s dune habitats are particularly rare and important, so where driving could damage these sensitive areas, the Coastal Act requires that we protect them,” commission spokesman Joshua Smith said in a statement to The Times.However, he said, the agency does not “have a one-size-fits-all policy on driving on the beach.”But Humboldt County residents and officials decry the move as just the latest example of overregulation and government overreach in liberal California — and of the disconnect between its rural and urban ...