The director of California State Parks on Monday committed to banning vehicles from a small section of the Oceano Dunes State Vehicular Recreational Area by the end of the year to comply with orders to improve air quality for downwind communities. 

The move won’t likely result in immediate relief from harmful particulate matter that blows from the off-highway vehicle park to the Nipomo Mesa.

But it will be one of the first mitigation projects in a stipulated abatement order to reduce dust emissions from the park 50% by 2023. 

The community regularly experiences plumes of dust from the Oceano Dunes that violate air quality standards dozens of times a year.

“The Scientific Advisory Group, a panel of geomorphologists, have recommended changes to the park that they counsel are necessary to improve the air quality of the local community,” State Parks Director Lisa Mangat told the San Luis Obispo County Air Pollution Control District hearing board at a meeting in Arroyo Grande. 

“I wanted to come in person today, so that you have my commitment that we are agreeing to make those changes,” Mangat said. 

“The most impactful change, just to make it abundantly clear, as of Jan. 1st, we would no longer allow vehicles on approximately 50 acres along the shoreline, commonly referred to as the foredunes,” Mangat said.

The closure will cut into popular camping space and reduce the off-highway vehicle riding area by less than 5%.

State Parks didn’t commit to the plan until the agency was before a hearing board that could have issued sanctions or forced closures.

The hearing board accepted an amendment to a current abatement order after the county Air Pollution Control District asked the board to intervene. because State Parks allegedly violated the order by failing to work with scientists, as directed, and failing to commit to mitigation projects within a timeline. 

State Parks submitted a plan that was rejected multiple times because it did not include installing mitigation projects to vegetate a foredune, an effort that scientists would reduce dust emissions that are enhanced by vehicle activity. 

State Parks was also directed to assign a project manager to the dust mitigation efforts. 

Not all hearing board members were satisfied with the plan

Board member Robert Carr said the plan was just “kicking the can down the road.” 

Carr made a motion at the meeting to declare Oceano Dunes State Vehicular Recreation Area a nuisance, order the much-larger La Grande Tract to be closed and bring the downwind community into compliance with all state air quality standards within two years. 

No one on the five-person board seconded his motion. 

In response, Carr said, “My spine is the only one that’s up here. And it’s in pretty poor condition.” 

Hearing board chair Yarrow Nelson said he thinks “this stipulated process is working.”

“It hit a hiccup when State Parks’ work plans were not up to the requirements of the SAG,” Nelson said. “With the modifications we’ve made here, I think we’re making good progress.”

A new Public Works Plan for the Oceano Dunes that could redesign the park may result in new riding areas opening up, Mangat said. The next public meetings about the plan will be held in Arroyo Grande and Bakersfield in December.

Monica Vaughan is a reporter for the San Luis Obispo Tribune. Contact her at mvaughan@thetribunenews.com.