Chris Dixon: Chad, there's been a lot of talk for years about development at the Dana Point Headlands. It's a pretty interesting area.

Headlands Cliff. Photo © Cliff Wasseman/aku-aku.com

Chad Nelson: Yeah, if you go up there, you feel like you're in the place that time forgot. There's been a lot of controversy there over various habitat issues there with the development. There's an endangered butterfly and the Pacific Pocket Mouse. The Sierra Club and number of other groups have been working with the developer to create a plan that has some open space and preserves habitat and the endangered animals and plants up there.

Mark Cousineau: For Surfrider in San Clemente and Dana Point, this is our biggest fight right now -- our number one campaign.

This issue has a lot of history and background. There've been many compromises to get to the current plan: stormwater, erosion, bugs, bunnies, flora and fauna, beaches and a lot of other things. The compromise that's been reached though -- that many environmental groups have signed onto -- but we feel that plan screws the beach in the process. Particularly Dana Strands, which is a place near and dear to many hearts. It's got that hike in, rural, and undeveloped feel. Kind of like Trestles., I know some of the locals like Timmy Patterson will kill me, but it's still more of a secret spot.

Mike Lewis: There is currently a mobile home park along Strands Beach. But it was vacated in the mid to late 80s'. Now as you said, the park is dilapidated. The mobile homes are gone, but the cracked asphalt infrastructure is there. The beach clubhouse, which is the most prominent structure, is vacant, but it's condemned and boarded up. I think it's the only place on the property a person could actually walk into.

ML: There already is a revetment along 2200 feet of beach that was installed piecemeal through the 50s' and 60's. The big El Nino storms of '83 did some damage to the revetment and earthen slope there, and emergency remediation work was done on parts of the wall from December of '83 into February of '84. That was at a time when the park was still there. And that work was approved by the Coastal Commission.

Everything else though, the revetment, the mobile home park -- all that stuff is pre-coastal act.(ed's note: this means pre-coastal commission too) And that's an important timeline to our case from Surfrider's point of view.