Safe Water
Water quality in the area of the Oceano Dunes State Vehicular Recreation Area (ODSVRA), which is managed by the Off-Highway Vehicle (OHV) Division of California State Parks and Recreation, is being threatened by sewage, oil, gasoline, and other contaminates and toxins.
When the ODSVRA was established in 1974, fewer than 500 campsites were planned, with water and sewer to be provided within 10 years, by 1984. In 2006, there were 1000 campsites, each frequently including a half-dozen camping units, with no water or sewer facilities in place. In 2006, almost two million people visited the ODSVRA.
Sewage
There are no sewer and water hook ups for visitors to the ODSVRA.
Sewage from an average of 6,000 visitors per day, and over 50,000 per day on Holidays, is managed as follows:
Off-roading clubs have traditionally used small shower-like stalls with toilet seats. The human waste goes directly onto the beach, and is covered with handfuls of sand.
There are porta-potties that the OHV says are repeatedly turned over.
Recently, "Banana Boys" have offered pump-out for recreational vehicle holding tanks. Some campers are unwilling to pay the $30 fee, and others have boycotted the service for other reasons. Reports of dumping of holding tanks onto the beach by witnesses are not systematically or effectively addressed. Few citations are issued for dumping, and the reporting process requires a citizen arrest.
There are a dozen existing "vault" type toilets, whose permit is in question, and a permit in process to double the number of these toilets, which has been appealed. The issues raised include the threat to water quality and sanitation posed by this attempt to legitimize the lack of a sewage system for what amounts to a city positioned on a beach.
Oil, Gasoline and Other Toxins
In 1974 it was not intended that the visitors to the ODSVRA enter via the beach. The OHV failed to find an environmentally acceptable entry way, and continues to route traffic over a beach and through Arroyo Grande Creek.
Toxins from the undersides of thousands of vehicles per day are washed into the creek. Many vehicles are swept out to sea.
Campers park so close to the inter-tidal zone that water flows underneath them.
Vehicles using the beach as ingress and egress to the ODSVRA go through a "sand ramp" that is intentionally dug to fill with ocean water. Thousands of camping vehicles, many forty feet long, race through this inlet, with the result that many get stuck. Vehicles drive through the water along the beach, spraying the surf.
Action
Unlike Santa Barbara County, who tests water quality on every beach, San Luis Obispo County has never tested in the area of the ODSVRA. On November 7, 2007, the California State Water Board approved testing for contamination of the beach and ocean in this area.