No full-scale environmental study will be conducted before Belmont Pier mooring begins this summer, according to a 2-1 vote from the Long Beach City Council Planning Commission Thursday night.
The recently passed motion will only provide 45 of the intended 90 buoys, allowing people to park their boats for no more than 10 days at a time. Waste disposal, handled by a private contractor, will tend to all sanitary pump-out services. There is little talk of any other water activities besides building the actually buoys.
The project, despite its reductions and regulations, still has some critics disputing its lack of foresight for its impact on the environment.
The Belmont Pier website said that Long Beach has a unique breakwater system, permitting low-energy wave activities like wind sailing, row boating and canoeing.
Certainly unique, though perhaps not an ideal location for water sports, Long Beach has many problems that some organizations, Like Surfrider, disapprove of.
Unfortunately, very few people spend time on the actual shores of
Even fewer people spend time on the pier. Pier-goers are usually recreational fishermen, not required to have a fishing permit on the structure.
On the main Belmont Memorial Pier web page, the site declares: “In the near future we will offer boat moorings, shore boat service, fishing boat charters, catamaran rides, water craft rentals, a restaurant and banquet facility at the end of the pier and from an information kiosk at the beginning of the pier, we will offer, for rent: bikes, skates, surrey bikes, umbrellas and beach chairs.”
This page also states that these activities will take place in the Summer, 2006, but have not transpired.
The Belmont Memorial Pier Buoy Mooring project, approved after much debate, will most certainly further augment Long Beach’s severely human-impacted coast. Since there has been no environmental study required to predict human effects of waste dispersal and pollution, these impacts are yet to be determined.
The links below provide a good bit of current debate and insight.
Belmont Pier website:
http://www.belmontpier.com/future.htm
Revised Mooring project details:
http://www.longbeach.gov/civica/filebank/blobdload.asp?BlobID=13061
Press Telegram article:
http://www.presstelegram.com/search/ci_5814241
City of
http://www.ci.long-beach.ca.us/civica/press/display.asp?layout=4&Entry=1304
Surfrider article:
http://lbsurfrider.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=63&Itemid=46
