WWTT? VAFB Closes Trails to Hikers

What were they thinking? Vandenberg Air Force Base is the subject of some press scrutiny from the Los Angeles Times and even the very northern San Jose Mercury. This from the LA Times on trail and beach access:

At the trail head to one of the most remote and rugged public beaches in California, graffiti scratched onto a road sign asks: "What good is a state beach if you can't use it?"

It's a question that has vexed lovers of wind-swept Point Sal State Beach in the year since officials at Vandenberg Air Force Base abruptly closed the only public road leading to and from its rocky shoreline and began citing hikers who used it.

Being someone who understands national security, I can understand how VAFB would want to be careful and provide heightened security at times. To indiscriminately say they need to protect missile secrets all the time, every day....whaaaa? When many of their launches are for some corporation that is putting up a TV satellite or some such -- it rubs me the wrong way.

Surprisingly, Supervisor Joni Gray seems to get it when she points out in the LA Times:

...county leaders point to documents dating to 1935 that they say support the public's long-standing right of access. Vandenberg honored those agreements for decades without a problem, said county Supervisor Joni Gray.

To arbitrarily close the road and begin citing citizens attempting to use it is not only an abuse of authority by the military, it's illegal, Gray contends. "People shouldn't have to be doing community service when in fact they didn't break the law," she said. "We have set forth that legal argument, and the base officials haven't disagreed with it."

VAFB did not inform the county or the Coastal Commission of their new policy until after they began enforcing it. To be somewhat fair, it seems VAFB is slowly responding to Supervisor Gray's concerns...but perhaps not fast enough for this rather conservative public official or the public-at-large. Frankly, I am very impressed and surprised with Gray's stance....

"That's why I'm squawking," Gray said. "We think people have been deprived of their beach long enough."