Beach fires will continue at Dockweiler

The South Coast Air Quality Management District has apparently decided that banning fires for health reasons at Dockweiler State Beach — under the LAX takeoff path and downwind from the massive Hyperion sewage treatment plant — didn't make sense scientifically or environmentally. So a revised proposal for fire rings on beaches will be released today that incorporates "better and more information than we had two months ago,” said AQMD project manager Tracy Goss. More from ZevWeb:

A hotly contested proposal to ban wood burning in Southern California’s iconic beach fire rings appears to be going up in smoke.

An official with the South Coast Air Quality Management District said Wednesday that “an alternative proposal” had been developed that would continue to allow bonfires on the region’s beaches so long as certain measures were undertaken by June, 2014, to minimize the known harmful effects of burning wood...

That’s good news for the popular pits at Dockweiler State Beach, which, under the earlier proposal, would have fallen victim to a dispute flaring 50 miles south, where Newport Beach officials are determined to remove 60 fire rings. Some residents there have complained of respiratory problems and smoke-drenched homes. At Dockweiler, the neighbors include LAX, a sewage treatment plant and an oil refinery, and they’re not complaining.

Restricting fires at Dockweiler for health reasons “doesn’t make a whole lot of sense,” Goss acknowledged, noting that the latest proposal would take a more nuanced beach-by-beach approach based on such things as topography, wind and proximity to homes. Goss declined to provide specifics until the plan’s public release, scheduled for Thursday. Already, the agency has two “public consultation meetings” set for next week on the new proposed amendments to Rule 444, which regulates “open burning.”

Of the national attention the AQMD’s earlier proposal attracted, Goss, a 25-year veteran of the agency, said: “When they make a political cartoon of your issue, that doesn’t happen very often.”

Photo: Jewish Journal/Dan Kacvinski