Date: January 18, 2013
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: Andrew Madsen (805) 961-5759
Lynn Olson (831) 385-5434
Los Padres National Forest
6755 Hollister Ave. #150
Goleta, CA 93117
http://www.fs.usda.gov/lpnf
Water Shut Off at Kirk Creek Campground
GOLETA, CA…Los Padres National Forest officials have announced that Kirk Creek Campground on the Monterey Ranger District will convert to a dry campground effective today. Visitors to the camp site are encouraged to bring an adequate amount of water for use during their stay.
Over the years, the Forest Service has taken a number of steps to upgrade Kirk Creek’s water treatment system in order to meet the State of California’s water quality standards. When these efforts failed to improve water quality, the decision was made to shut down the Kirk Creek water system to reduce the potential for public healthy and safety issues.
Two new vault toilets were installed to replace the antiquated, flush-toilet restrooms in anticipation of the water shut-off.
“After exploring our options and assessing the impacts, we have determined the best course of action is to shut off the water as a precaution,” said Monterey District Ranger Tim Short. “While I understand this will inconvenience our visitors, the public safety aspect simply outweighs the alternative.”
Kirk Creek Campground was originally constructed in the early 1960s to provide year-round, single-family vehicle camping along the Monterey County coast. The campground includes thirty-three campsites configured around two intersecting loops. Over time, several of the sites were modified to allow for recreation vehicle and multi-family camping.
For more information, please contact the Monterey Ranger District at (831) 385-5434, or on-line at: http://www.fs.usda.gov/lpnf.
Been following this for about a near now. Bummer! Been drinking that water for 40 years. To bad we cannot even use it for dishes or washing hands.
Ugg, we love camping there and appreciate not having to haul wash water. If the “powers that be” had just replaced the old low efficiency toilets with newer models, I think that we could have avoided pit toilets and absolute dry camping. It states on every faucet that the water is non- potable.I am not a soils or hydro- engineer, so please take this as the average person comment that it is.
Has anybody ever gotten sick from The Kirk Creek water? Why is it too hard just to have a good dependable waterline with simple sediment filters and let intelligent human beings read non-potable and provide a market for all those nifty new age portable water purifiers that are on the market now. If the forest service is too broke to keep the system going, ask the community for volunteers to cover it . Most of the locals are quite good at this sort of thing. I’m sure some kind of trade could be worked out.
I don’t think there’s any question that hard-core ‘enviornmental elitists’ in/and the state of California are intent on ultimately forbidding all human ‘intrusion’ on the land of this state. I’d like to see that ‘study’ made public and on what specific analytical basis their verdict was formed. This has the same stink as the gasoline additive for years that was mandated for public protection.
Cutting off the water supply is a classic land-grabber trick, like re-routing streams away from farms and cattle land, used in the 30’s with LA.(Go watch Chinatown again). And follow the money. All that moolah set aside for our parks and just found, did that pay for this committee instead of improvement? Somebody’s profiting and it sure ain’t the little people. The beach access, the mountain access, trail access, and roads access will be sequentially diminished before the frog in the tepid water reaches boil. Boiling mad is what’s called for.
Holycowgirl, you make an interesting point, however Kirk Creek and Plaskett Creek are National Forest Service property, not state property. We could try to appeal to our senators and representatives at the national level, I suppose, but congress is currently dealing with a budget deficit so a running water solution at Kirk Creek doesn’t look too likely in the next few years…
Thank you for the info, Suzi. I’m not convinced that anyone in Washington is dealing with the budget or there’d be one, but they make a good distraction keeping us from essentials. Namely that this is a country that loves its wild land, that wants a wilderness experience for us now and future inhabitants. Maybe a shift in sensibilities from loathing human presence to loving ourselves as at least equal creatures on the planet would foment a movement to live here in peace, equaling the politics of concern and access for wolves and owls and lizards.
We are headed for zoos and museums with images and immitations of beaches and forest where our children can observe nature, but never experience it first hand and that’s my protest.
I don’t want to be forbidden the experience of a stream’s trickle or roar. Or watching dawn through a canopy of redwoods. Or a sunset over our vast bodies of water with my feet wet from its thrilling caress. What the parks systems are doing is equal to ushering the native American Indian to reservations, land without water, without promise, without Kirk Creek. Or clustered only in cities, denied permission to walk on pine needles or climb rocks. A revolution ripe for Big Sur.