This month’s NCCWP meeting in Rockaway Beach at St. Mary’s by the Sea (scheduled for Thursday, June 27) has been canceled, because of a conflict with another important meeting. (Next month, on Thursday, July 25, these regular NCCWP monthly meetings will resume. Please see the detailed information at the bottom.)
Instead of attending the NCCWP meeting on June 27, please join us at a special Rockaway Beach Planning Commission meeting beginning at 5:00 p.m. at City Hall; 276 S. Highway 101. This will be a continuation of the June 20 Planning Commission hearing regarding a proposed housing development in the Nedonna Beach neighborhood. Your participation is needed to help save from development a section of coastal wetland, forest, and estuary.
The Nedonna Beach neighborhood lies within the boundaries of the groundwater source-protection area for the wells that provide drinking water for Rockaway Beach. Development in Nedonna Beach is detrimental to providing safe and clean drinking water from the existing wells. Many people in our community have already expressed concerns about the City allowing this high-density development to proceed.
Please join with concerned citizens of Rockaway Beach to STOP THIS DEVELOPMENT.
The public may submit testimony up until and at the public hearing at cityplanner@corb.us.
A moratorium on new construction in the Nedonna Beach neighborhood needs to be enacted. There are issues regarding both public safety and public health that need to be resolved. The primary public safety concern is the fact that there is only one way to drive into, and one way to drive out of, this neighborhood of over 400 dwelling units. This neighborhood is in a tsunami zone. Eventually, there will be a major earthquake that will generate a tsunami large enough to wipe out every house. Long term residents know to walk as fast as they can towards the tsunami evacuation stairs; the many short-term rental occupants probably will not, and, therefore, they will try to drive out. With only one exit, that will compound the disaster. The City has ignored this potentially lethal situation for decades. It is time for a solution and a moratorium on building more houses in Nedonna Beach.
The Oregon Fire Code requires two access points for emergency vehicles. A major fire in this neighborhood, having only one way in, could be catastrophic.
From an ecological point of view, there should be no more degradation of wetlands. To an extent, we have already experienced drinking water shortages at the coast during the summer. How many more water users can be supported by Jetty Creek and the backup wells that are beneath the Nedonna Beach neighborhood?
The RB City Council has the authority to enact a moratorium that would prohibit any new development in a given area until it figures out issues of drinking water availability, evacuation safety, etc. But there are specific State law requirements they would have to meet in order to do that. ORS 197.520.
See below for the RB Planning Commission meeting agenda and information packet, including the 2008 application for the Nedonna Wave housing development.anning
On Thursday, July 25, at 6:30 p.m., North Coast Communities for Watershed Protection will be holding another of its regular “last Thursday of the month” grassroots, public meetings at the St. Mary by the Sea Parish Hall; 275 S. Pacific St.; Rockaway Beach, Oregon.
Two experts from the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality will give presentations: Alyssa Leidel, Drinking Water Protection Specialist, and York Johnson, North Coast Basin Coordinator.
