Oceanside Moves Ahead On Sand Capture Plan

Good Morning, I’m Annica Colbert….it’s Thursday August 12th >>>> Oceanside’s disappearing beaches More on that next, but first... let’s do the headlines…. ###### California will be the first state in the nation to require all school personnel be vaccinated against covid-19 or undergo weekly testing. Governor Gavin Newsom made the announcement on Wednesday. "we think this is the right thing to do and we think this is a sustainable way to keeping our schools open." Locally, San Diego unified school district has already mandated covid-19 vaccines or testing of their teachers. ######## San Diego has a new director of homelessness strategies and solutions. Earlier this week, hafsa kaka was appointed to the position, and she says she understands it’s not a simple issue. “we know that the complexities within the homeless infrastructure, the ecosystem, it’s not monolithic, every individual comes unique and every individual has to have the ability to be addressed.” kaka says she plans on expanding the department. ######## In northern california the Dixie Fire continues to rage. It is now the largest single wildfire in California history, having blackened more than 500-thousand acres. At least a thousand buildings, many of them homes, have been destroyed. Here’s Cal Fire Chief Tom Porter. “The concern we have going into the next few days is another bout of monsoonal moisture coming up through Southern California, turning into dry lightning potentially through this area and all the way through to the northern coast of California and then into Oregon and Washington as well.” After nearly a month of battling the Dixie Fire, containment stands at 30 percent. ######### From KPBS, you’re listening to San Diego News Now. Stay with me for more of the local news you need. Oceanside officials have voted to move ahead with a plan to build underwater barriers to capture sand for the city’s beaches. KPBS Environment Reporter Erik Anderson has details. Construction of the Camp Pendleton harbor in 19-42 created a long running sand erosion problem for the north county community. City officials hope to fix that by building underwater barriers to keep the sand from moving out of the region. The sand could help maintain or even widen the city’s beaches. The Surfrider Foundation opposes the project because it could rob sand from beaches south of Oceanside. Laura Walsh, SurfRider “It’s kind of a zero-sum equation. In some sense. Again, sand dynamics are really complicated but, if you’re blocking sand here the sand is not going to there.” The California Coastal Commission will have to evaluate the project at some point. The state agency hasn’t approved a sand retention project like this one in decades. Erik Anderson KPBS News ######## Some rancho peñasquitos residents are suing the city over a 536-unit senior community housing development. The Junipers project was approved by the city council in june. kpbs’s alexander nguyen has more. The group behind the suit is called Peñasquitos Northeast Action. Its members are concerned about having an adequate fire evacuation route if the Junipers is built. Mike Slaven is with the group. “We are very landlocked. We have one way in and one way out. It’s a danger waiting to happen. We’re one of the few communities that does not have an approved fire plan because we only have one way in, one way out.” Everett DeLano is the group’s lawyer. He says PQ-NE has been trying to work with the developers and the city on this issue, but got nowhere. So they felt the lawsuit was the only way their voices could be heard. “In essence, what the case is saying is, the city approved a project that’s gonna dump a lot of bad impacts -- impacts in terms of fire safety, impact in terms of traffic impacts and other kinds of impacts onto the community without adequately addressing those.” PQ-NE says it is not against development, it just wants safe development. The city attorney’s office says it will review the complaint and respond in court. AN/KPBS ########## California could get billions of dollars to fight wildfires and drought from the $1 trillion infrastructure bill, approved by the US senate on tuesday. KQED politics correspondent Marisa lagos has more. ########## Faced with a national homelessness crisis that worsened during the pandemic, cities across the country are opening so-called “tiny home” villages for the unhoused. The villages consist of collections of small modular aluminum shelters - think fancy garden sheds that can house one or two people each. Los Angeles has been especially aggressive in opening tiny home villages. The California Report visited one in L.A.’s San Fernando Valley. Saul Gonzalez has the story. And that was Saul Gonzalez from the California report. ########## Coming up....the Old Globe returns to live performances with the 1960s rock musical Hair "This is going to sound so crazy, but I feel like this play is needed right now, just like it was needed back in the late 60s." More on that next, just after the break. The Old Globe had planned to stage Hair back in 2020 but the pandemic forced the production to be postponed. Now the 60s rock opera will mark the Globe’s return to live performances. KPBS arts reporter Beth Accomando says that the play may actually be more relevant now. By the end of 1968, audiences seeing “Hair” had also witnessed race riots spreading across the US, widespread student protests, debate over the Voting Rights Act, the founding of the Black Panther Party, and the Stonewall Riots. The rock musical “Hair” captures a sense of political and social upheaval that feels surprisingly familiar to audiences in 2021 says actor Andrew Polec. ANDREW POLEC: This is going to sound so crazy, but I feel like this play is needed right now, just like it was needed back in the late 60s, this play tapped into the zeitgeist, the pulse of the late 60s and completely captured the essence of how life needed to change, how the old needed to be subverted almost and changed into the new. We needed to question the status quo. Polec plays counter-culture hippie icon Berger in the Old Globe’s production of “Hair.” ANDREW POLEC: Right now, what we want to do and what we want to share with everyone in this world and everyone who sees this play is that there is still a chance to always change and better ourselves. But “Hair” is very specifically set in 1968 as actor Tyler Harwick points out. TYLER HARDWICK: You have a bunch of 18 year-olds who are being drafted and the government is deciding what their life is going to be. And in most cases, their life was ending in Vietnam. Yet the play’s message is timeless says James Vasquez. JAMES VASQUEZ: Every generation is going to have a fight and every generation is going to want to make the world a better place. And that's ultimately what hair is about. It's a group of young people who come together fighting for change and fighting for better. In fact, Vasquez says it’s very important to keep the play firmly in its period setting. JAMES VASQUEZ: I think it's important to show humanity that we have continual opportunity to improve and we don't always take that opportunity. So it's a little bit of a smack in the face and reminder that we have work that we still need to be doing. The play has almost 40 musical numbers and each is like its own protest moment adds Vasquez. JAMES VASQUEZ: Everybody steps forward at some point with something that is vitally important to them that they need to share. CLIP Hair song JAMES VASQUEZ: You're definitely going to have messages of Black Lives Matter, there's a big push of BIPOC stories in our production and living your life authentically, which I think are wildly important issues in 2021 that fit into the story of “Hair.” CLIP Hair song “Hair” stirred a lot of controversy when it opened because there was onstage nudity, a character urinated on the flag, and lyrics addressed racist stereotypes as well as sexual freedom. JAMES VASQUEZ: There are a couple challenging moments in the story, some that I that even sort of make the fur on the back of our, you know, stand up a little bit. We've had some conversations about moments in the show that make us uncomfortable, that we, after discussion, find important to present as part of the story. I will say the urination on the flag is no longer in the script. We've found we found other ways to make comments on what it is to be an American today. But the nudity remains. JAMES VASQUEZ: And so the moment of nudity is just that, it is about freedom of expression and authenticity. One benefit of the play having been postponed is that it is now being performed on the outdoor stage. JAMES VASQUEZ: You put those trees in the background and it just changes the world for you. We've graffitied messages of hope and love all over the stage. Messages that remind us of an opportunity for change that we had more than a half century ago and that we now face again. Vasquez hopes the energy of youth drives the play will inspire audiences to strive yet again for something better that’s in front of us. Beth Accomando, KPBS News. CLIP Hair song Hair runs through Sept. 26 at the Globe’s outdoor Lowell Davies Festival Theatre. That’s it for the podcast today. Be sure to catch KPBS Midday Edition At Noon on KPBS radio, or check out the Midday podcast. You can also watch KPBS Evening Edition at 5 O’clock on KPBS Television, and as always you can find more San Diego news online at KPBS dot org. I’m Annica Colbert. Thanks for listening and have a great day.