News flash: Dunes will keep blowing sand into Nipomo Mesa | San Luis Obispo Tribune

News flash to those living on the Nipomo Mesa: You live downwind from a massive sand dune area! Go ahead, Google Earth it and you’ll see the sand hills and valleys, created by the prevailing northwesterly winds, straight towards your homes. You can also see the massive amount of development that’s taken place on the Mesa over the past two decades. All of this development has sped the removal of Eucalyptus trees that once acted as a natural buffer against the effects of the wind and the blowing sand or as the SLO-APCD likes to call it, particulates.

Our forefathers were wise enough to plant those Eucalyptus trees over 100 years ago on the Mesa to help slow the wind and sand. The only existing groves that are still found in the area are in Pismo (Monarch Grove), Halcyon and the Mesa. I’m sure there are a few other groves left, but development has ultimately clear cut them.

If you have respiratory problems, I sympathize with you. But I’m afraid that closing the beach to vehicles isn’t going to make a bit of change with air quality, as the wind, naturally, will be blowing sand for millennia.