Surfing
Trestles was in danger again, but it takes more than a lowly toll road agency to spoil this peak.
If you’re a fan of high-performance surfing, then you’d have a very hard time arguing the notion that Lower Trestles is the best wave in the United States of America. With its unparalleled consistency, rampy right and leggy left, the wave caters to almost any surfers dream. But unfortunately, California’s TCA does not surf.
The TCA, which stands for Traffic Corridor Agency, builds and operates toll roads. For years, they’ve been trying to build a highway connecting the San Onofre area with inland Orange County. Such a road would contaminate the ocean and likely cause an ecological meltdown that would alter the bathometry at Lowers. The wave, as we know and love it, would cease to exist.
The toll road folks tried to play the old negotiate an inch, take a mile game by claiming that they only intended build a 5-mile extension on an already implemented Highway 241. The proposed extension was essentially a road to nowhere, and the general public saw beyond their ploy and called malarkey on the TCA’s grand plan of building the road all the way to Lowers piece by piece. Which is exactly why it got snuffed.
After an outburst of dedicated citizens showed up at a meeting, California’s Regional Water Quality Control Board denied the TCA’s proposal. And so Trestles lives on, in your heart and in mine.
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