Fight For The Coast

Fight For The Coast
by: Nathan Post


It was life reduced to it’s simplest terms. Everyday activities required monstrous demonstrations of will, and agonizing pain. Bob Keats is a sick man. The cause of his illness is something called Mixed Connective Tissue Disease, a form of arthritis. It started in 1982, and grew progressively worse. As the disease took hold of him, everything Bob loved stopped: surfing, a social life, guitar playing, song writing, everything. It wasn’tlong before handling this illness became a consuming matter of survival. As the disease progressed, “survival” came to mean surviving from day to day, week to week. By 1984 Bob Keats was almost totally disabled.

It is nearly impossible to imagine the pain a man feels while watching the things he loves most in life disappear before his very eyes. As if to add insult to injury, Bob found that he was allergic to the non-steroidal, anti-inflammatory medicine he was taking.The medicine, Naprosyn, was making him sicker.

It is a unique and gifted man who can take a severely degraded quality of life and make something productive and positive from it. With his college level teaching career in ashes, and forced to live on meager disability payments, Bob made a decision that would change his life. Determined to do something about his deteriorating health, Bob stopped taking the medicines his doctors prescribed and began a uniquely personal holistic program for survival. The program included stretching, exercises, Yoga, food supplements, a restricted diet, meditation and acupuncture. Bob had begun the full time job of regaining his health.

It wasn’t always this way. In 1962 Bob Keats attended the Robert Louis Stevenson School in Carmel. Bob was a curious, intellectual student, brimming with all the energy and good health one associates with youth. His passion was body surfing. It wasn’t long, however, before something else began vying for his attention. It was called surfing, this time on a board. With his friends, Bob began to learn how to surf, but that wasn’t good enough. He decided that in order to learn to surf well he was going to need instruction. To that end, he approached the school’s headmaster about starting a surfing program. Ever resourceful, Bob convinced the headmaster of the benefits of such a program, and from that effort a surfing program was born. Bob and his friends would hire the best surfer they knew, a guy named Mike O’Malley.

For Bob, indeed for most of us, surfing was fast becoming an obsession. When a recruiter from UCSB appeared on the campus of Robert Louis Stevenson High School with a brochure featuring a photograph of Campus Point, that was it. Bob, despite parental objections, was determined to attend UCSB. Surfing had become a priority.

Bob continued to surf through his college years, and the teaching years. In that time, he became intimately familiar with the Santa Barbara Coast line, wearing out two Volkswagen vans in the process. He knew the language of surfing, which breaks take which swells, what tide is most conducive to surfing a particular break. He knew the secret spots, places so secret that mere mention of them can illicit death threats. A number of these secret spots line the coast line west of Santa Barbara.

For local surfers, the coast north and west of Santa Barbara is a special place. It is the last significant stretch of relatively undeveloped, unprotected coastline of this magnitude remaining in Southern California, and it contains incredible biological, cultural, and recreational resources. Known as the Gaviota Coast, it is not only beautiful, but it is a great place to catch winter waves.

Bob Keats was sick when Hyatt decided that it wanted to build a gigantic destination resort at Haskell’s Beach. Physically unable to respond, Bob was forced to watch events transpire from afar. All was not lost. Citizens for Goleta Valley, an environmentally sensitive community group, was actively waging war against the project. The opposition stopped, however, when Citizens for Goleta Valley, exhausted from a series of lawsuits, agreed to accept five million dollars in exchange for a promise to end their resistance to the project.

It was the summer of ‘91 when Bob, battling recurring illness, began making phone calls in an attempt to find an organization willing to take up the slack, and help save Haskell’s Beach. He had no intention of doing it himself. He was too sick, and he tired easily. Maintaining his health was absolutely critical. There was always the chance of a relapse, and the disease is potentially fatal.

In June of 1991, world famous surfer, Fred Van Dyke, suggested that Bob take his concerns to Surfrider. Bob agreed. Reeve Woolpert assisted Bob by delivering information Bob has prepared to Surfrider’s Board of Directors.

Interested in preserving the character of the Santa Barbara Coast, ReeveWoolpert began exploring the idea of starting a Santa Barbara Chapter of Surfrider. In January of 1992 Bob received a call from Anna Puddicombe. The first meeting of Surfrider Foundation- Santa Barbara Chapter was held at a coffee shop in Isle Vista. Mike Allen would be the Santa Barbara Chaper’s first Chapter Chair. The Surfrider Foundation’s Haskell’s/Naples Task Force was formed in April of that year.

The first Task Force meeting included Bob and three younger men. They were Erik Krammer, Captain of the UCSB surf team; Barry Steinbock, surfer and student; and Stephan Neukemans, also a student surfer. The Task Force’s first goal was to print flyers for the letter-writing campaign. They developed a blue, eleven by eight-and-a-half inch flyer with a tear off postcard attached.

The second big step involved a special showing of The Endless Summer. The Santa Barbara Chapter of Surfrider was proud to offer it’s sincere appreciation and gratitude to Santa Barbara County film-maker Bruce Brown and his distributor for allowing it to show the film. The showing succeeded in bringing the Task Force more members.

As if a destination resort wasn’t bad enough, something new was on the horizon. The Arco Gas & Oil Company wanted to develop two golf courses on coastal land that they own west of Haskell’s Beach, and Jack Morehart was interested in developing a large subdivision at the paper town site of Naples. A Santa Barbara News-Press headline read, “It’s contruction vs. cattle on coast.”

With less than two weeks to respond, the Surfrider Haskell’s/Naples Task Force went before the County Environmental Review Hearing for ARCO’s proposed golf courses. Together, it’s members managed to produce over sixty pages of comment and analysis of the Draft Environmental Impact Report. In April of 1993, experiencing a relapse and fatigue brought on by a lack of sleep, Bob Keats led Surfrider Task Force members in an appearance before the Santa Barbara County Planning Commission. Veteran surfer, Keith Zandona emceed a video tape documenting not only historical access, but the existence of well established trails on ARCO’s property. Commissioners were treated to shots of surfers taking advantage of spectacular winter surf below the bluffs. Surfrider Task Force lost this skirmish, but it’s members were not about to give up. Surfrider was quick to point out that it was not opposed to golf, rather it was opposed to developments that weakened agricultural zoning along the Coast.

The Surfrider Haskell’s/Naples Task Force appealed the Planning Commission decision regarding ARCO to the Board of Supervisors. The results were not unexpected. Surfrider Haskell’s/Naples Task Force would subsequently appear before the California Coastal Commission to appeal what it considered an illegally approved development on land zoned for agriculture.

You may be asking, is it worth it; the battles waged, the battles lost, the cynical politics that they encountered? Surfrider Task Force believes that is it. Still, the purpose of this article is not to determine the suitability of any proposed project, but rather to honor those who suffer adversity and yet succeed in making the most of the gifts that God has given them. The fact that one man suffering a debilitating illness can accomplish so much is something that we must all take delight in.

The Gaviota coast line is a scenic treasure supporting hundreds of species of birds, unique plant and animal life. Miles of unspoiled coast line are home to harbor seals, California sea lions, and northern elephant seals. The coast supports habitat for snowy egrets, great blue heron, the blue-gray gnatcatcher, the endangered snowy plover, and red-tailed hawks.

Aggregation sites for Monarch Butterflies dot the landscape. Coastal sage, an endangered plant community in Southern California, is common here. Here too are the California slender salamander, the rare red-legged frog, the western fence lizard, and the Pacific rattlesnake. Mountain lions, bobcats, gray fox, coyote, brush rabbit, striped skunk, and deer have also been observed here.

This is a spiritual land, inhabited for ten thousand years by Chumash Indians. It is a land blessed by the miracles of nature. For the lone hiker and independent surfer, it is a place that holds special meaning. A place to get away from it all, a place to feel at one with nature. Gentle ocean bluffs, rustling grasslands and silent wetlands beckon the casual visitor. They call out to those with ears to listen, reawakening memories of a distant place, a California that is fast disappearing. Will we respond to that call? Is this heritage, this resource worth preserving? The Haskell's/ Naples Task Force believes that it is, and if a way is ultimately found to save it, then recognition must given to the rare insight and vision of one disabled man, Bob Keats. Who says there are no heroes anymore? Speaking before a Coastal Conference in April of 1994, Keats said, “Not only can we save it. It is our duty to save it.” And so it may be.