State Parks’s Oceano Dunes public records: Suppress the science

February 11, 2025

By WILL HARRIS

Oceano Dunes, a unique shoreline park south of Pismo Beach, offers coastal access, affordable camping, and exceptional off-road recreational opportunities. Or it did. Now, after an expense of more than $25 million, nearly half the park has been fenced off from use, and with it, half of the coastal camping is gone.

The fencing and related efforts stem from a local air district’s claim that recreational activity at the park creates bad air quality two miles inland. California State Parks initially pushed back, proving air district claims to be false.

But recently released information shows State Parks downshifted to passivity beginning in 2018. False claims would no longer be challenged and legal standing beneficial to State Parks would be ignored. Worse, documents reveal that State Parks intentionally suppressed its own peer-reviewed study that shows recreation at the park has nothing to do with air quality concerns expressed by the air district.

Also, State Parks executives have left the top district superintendent position at Oceano Dunes vacant for eight years. Staff now fill the role as placeholders, serving in an “acting” capacity only while hoping the “acting” gig parlays to a permanent leadership post. Instilling that hope is intentional and false.

It’s a years-old carrot dangled to ensure unquestioning compliance with the shot-callers in Sacramento. Taken together, the released records expose a corrupt system that prioritizes political control over everything else, leaving our state parks mismanaged and their futures at risk.

The memo and the Mesa

According to a confidential California State Parks memo, representatives of the California Air Resources Board, or CARB, consider the state’s PM10 air quality standard “aspirational and ambiguous” and acknowledge that “most parts of the state are not compliant with that standard.”

(Any airborne particle that is 10 microns or less in diameter is considered PM10. Instruments used to measure PM10 detect dust, smoke, water vapor—even sea salt in the air—as the same generic thing: particles suspended within a known volume of air. Air quality standards for 24-hour PM10 levels are set by federal and state regulators. The California standard set by CARB is two-thirds more restrictive than the federal EPA level.)

The State Parks memo is dated Feb. 1, 2022 and part of a trove of documents released by State Parks in response to an Aug. 6, 2024 public records request by the Friends of Oceano Dunes. The Friends group is a non-profit organization that advocates for continued and enhanced public access to the Oceano Dunes State Vehicular Recreation Area.

Since 2010, the San Luis Obispo County Air Pollution Control District, or APCD, has claimed that off-road recreation at Oceano Dunes causes violations of the state’s PM10 standard on the Nipomo Mesa, which is about two miles inland from the park.

Specifically, they claim that the PM10 on the Mesa is dust from Oceano Dunes. The broader backstory of this claim has been presented previously (see attachment to this 2023 letter to the state’s Park and Recreation Commission) and so is not the focus here. Some of the background is discussed below to give context and relevance to the released documents.

A shifting stipulated order and its science group

In 2018, the air district issued a stipulated order of abatement, or order, against State Parks. It required that State Parks eliminate violations of the state’s PM10 standard on the Mesa by covering large sections of Oceano Dunes to prevent the emission of dust from the dunes. The order was to expire on Dec. 1, 2023.

The order also mandated the formation of a “scientific advisory group” to dictate and oversee the dune-covering operations. To date, State Parks, working collaboratively with the air district and the SAG, as the science group is known, has fenced off nearly half of the 1,500-acre recreation area from use. Despite covering the sand in these fenced areas with plastic “wind fences,” hay bales, and vegetation plots, PM10 violations on the Mesa persist. Last spring, there were 14 violations over the span of 12 days.

The order has been officially revised twice. The most recent revision, accepted by the APCD’s Hearing Board in Oct. 2022, extended the life of the order to Dec. 1, 2025. It also shifted the order goal from eliminating PM10 violations on the Mesa to eliminating “emissions in excess of naturally occurring emissions from the vehicle recreation area that contribute to downwind violations of the state and federal PM10 air quality standards.”

But despite that key shift of the order’s goal, one year later, at the Hearing Board’s Oct. 13, 2023 meeting, State Parks, the SAG, and the air district all acknowledged that they did not yet know what “emissions in excess of naturally occurring emissions” meant.

At that meeting, Jon O’Brien, the environmental program manager overseeing the order efforts on behalf of State Parks, stated, “We’ll be working very closely with the SAG, very closely with the APCD, on this to quantify what ‘emissions in excess of naturally occurring emissions,’ what that means.”

Largely because of its continued frustrations at trying to quantify “emissions in excess of naturally occurring emissions” from the Oceano Dunes park, the SAG initiated a third revision of the order, which was presented to the APCD’s Hearing Board on October 15, 2024. That revision pushes the order’s expiration date to Dec. 1, 2028.

That’s an extension of authority over Oceano Dunes that the SAG proposes giving itself and the air district that is more than six years beyond the original end date of the order and more than 10 years since the order was first issued.

As of March 2022, State Parks has spent in excess of $25.2 million on order-related efforts to reduce PM10 violations on the Mesa. Members of the SAG have received a significant percentage of those public funds for their consultation services. To date, under the SAG’s direction, State Parks has fenced off more than 740 acres of the park from recreational use.

The memo author, the CARB executive and State Parks’s legal apathy

The State Parks memo obtained from the records request is titled “CARB Questions around PM10.” It is watermarked “confidential” and authored by Sarah Miggins, the deputy director of the Off-Highway Motor Vehicle Recreation Division of State Parks. Some editing is provided by State Parks’ Mr. O’Brien. No other documents provided by State Parks in response to the records request indicate that questions in this document were actually asked or answered by CARB officials.

Based on 2019 CARB email correspondence obtained previously by the Friends group, one of the CARB representatives referenced in Ms. Miggins’ memo is Kurt Karperos. Mr. Karperos, now retired, was a deputy executive officer at CARB.

Given Mr. Karperos’s stature at CARB, it would seem that correspondence attributed to him that indicates the state’s PM10 standard is “aspirational and ambiguous,” would provide significant legal leverage for State Parks to exit the order, particularly if “most parts of the state are not compliant with that standard.” Add to that the findings of the three-year investigation undertaken on behalf of State Parks by the Scripps Institution of Oceanography.

Scripps and the significance of 14%

The Scripps work, published in the peer reviewed scientific journal Atmospheric Environment, shows that 14% of the PM10 on the Mesa consists of mineral dust. That is a regional measure of PM10 that is two miles from the park—a park situated within a much larger dune field.

That means that only a fraction of that 14% dust content could feasibly be dust from Oceano Dunes, and by extension, only a fraction of that fraction could be “emissions in excess of naturally occurring emissions,” if such a thing exists. Given the Scripps results and the SAG’s years-long struggle to quantify “emissions in excess of naturally occurring emissions,” that’s doubtful.

What’s more, Dr. Lynn Russell, the atmospheric chemist who led the Scripps work, presented her report and findings to the regular board of the APCD in September 2023. The board then voted unanimously to “accept and file” the report and its findings, putting the Scripps study on the same legal plain as an unpublished APCD study known as the Phase 2.

The APCD’s Phase 2 report, despite significant flaws, was “accepted and filed” by the APCD Board in 2010. With that status, the Phase 2 document has since been used to justify actions the air district has taken against State Parks and Oceano Dunes, including the issuance of the order.

State Parks suppresses Scripps study and “dust” disappears

Yet rather than pick up legal and scientific arms to defend Oceano Dunes, State Parks has been steadfast in prostrating itself to the order, the SAG, and the APCD. The Aug. 6, 2024 public records request provides only the latest record of this: No documents received from the request show that State Parks’s Sarah Miggins, Jon O’Brien, or any other Parks representative ever pressed CARB officials as to the viability of the state’s PM10 standard.

And emails between SAG member Jack Gillies and Parks’s O’Brien and Miggins demonstrate a concerted effort to avoid reference to the Scripps investigation. This is on display in a March 7, 2023 email exchange made in anticipation of a meeting of the state’s Off-Highway Motor Vehicle Recreation Commission, where SAG-related work that was conducted after the Scripps investigation and regarded the composition of the PM10 on the Mesa was to be presented to the Commission by Gillies:

Jon O’Brien to SAG’s Jack Gillies: “Just to confirm that there will be minimal comparison to Scripps. Instead you will just be presenting the data from the Desert Research Institute, APCD study. Is that correct? Sarah asked me about that this morning. Thanks.”

SAG’s Jack Gillies in reply to Jon O’Brien: “I am not going to make any reference to Scripps results in the presentation.”

Jon O’Brien to Sarah Miggins, upon forwarding his exchange with the SAG’s Jack Gillies: “There will be no reference to the Scripps results in the Desert Research Institute presentation.”

At that March 2023 commission meeting in Redding and at other meetings, State Parks’s O’Brien vaguely assured the commissioners and the public that the Scripps work showing 14% dust content in the Mesa PM10 “will be part of the discussion” as State Parks works “very closely with the SAG, very closely with the APCD” in amending the order for a third time.

But that proposed order amendment, as submitted to the APCD Hearing Board on Oct. 15, 2024, makes no reference to the Scripps work, nor does it even mention the word “dust.” (By comparison, the initial order from 2018, written before the SAG was formed, refers to “dust” nine times.)

The second order revision, finalized in Oct. 2022, also does not mention Scripps or “dust” even though that revision occurred after Scripps’s Dr. Russell delivered a Nov. 8, 2021 interim report to Sarah Miggins that detailed the 14% dust findings. Based on notes by Miggins in the earlier cited confidential memo, it appears that disregard of the Scripps work was an intentional choice: Miggins writes, “The SAG is not considering mineral dust content of the PM10 as part of the order revision or Scripps findings.”

The mad scientist

There are other nuggets in the records release, including a Dec. 16, 2022 email from the SAG’s Jack Gillies to State Parks’s Jon O’Brien where Gillies writes that the publication of the Scripps findings made him “rather angry,” and that the publication “is a travesty of air quality science in my and my other colleagues opinions.” He continues, “I am preparing a manuscript based on the Desert Research Institute 2021 speciation data to plant our flag into the source attribution ground.”

The SAG, and specifically Gillies, have long attributed only one source to the PM10 on the Mesa, and that is dust from the dunes. The SAG’s PM10 computer models are based on that 100% dune dust assumption. So it would seem that “planting a flag in the source attribution ground” only after getting word that a published scientific article demonstrably contradicts that assumption is reactionary at best.

It also shows the SAG has disregarded a key provision in the 2018 order that states, “APCD, OHMVR [State Parks] and CARB will continue to refine all source contributions of emissions affecting the Nipomo Mesa.”

The eight year vacancy

But it was a forwarded email received independent of the Friends’ records request that proved to be the kicker. On Dec. 9, 2024, State Parks’ Sarah Miggins emailed Parks staff regarding “Oceano Dunes Leadership.”

She announced that Jon O’Brien, the environmental program manager based in Sacramento, would be taking over as “acting district superintendent” at Oceano Dunes. The brief email included a forwarded email to select staff, which provided more detail.

Mr. O’Brien will replace chief ranger Kevin Pearce, who has been acting district superintendent since 2017. Beginning Jan. 1, 2025. Mr. O’Brien is to maintain his current role in Sacramento while traveling to Oceano Dunes “two days a week or four days every two weeks,” and as needed. His assignment will be evaluated in six months “to see how things are for him and the district.”

There is much to this announcement, which underscores a Sacramento-based management approach to Oceano Dunes. But what hits first is that the district superintendent position at Oceano Dunes has been open since 2017.

Kevin Pearce filled in on an interim basis when the previous district superintendent, Brent Marshall, was promoted to the Monterey District in 2017. Both Brent and Kevin, as State Parks rangers, are law enforcement officers. Prior to an organizational restructuring of State Parks that was known as “transformation,” rangers could promote to lead a State Parks district and maintain their law enforcement classification.

After the “Transformation” restructuring, which was finalized in 2017 (after Brent Marshall’s move to the Monterey District), a district superintendent position at State Parks was no longer considered a law enforcement classification. For law enforcement officers that created a disincentive to promote to a district superintendent spot because that meant giving up badge and gun and no longer accruing a pension based on a law enforcement classification.

So, Kevin Pearce stepped up for State Parks as “acting district superintendent” because an official move to that position was effectively a demotion. And he remained in that limbo between job classifications for nearly eight years, doing, by accounts from visitors and staff alike, a “fantastic job,” as the forwarded email stated.

But eight years? Why has State Parks left the position open for that long? One of the oft-promoted benefits of the “Transformation” restructuring was that it was to “streamline the hiring process.” It seems more it has led to a perpetual meander.

The choice to not choose

In those eight years, there have been two presidential elections and two elections for California’s governor. We have also had two directors of State Parks, and two deputy directors in charge of the Off-Highway Motor Vehicle Recreation Division of State Parks.

And through that time, there have been at least four separate attempts to hire a permanent Oceano Dunes district superintendent—four times when the position was advertised, submitted applications evaluated, candidates interviewed, and the job…not filled. On at least three occasions State Parks hired professional recruiters to find candidates deemed satisfactory. And so the recruiters found candidates, and still more candidates applied. Yet amidst that pool of many, not one person was deemed worthy.

As they say, not choosing is also a choice. For State Parks, this has become ever more apparent. It begs the question: Who has been doing the not-choosing?

Where the breadcrumbs lead

The only constant at the top executive level of State Parks since 2017 has been Liz McGuirk, the chief deputy director and second in command. And through that time, the extent of her involvement with the OHMVR Division generally and Oceano Dunes specifically has been significant, including:

●       In 2017, she oversaw the final implementation of State Parks’s “Transformation” restructuring. “Transformation” diminished the OHMVR Division’s role at Parks and reallocated much of its funding.

●       In 2018, she was a deciding voice in accepting the APCD’s order—a decision made without input from the technical team State Parks had assembled to evaluate and counter various order-related proposals pushed by the APCD.

●       In 2019, she assumed a more direct management role with the SAG following the first revision of the order, a revision orchestrated at the State Parks executive level and above, which authorized fencing off 50% of the park’s prime shoreline camping to create the vegetation planting project known as the “48 acres.” That project provides no PM10 reduction benefit on the Mesa and has caused headaches and hazards for Oceano Dunes staff and visitors.

●       In 2019/2020, the deputy director position at the OHMVR Division was vacant. Rather than have the Division’s very capable second in command at that time, Division Chief Brian Robertson, fill in as acting deputy director, Ms. McGuirk assumed the role herself while maintaining her duties as chief deputy director for all of State Parks.

And it continues. Beginning at least since Aug. 2021, Ms. McGuirk has been on the interview panel for the Oceano Dunes district superintendent spot. As the top Parks executive on a three-person panel that includes two of her subordinates, McGuirk weighs in as to who should or should not be the Oceano Dunes district superintendent. I know because I interviewed for the position. Twice.

The district superintendent dangle

I submitted my application in 2019, and on July 17 of that year I was interviewed for the district superintendent spot by the Chief of Southern Field Operations/Executive Chief of Law Enforcement Brian Ketterer, and by Kathy Amman, the Deputy Director in charge of the Park Operations Division of State Parks.

The interview went well, and in an Aug. 6, 2019 email to me, Chief Ketterer, stated, “If you are still interested in moving forward in the process I would like to extend the invite.” I called to say I was indeed still interested. But a second interview never happened. Later, when I saw Ketterer at a Nov. 8, 2019 OHMVR Commission meeting in Atascadero, he told me “things are out of my hands,” but that I should “hang in there.” Still, there was no communication from State Parks, no follow-up interview.

The position was readvertised in 2021, and so I resubmitted my application to start the process again. My application was accepted, and I was interviewed on Aug. 5, 2021 at the Oceano Dunes District Office in Pismo Beach.

On the panel were Ketterer, Sarah Miggins, and Liz McGuirk. I thought the interview went well. There were at least two other candidates who made it through the selection process to be interviewed that day, and I’m sure they thought they did well also. But in the end, no one was chosen for the district superintendent spot, and the position remained open. By choice.

This anecdote reflects the dismay of not one but all of those who went through the time and effort to evaluate the potential job, prepare an application and related documents, contact references, submit the application package, wait, prepare again, travel, interview, return home, and wait again. For nothing. Similarly, the contracting of recruiting agencies seems to have been only an exercise, only for show.

There have been at least two other rounds of interviews in the subsequent years. Those appear to have been internal to State Parks to find a State Parks employee willing to sub-in for Kevin Pearce as “acting district superintendent.” But in the end, Kevin served ably in that role through 2024. No doubt he is grateful to return finally and officially to his Chief Ranger position.

That said, the person now taking the district superintendent spot, Mr. O’Brien, also serves only in an “acting” capacity. So, moving into 2025, the Oceano Dunes district superintendent position remains open. By choice.

Not a storybook ending

So who is making that choice, to choose no one, and leave the position open for eight years? Simple deduction reveals it’s Liz McGuirk, Liz McGuirk who plays a peculiar Goldilocks, looking for no one at all until she finds someone just right, someone just malleable enough to suit her needs.

And maybe that’s happened. Down the road, maybe she makes O’Brien the official district superintendent at Oceano Dunes. It seems he has been able to walk the order line to Ms. McGuirk’s liking, so grooming him for the spot makes a certain sense—if suppressing science and continued kowtowing to the APCD actually made sense. For McGuirk, a political appointee, it apparently does, just as surely as adhering to whispered mandates from above her pay grade makes sense.

What is obvious is that keeping the district superintendent position open and leaving Oceano Dunes in leadership limbo for eight years is an affront, a dereliction of duty. And foremost, a decision.

Unsurprisingly, that decision aligns with all of the other order-related decisions that have led down a crooked path—a path the Sacramento-based management of State Parks readily walks no matter the cost, be it in lost recreational acreage, lost scientific integrity, or the waste of millions in public funds.

State Parks is broken. Oceano Dunes is proof.

(Epilogue note: Kathy Amann, the person who ran the Park Operations Division at State Parks, retired in 2023. As of Feb. 2025, that post remains vacant. There are more than a few capable people working in Park Ops who answered directly to Ms. Amann—people who could credibly fill the vacancy she left behind. But instead, it appears Liz McGuirk thought it would be best if she filled that role herself. Because she has. Ms. McGuirk now serves as “acting” deputy director of Park Ops while continuing as Chief Deputy Director for all of State Parks, just as she did in 2019/2020 for the OHMVR Division.)

Will Harris is a geologist. From 2005 to 2022, California State Parks contracted Mr. Harris to provide geological consulting services and serve as subject matter expert regarding geological processes. Most of Mr. Harris’s work for State Parks regarded Oceano Dunes.