Managing the Future California Coast with Dr. Charles Lester

May 16, 2021

California dreamin' - Coastal Management West Coast Style

This week, host Peter Ravella and Tyler Buckingham head out to the West Coast to look at coastal management in the Golden State. Joining the show is Dr. Charles Lester, the director of the Ocean and Coastal Policy Center in the Marine Science Institute at UC Santa Barbara. Dr. Lester previously worked for the State of California and the California Coastal Commission for twenty years, including serving as the agency’s fourth executive director from 2011 to 2016. Charles is an expert in integrated coastal management and California coastal law and policy. He has extensive experience in California, including managing or directing hundreds of coastal planning and regulatory projects for the Coastal Commission. In 2015, he led the agency's completion of California's first comprehensive land use guidance for addressing sea level rise and coastal protection on the outer coast (Sea Level Rise—Adopted Policy Guidance). Charles speaks regularly on coastal management, adaptation and resilience, including recently as part of a Congressional briefing on “west coast resilience” (Charles Lester at EESI).

Show Transcription
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Peter Ravella & Tyler Buckingham

Peter and Tyler joined forces in 2015 and from the first meeting began discussing a project that would become Coastal News Today and the American Shoreline Podcast Network. At the time, Peter and Tyler were coastal consultants for Pete’s firm, PAR Consulting, LLC. In that role, they worked with coastal communities in Texas, Florida, and North Carolina, engaged in grant writing, coastal project development, shoreline erosion and land use planning, permitting, and financial planning for communities undertaking big beach restoration projects. Between and among their consulting tasks, they kept talking and kept building the idea of CNT & ASPN. In almost every arena they worked, public engagement played a central role. They spent thousands of hours talking with coastal stakeholders, like business owners, hotel operators, condo managers, watermen, property owners, enviros, surfers, and fishermen. They dived deep into the value, meaning, and responsibility for the American shoreline, segment-by-segment. Common threads emerged, themes were revealed, differences uncovered. There was a big conversation going on along the American shoreline! But, no place to have it. That's where CNT and ASPN were born.