The California Coastal Commission is notorious for making life difficult along the otherwise spectacular Pacific Ocean. But its recent decision to block a fireworks display for the Fourth of July in Long Beach — on the 250th anniversary of U.S. independence, no less — is a new low.
As The California Post reported, the “Big Bang on the Bay” has been a popular event in Long Beach for 15 years.
The Coastal Commission wants the organizers to use drones, instead of pyrotechnics — at five times the price. Their reason: Fireworks cause pollution, apparently.
Fireworks explode in the sky between the Queen Elizabeth, left, and the Queen Mary in Long Beach. MediaNews Group via Getty ImagesLong Beach is a port city, where cargo ships blow smoke and leak oil on a daily basis. Those impacts dwarf the small amounts of ash, smoke, and other materials that are left over after a quarter of an hour of fireworks. It’s not as if these are being released every day, or for long.
The Coastal Commission says that it told organizers to stop using fireworks after 2025.
Really? So the grand American tradition of Fourth of July fireworks could be celebrated on the nation’s 249th anniversary, but not on its 250th?
No wonder the Coastal Commission has a reputation for ruining fun. It causes more misery in California than the pollution it claims to worry about.
The city will nix its annual July 4th fireworks display, named “Big Bang on the Bay,” for the first time in 15 years after the state denied an appeal to host the show in its traditional form. WireImageThe Coastal Commission was created in 1972, through a ballot initiative — not the first or last time voters have been convinced to back an idea that is good in theory but terrible in practice.
The purpose of the Coastal Commission was to stop private developers from blocking access to the beach. Now the Coastal Commission itself is preventing people from enjoying the shore.
The Coastal Commission also blocks useful initiatives like desalination. Though it ultimately approved a plant near Dana Point, it blocked a desalination plant in Huntington Beach in 2022.
There was nothing wrong with the latter’s proposal to use salt water from the open ocean. One suspects there was politics at play in the vote, given Huntington Beach’s conservative streak.
Even Gov. Gavin Newsom, who has never met a regulation he didn’t like, understands that the Coastal Commission can be a major pain.
That is why he signed an executive order after the Palisades Fire to restrict the Coastal Commission’s authority in the rebuilding areas. It was one of the few interventions by the state that made a difference, and that was welcomed by all.
The Trump administration has also identified the Coastal Commission as a major impediment to rebuilding.
It turns out the Coastal Commission is also a serious obstacle to having a good time.
It makes the entire environmentalist movement look bad, like little more than scolds.
Americans fought a revolution against the British Empire to be free of constant taxes and petty interference in their lives. The Coastal Commission has, inadvertently, reminded us of the sort of thing our Founding Fathers fought against. It has pitted its “green” bureaucrats against the red, white, and blue — literally.
There is still time for it to reconsider its decision, and it should.
