On Last week’s Z1077 Up Close Show, host Gary Daigneault spoke with County Board of Sueprvisors Chair Dawn Rowe about what are commonly being called “alt” camping sites. These “alt” sites feature uncoventional structures, like trailers, box trucks, tents, and bubbles, on otherwise undeveloped private land, and they are becoming more and more prevalant here in the Morongo Basin.
Rowe said, “For better or worse, and folks are going to yell at me for this, it is not an allowable use in the county of San Bernardino. You absolutely have to have a permit to operate those types of things for the same reasons. For sanitation, traffic, for a lot of the places that have the trailers that pop-up, or the teepees or the tents, things like that, there’s ten to twenty cars and they are coming and going daily. Neighbors just don’t like it.
“With a use permit, you will have traffic studies, and pollution studies, and night sky studies. Things that we value. And enforcment on these issues is coming.”
When asked whether these types of campsites could be allowed under county regulation, Rowe said that it is possible to adjust zoning for specific areas, but that it is not a simple process.
“So you can change your zoning, but because most of this is rural living, it requires a general plan ammendment which goes before the county Planning Commission and then the Board of Supervisors. It’s not simple, because we have a lot of community push-back on that. Folks don’t want commercial activity in the rural living zones next to neighborhoods, which I undesrtand.”
To hear the full interview with Rowe and Community Laison Geln Harris, you can listen to the Up Close Show as a podcast on Z1077fm.com or wherever you get your podcasts. The Up Close Show airs ever Friday morning on Z1077 at 10 a.m.
