SMMC Head Sends Notice to Paragliding Promoter about Misuse of Malibu Public Property

• Commercial Operation Is Launching Craft on Lands Under Agency Stewardship •

By Anne Soble

In the wake of last week’s fatal accident involving a member of the Malibu Paragliding Club, the adjunct of a commercial operation that has been launching powered paragliders from various public property sites in the Malibu area, Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy Executive Director Joe Edmiston has informed MPC’s organizer that PPG activities on SMMC/Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority holdings are not authorized.
In what appears to be the first formal action in response to the club’s use of Malibu Bluffs Park and other sites for commercial paragliding programs, Edmiston wrote in an email and posted communication to Claude Fiset on Wednesday, Aug. 13, that “neither you nor your organization, nor any other person or entity has take-off or landing rights on any property of the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy or of the Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority, except pursuant to my explicit permission, in writing, and filed in the offices of the Conservancy and the Authority.”
The SMMC executive director told Fiset, “We note persistent media reports that you [state that you] and/or your organization, the “Malibu Paraglider” website, have some understanding or agreement with the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy with respect to take-off and landing on Malibu Bluffs. There is no such agreement, and you know it.”
Edmiston added, “Nor is there any agreement with the Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority, which both owns parkland in Malibu and administers that of the Conservancy.”
He further informed Fiset that “the conditions of use have been posted on the Malibu Bluffs property, as they have with all property of the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy, and a violation of which is punishable pursuant to Section 33211.6 of the Public Resources Code,” and he added that “Section 21403(a) of the California Public Utilities Code will be enforced.”