This time, it’s the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) getting in on the “let’s beat up Costa Mesa” action. CDFW has a bone to pick with the city allowing the Harbor Soaring Society to continue its glider flying — and flying field maintenance — in Fairview Park. Check it out below, then read on.

The newsy bit in here is, of course, that CDFW is demanding that the city halt “recreational use of model aircraft” that “will impact the vernal pool complex”.

For those of you not lucky enough to spend a fair number of Tuesday evenings at City Hall, recall that the conflict between the Harbor Soaring Society and resident-conservationists (as well as their allies inside City Hall itself) has been the centerpiece of the debate over the Fairview Park Master Plan Update, which is due back from CEQA review any day now and will be going to the City Council for final adoption on November 17, 2026.

I THINK the map I’ve drawn below, taken originally from the Draft Fairview Park Master Plan Update, shows the current flying field’s location juxtaposed with the outermost edges of the vernal pool complex. Now, don’t rely on this, because I’m not deep in the weeds (rimshot!) on all things vernal pools and glider flying. But assuming I’m close, you can see that the current flying field’s location sits directly within the vernal pool watershed:

So, that’s it? After years and years of push-and-pull, it’s game, set, match to the Fairview Park birders, vernal pool enthusiasts and wildlife defenders and total defeat for the Harbor Soaring Society’s dream of keeping its westside flying field open? Certainly the trump card of threatened state action has been enough to get this City Council to do remarkable things, such as grab the third rail of amending Measure Y, bless a sober living home they’ve spent millions of dollars fighting in court, and upzone our commercial corridors for thousands of new homes. So scary letters from the state should be enough to end the debate over the fliers and create a glide path for the Fairview Park Master Plan Update to finally get passed… right?

Maybe. Maybe not. Let’s dig into this letter a bit more.

The letter only threatens “unauthorized” activities, but leaves the door open to authorizing them

First, the letter is not a “cease and desist” order in the classic sense. Instead, the letter focuses on the fact that the activities were not “authorized” by CDFW. The letter goes on to state that the state agency would welcome the opportunity to “scope the permitting obligations” of continuing to operate the flying field, which is bureaucrat-speak for “let’s talk about what pieces of paper we would need to stop bothering you about this”.

So if the city wants to continue to defend glider flying in Fairview Park, it has an avenue to do so. And if it does go down that road, the folks that have been trying to get the flying field relocated for years may come to regret this day. A state-authorized flying field would be a lot more difficult to dislodge than a legally ambiguous flying field. So careful what y’all wish for, I guess.

The City Council has thumbed its nose at state threats before

I don’t have to stretch very far for this one — when it came down to defending resident desires against increasingly outsized state agency demands at the Fairview Developmental Center, the City Council banded together and voted 7-0 to approve a plan that appeared to defy state expectations for unit count, site access and financial feasibility. So yes, while state threats (and lawsuits) have certainly produced surprising results from our City Council, it doesn’t seem completely controlled by them. So who knows how they will take this latest news.

This isn’t the only recent CDFW letter the city has received

It is important to point out at this juncture that the CDFW letter the city received last week wasn’t published by City Hall. Instead, the letter was surfaced by the Harbor Soaring Society, which says it demanded to see it after being told it couldn’t fly in Fairview Park starting this weekend. It has since made the letter publicly available on Facebook.

However, if you look closely at last week’s letter, you’ll see this isn’t the only recent letter from CDFW that the city has received and not yet disclosed. The letter’s appendices show that CDFW has provided comments on the city’s mitigated negative declaration (MND) analysis under CEQA of the draft Fairview Park Master Plan Update (the link runs to disclosure on the CDFW website).

In this June 2026 comment letter, CDFW criticizes the scope of the city’s MND, which is a lighter-touch CEQA process than a full-blown CEQA environmental impact report. In so many words, CDFW told the city that, while it supports the draft Fairview Park Master Plan Update’s direction, it still thinks that the current environmental review is too thin.

Too thin for what? Importantly, CDFW says the analysis won’t support the state take permits the city’s own MND says it will need to implement the Fairview Park Master Plan Update in any event. In other words, it’s not just glider flying that might need to go through the costly process of a take permit. The city itself already will likely need one (or more) to support the other projects in the Fairview Park master Plan Update, and CDFW is saying our current analysis isn’t enough to support getting those permits in the future.

Fully satisfying CDFW’s CEQA concerns may end up bleeding even more time and money in this process. So while the flying field comments are certainly the most attention-grabbing, the real issue may instead be CDFW’s lingering dissatisfaction with the way the city is handling the master plan update generally.

One more thing: who (or what) will pay for all this work at Fairview Park?

I’m always grateful to get to see these kinds of letters as a member of the public because it offers a glimpse into the shadowy world of inter-governmental communication, and I always wonder if there are details in there that can provide clues as to what various departments really care about.

For example: once again, this letter from CDFW includes a terse, almost bitter paragraph recounting all of the ways the City of Costa Mesa has historically failed to live up to its obligations to CDFW and various other agencies and counterparties over the years in Fairview Park:

So that got me thinking: where are we going to get the money to actually do the implementation of the updated master plan if we can’t seem to get the existing work under the old master plan finished? And what funds will we need to use if we have to revise the CEQA analysis to satisfy CDFW?

And that got me thinking a bit more. How do we fund the work in Fairview Park right now? If I have my numbers right, we’ve been drawing money for years out of a fund dedicated to building and improving city parks, and that fund is almost out of money. But more on that next time.