Peter M. Douglas

Peter M. Douglas (August 22, 1942 – 2012) was a German American environmental activist, self-proclaimed "radical pagan heretic", and principal author of Proposition 20, an initiative in 1972 that created the California Coastal Commission. He served as its Executive Director for 26 years. He was also co-author of the 1976 Coastal Act.[1][2][3]

Peter M. Douglas
Executive Director of the California Coastal Commission
In office 1977–2012

“The goals and objectives of the Coastal Act are to better the environment, give due-process rights and protect the liberties of property owners. Unfortunately, Peter Douglas and the Coastal Commission ignored the protections that are guaranteed in the act,” said attorney Ronald Zumbrun, who led a constitutional challenge to Douglas's work.[2]

Douglas was born in the German capital of Berlin on August 22, 1942 as Peter Ehlers (he changed his last name once he obtained American citizenship).[3] He died of lung and throat cancer in 2012.[2] The state of California paid Douglas $213,838.35 during 2011, not including benefits.[4]

Early life

Born Peter Michael Ehlers in Berlin on Aug. 22, 1942, (he and his sister changed their last name upon becoming American citizens), Mr. Douglas and his mother, Maria, and sister, Christiane, left their house when it was destroyed by Allied planes in the Allied bombing of Berlin. After WWII he immigrated to the United States in 1950.[3][2]

Bombing of Berlin in July 1944

As a young man in Southern California Mr. Douglas enjoyed surfing off Redondo Beach and camping in the desert and mountains.[3][2]

He studied in California and Germany. He earned an undergraduate degree in psychology and a graduate degree in law at UCLA, where he plunged into antiwar and social justice movements and co-founded a law collective. He also studied abroad for one year in Germany. After completing his law degree in 1969, he and his German-born wife, Rotraut, then moved abroad for a few years. Environmentalism was not yet on his radar.[3][2]

Career

He returned to the U.S. in 1971 and accepted a job in Sacramento on the staff of then-Assemblyman Alan Sieroty, a Democrat from Los Angeles, who put him in charge of writing laws protecting the state's coastline.[3][2]

He was the main author of California’s landmark coastal protection laws and for more than a quarter-century was executive director of the California Coastal Commission, the powerful regulatory agency he helped create.[3][2]

He fought the development of homes, industry, and infrastructure in California. He counted among the commission’s most significant achievements defeating a proposed toll road skirting San Onofre State Beach, a liquefied natural gas terminal off the Ventura County coast and the development of Hearst Ranch. He considered the decision to allow housing subdivisions along the Bolsa Chica wetlands one of its worst failures.[3][2]

Bearded and usually wearing Birkenstock sandals, a bolo tie and hiking pants, he was known to sometimes pull his biodiesel car to the side of a highway and stand in front of bulldozers operating without a permit his agency might have withheld.[3][2]

He was “the world’s best bureaucratic street fighter,” Steve Blank, a member of the commission, told The New York Times in 2010.[3][2]

Death

Mr. Douglas died of lung and throat cancer in 2012. As his cancer progressed, he wrote of his beliefs about life and death in lengthy, highly philosophical emails to friends. He halted mainstream Western medical treatment in favor of Eastern therapies, abandoned his strict vegan diet and wound up outliving his doctors’ dismal prognoses by many months, applying the same drive and optimism to his personal fight as he had to his job as chief steward of California’s coast.[3][2]

He died at the home of his sister, Christiane, though Douglas enjoyed living in coastal Larkspur, CA, and had another home in rural Northern California by a river near the Oregon border.[3][2]

References

1. "Ca - Officials". www.allgov.com. Retrieved December 27, 2020.
2. Woo, Elaine (April 4, 2012). "Peter M. Douglas dies at 69; California Coastal Commission chief". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved December 26, 2020.
3. Hevesi, Dennis (April 9, 2012). "Peter Douglas, Sentry of California's Coast, Dies at 69". The New York Times. Retrieved December 27, 2020.
4. "PETER M DOUGLAS, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF THE CALIFORNIA COASTAL ZONE COMMISSION (2011)". Transparent California, California's Largest Public Pay and Pension Database. 2021. Retrieved January 23, 2021.