WHEN I LAST HEARD from my friends in the Pierpont community, they were up to their necks in sand dunes and bureaucratic red tape. The situation really hasn't changed much except that they are now buoyed by the results of a recent non-binding arbitration decision. But the rhetoric is still being piled on higher than the sand dunes.

As I've reported in past entries, residents have been stymied in their efforts to get both city and Coastal Commission permission to move sand away from their homes which is now damaging their properties.

Homeowner Ron Wilson is the only one who has been issued a permit to move the sand away after encroaching dunes shattered a glass retaining wall outside his oceanfront home. He recently won an arbitration decision in his quest to recover damages from the city for $37,000. However, Kate Neiswender, an environmental lawyer working on the case, said the city has decided to go ahead and pursue a trial date.

In other legal action, last spring a judge denied a preliminary injunction sought by the homeowners against the city to force the speedy removal of the sand piled up against their homes. That case is also yet to be resolved.

"The city was instructed by the judge not to let this fall into a bureaucratic black hole," Neiswender said. Yet that's exactly what has happened, she added. "The city is so unmotivated to help the people of Pierpont, it defies belief," she said.

The City Council has been doing what it can to move things along, said Mayor Christy Weir. She spoke with Assemblyman Pedro Nava, who was once on the Coastal Commission. Weir asked for advice on what the city can do to appease this state entity which has maintained all along the Pierpont area is a sensitive environmental habitat for rare plants, nesting birds, globose dune beetles and legless lizards. Using mechanized equipment to move the sand is out, the commission has said, and they have the final say.

BUT NEISWENDER MAINTAINS it's now the city holding things up, as they are the ones who issue the permits to move the sand. She pointed to a July 25 meeting between representatives of the Coastal Commission, State Parks and the city on behalf of Dan Scully, a resident whose situation is the most urgent. "The agreement was we could move the first three feet of sand away by hand. We are allowed to move it as many times as we want.

"Of course we are required to sift through all the sand like little kids, looking for legless lizards and globose dune beetles."

City Attorney Ariel Calonne said the residents' first attempts at applying for permits did not fulfill the Coastal Commission's many requests as spelled out in a detailed letter. "The first applications that came in ignored that letter and, in all candor and honesty, were worse than the back of a napkin in terms of literally sketching out what would happen," he said.

Five residents, including Scully, resubmitted their applications weeks ago for hand clearing of the sand, Neiswender said, following the July meeting with the Coastal Commission. A biologist was hired to look through the sand first. There are no nesting birds or rare plants, she said. Nobody knows about the beetles or lizards.

Calonne acknowledged the resubmission. "We agreed to issue him (Scully) an administrative permit. He has done his biological report. He will get permitted after the administrative hearing, which is being pre-reviewed by Coastal Commission staff so we're sure they won't appeal. The rest of the folks finally submitted biological reports about three weeks ago and are being queued up to get through the administrative hearings as fast as possible," he said.

If this has been as exhausting to read as it was for me to write, just think of how these residents are feeling about now.

All this to move a little sand.