Coastal cop’s troubled waters

Andrew Willis walked for an hour along the rugged Corona del Mar coast, his path punctuated by intimate coves and tide pools.

“There were no footprints other than mine,” he recalled.

Someone with a small bulldozer had been moving dirt down the side of a bluff 30 feet above, a neighborhood tipster reported. It could be illegal. And it was Willis’ job, and only his, to investigate.

Willis, 30, is the sole California Coastal Commission official patrolling for illegal development and habitat destruction from Pacific Palisades to San Clemente, some 280 miles of shoreline that are among the most populated stretches of the West Coast.

Included in his territory are coastal wetlands and offshore islands, and he is the commission’s only guardian of public access for dozens of beaches in Los Angeles and Orange counties, excluding Malibu.

“It’s almost an impossible task,” he said.

He has stopped county workers in Marina Del Rey from trimming trees where herons nested. He has told a Sunset Beach homeowners association to remove hot tub equipment that blocked a public walkway. And he has tracked down a group of Newport Beach homeowners who hired a bulldozer operator to level sand dunes that blocked their ocean view. After a legal fight, the dunes are being restored.

The San Pedro resident has 300 open cases, some dating to the 1980s. And the backlog is growing.

“There’s a lot of people and a lot of coast. A lot of homes being built,” he said. “But I’m just one person for that area, and I can’t protect everything.”

In 1976, a year before Willis was born, the Coastal Act gave the state broad powers to protect the California coast from encroachment by developers and property owners. But the agency the law created, the Coastal Commission, has suffered from a lack of staff in recent years.

Statewide, only four other coastal inspectors patrol the remainder of the state’s coastline.

“It’s like having five cops for the whole state of California,” said Lisa Haage, who directs efforts to enforce the Coastal Act.

When Willis checks out reports of coastal rule-breakers, he uses commonplace tools: a digital camera, aerial photos, maps, binoculars and his eyes. He usually roves on foot, but occasionally borrows a kayak or floats atop his surfboard in search of a vantage point.

He does not carry a ticket book, gun or baton. He wears the uniform of a beach boy: short-sleeved, surf-brand shirts, jeans or shorts.

Willis said he was not about “sirens and citations.” Some coastal dwellers are unaware that building a deck, moving sand or cutting down plants can be illegal, he explained. “I approach it as more of an educational experience.”

But he wields considerable authority.

Aside from San Francisco Bay, the Coastal Commission regulates all coastal land use, and some areas miles inland, with say over issues as small as the impact of a tiny patch of sod or as large as a hotly contested toll road. Under state law, the entire coast must be open to the public at the mean high tide line, meaning that someone should theoretically be able to walk anywhere along the water’s edge.

Some say enforcers like Willis have too much power, relying on tips from nosy neighbors and eroding homeowners’ rights.

“I have had clients who have had heart attacks and cannot sleep at night over dealing with the Coastal Commission,” said Ronald Zumbrun, a Sacramento attorney who has represented beachfront property owners.

On a recent morning, Willis and intern Christy Norris paddled through a placid Newport Beach channel, aerial maps on their laps. The Semeniuk Slough is a saltwater marsh that once connected to the Santa Ana River. Several dozen homes back up to the waterway.

He is on a scouting mission, surveying how many residents have built illegal yards, decks and docks on protected wetland area, regarded as vital habitat for birds such as the savannah sparrow and the California least tern. The homeowners will be sent letters and ordered to remove scofflaw encroachments. He sometimes staggers such mailings over several weeks so the irate calls don’t all come in at once.

From his 10th-floor office in a mirrored glass building in downtown Long Beach, Willis takes a dozen phone calls on a typical day. Conservation groups tip him to development threatening plants and birds. Beachgoers report homeowners roping off patches of sand, claiming them as their own.

Some tips prompt urgent fact-finding visits.

In a Laguna Beach neighborhood, residents had blocked the gateway to a scenic overlook of ocean coves by stacking half a dozen trash cans. Willis had them move the bins and post signs declaring the area public.

His detective work is sometimes interrupted by his own passions -- bird sightings and plant identifications. He goes to the field with a bird book in his back pocket and a digital camera and binoculars around his neck.

Willis was raised in the tiny subdivision of Monte Nido, surrounded by state parks in the Santa Monica Mountains. His mother was an environmental education guide and his father is a chemist. Growing up minutes from the beach, Willis always thought he would be a marine biologist.

Instead he became an environmental lawyer. But after passing the bar exam and working briefly at a law firm, he became a full-time enforcer, determined to make change as a regulator rather than a litigator. Now, he must constantly weigh development and property rights against environmental protection and public access.

Sometimes, his rounds uncover nothing more than petty neighborhood disputes. But other times, they cue action. He can order developers and homeowners to halt or remove construction, and can put disciplinary lawsuits into motion.

While Willis was investigating a report of illegal gravel dumping at Bolsa Chica in Huntington Beach, Gigi Stay, 65, emerged from her home overlooking the wetland and oil field. “I can’t tell you how relieved I am that you’re here,” she told Willis, pleading with him to help stop the work in the gully below.

He assured her he would find out what could be done.

Willis strives to protect such outposts. In Southern California “we don’t have Yosemite, but we have small stretches of wildness that people really cherish.”

His work has no end. The beaches are heavily used, and vigilant residents continue to spot new cases of public access denied and sensitive habitat invaded.

But not every investigation uncovers wrongdoing.

That dirt-moving bulldozer 30 feet above shore in Corona del Mar? Legal. The diggers, it turned out, were restoring native plants.

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tony.barboza@latimes.com