Beach Villagers Battle the Sea--and Coastal Panel

One wintry night in 1980, as the high, angry surf pounded Whalers’ Village Club, residents of the exclusive community in Ventura County made a hasty decision. They ordered a sea wall built of boulders to blunt the force of the waves, which were washing out so much sand that one house dropped 10 inches in the middle of the night.

But now their rock pile has become the center of a battle that will affect not only private communities all along the California coast but also the beach-going public.

The California Coastal Commission wants to exact a price in return for allowing that sea wall to remain: Whalers’ Village must open its private beach to the public. The condition is a standard requirement because the Coastal Commission believes that private sea walls cause erosion of nearby public beaches.

Chooses to Fight

Whalers’ Village has chosen to fight the public access condition. It won in the trial court but lost on appeal and, last year, the California Supreme Court refused to hear its case. The club now has appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which is expected to announce soon whether it will review the case.

The outcome could have an impact well beyond California because communities and even states around the nation increasingly are having to balance the proliferation of sea walls in recent years against the need for public beach access.

The lawsuit may even influence the unresolved scientific dispute over whether such rock barriers do indeed significantly affect beach erosion.

But to those who live in Whalers’ Village, the case is clear. “They’re telling me (that) in order to protect my home, they’re going to confiscate my property,” said one resident, Don Paul, a former Los Angeles Rams linebacker and now a fast-food entrepreneur. “It’s a very, very heartburn, indigestion point.”

If the court decides to take up the case, “either way, 15 years of debate will finally be clarified,” said Whalers’ Village attorney Charles E. Greenberg.

Residents of many other California beach havens are paying close attention to the case. The celebrity-laden Malibu Colony, and Surfside Colony, Capistrano Beach and Blue Lagoon in Orange County also have chosen to sue the Coastal Commission. And in San Diego County, a group of citizens has sued the City of Del Mar and the state Lands Commission, objecting to sea wall repair that was permitted without requiring public access.

“Everyone’s watching Whalers’ Village,” said Surfside Colony attorney Arthur Cook.

The Coastal Commission contends that concrete sea walls, rock revetments and wooden bulkheads put up by private communities all cause a backwash that erodes sand from nearby public beaches. And eventually, commission officials say, the beach in front of the sea wall also disappears, erasing state-owned tideland areas to which the public has a legal right.

With only less than half of California’s 1,000-mile beachfront available for public use, said Peter Douglas, Coastal Commission executive director, “the least that can be required is that you share with the public the use of the beach that’s left.”

The dispute has become so bitter and emotional that, in 1983, the city administrator of Seal Beach called the commission’s stance “blackmail” and offered to go to jail to defend what he regarded as residents’ right to build seawalls and still keep their privacy.

In recent years, the state Legislature also has tried to deal with the controversy. And in 1983, it passed legislation stating that the repair or replacement of any sea wall would not trigger the public access condition, as long as the structure is no closer to the ocean than it had been. But new sea walls would still fall under the Coastal Commission’s authority. “That was a pretty good compromise,” said Bill Allayaud, the commission’s legislative liaison.

May Be Overreacting

But some experts say that California may be overreacting by requiring public access for every new ocean barrier.

“There’s a difference between a . . . concrete-faced sea wall and a permeable structure like a rock revetment,” said Gary Griggs, a coastal geologist at the University of California, Santa Cruz. He said a revetment may be preferable because it results in less beach erosion. Griggs said the issue “deserves some more focused study.”

But other experts argue that the state has not gone far enough. They advocate a complete ban on new construction of wave barriers.

“During a real storm, revetments cause as much erosion as a sea wall,” said Orrin Pilkey, a coastal geologist at Duke University.

“I think it’s a critical issue for the state of California.” Allowing homeowners to exchange public access for sea walls is “a very shortsighted trade-off,” Pilkey said.

Such debate is resonating all around the country. In North Carolina, the state has not permitted construction of any ocean barriers since 1984. In Florida, the Vero Beach City Council election in March was billed as “the sea walls vs. the no walls.” The “no walls” candidates won, and the council was expected to quickly enact an ordinance to forbid sea wall construction.

And Texas has sued a developer on one Gulf Coast island and 16 property owners on another, seeking removal of illegal sea walls. None are allowed. Ocean storms are “the risk they take by building there,” said Ken Cross, an assistant attorney general in Austin, Tex. “It’s a hard and harsh rule, but Mother Nature’s harsh.”

In California, the Coastal Commission routinely grants emergency permits for sea walls when communities are threatened by storm. Only later does it generally require public access as a condition for a permanent permit. From 1977 to 1985, only five of 897 barrier construction requests--nearly all from private parties--were denied, according to Jim McGrath, a permit analyst for the commission.

The applications continue to flow in, especially in Southern California and in the Santa Cruz area, where oceanfront homes are built on sandy beaches rather than atop cliffs.

The fortifications began appearing in great numbers after the storms of 1978, 1980 and 1983, which caused towering and destructive waves.

“What we’re experiencing in California is a creeping but, no question, significant armoring of our coast,” commission director Douglas said.

For years, residents of the Whalers’ Village Club say, they had assumed that their town houses were beyond the ocean’s reach. When the club was built in the summer of 1969, the private beach extended for more than 100 feet beyond their sliding glass doors and wooden decks. Even in winter, the sand stretched for at least 50 feet.

But with the torrential storms in 1978, for the first time, “I saw waves that looked like they were coming from the top of the world,” resident John Sweetland recalled.

That March, Whalers’ Village families managed to save their homes by piling sandbags as a barrier against the crashing waves. But by the time the sea had calmed, much of the sand on which the homes had rested was gone; the caissons that support the structures stood exposed. The nine posts marking the boundary between the Whalers’ Village beach and the public Yerba Buena Beach had been ripped out.

Seven months later, the club sought a permit for a sea wall from the South Coast Regional Commission, the forerunner of the state Coastal Commission. The agency’s staff recommended approval--if Whalers’ Village would formally dedicate the beach for public access.

Withdraw Application

The residents withdrew the application.

Ironically, Don Paul said, Whalers’ Village families had traditionally let outsiders stroll, and even linger, on their beach. “It never bothered us,” Paul said. “We walk on other people’s beaches, so we don’t mind when someone walks on ours,” his wife, Charlotte, added.

The club has a cement wall between the public beach and its parking lot and paddle tennis courts. A chain-link fence with a lock protects the houses’ inland-facing entranceways. On the steep driveway leading down to the club from Pacific Coast Highway, a poster announces “Members Only” and threatens that “Violators Will Be Prosecuted.”

But the beach itself can be reached easily from the adjacent public property. It bears none of the markings of exclusivity that adorn some other private shorefronts. No border wall runs from the edge of the club to the sea; no “No Trespassing” signs warn strangers away. Even the uprooted posts were never replaced.

Still, Whalers’ Village families say that there have been occasions when they were grateful for the right to order unruly intruders off their beach.

And so it was that Whalers’ Village was without the protection of a sea wall when the winter storms hit in 1980. Paul recalled his doorbell being rung at 1:30 a.m. by a neighbor who announced that the house next to Paul’s had dropped nearly a foot. The two quickly made their way through the club, alerting residents of impending danger.

Paul then called a quarry in Camarillo and soon, boulders weighing five to seven tons each were being dropped onto the Whalers’ Village sand. Gaps were filled with gravel and smaller rocks, weighing five to 150 pounds each.

That August, the Coastal Commission approved the sea wall--with the public access condition, setting off the legal skirmishing.

In December, 1983, Ventura County Superior Court Judge Robert J. Soares ruled in the club’s favor, calling the commission’s requirement “an unlawful taking of private property without justification. . . .”

Reverse Decision

But last October, the state 2nd District Court of Appeal reversed Soares’ decision. In December, the state Supreme Court declined to review the case, and then the Village petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court.

Paul, the club treasurer, said that Whalers’ Village so far has spent more than $100,000 on the sea wall and in legal fees.

The residents are aware that their affluence may keep them from gaining widespread sympathy. More than half of the Whalers’ Village owners also have another house elsewhere.

“It’s so easy for people who haven’t got the investment in here to say that we’re greedy,” Paul said.

“I really don’t think we’re asking for a lot,” his wife added. “God, give us a break. I don’t care how many homes I have, this is still my house and I should be able to protect it.”