Shoring Up the Coastline : Proposed Legislation Would Make Violations a Criminal Act and Impose Stiff Fines

Under the law, Californians need permission to dump trash into a marsh or scrape the top off a ridgeline overlooking the Pacific to make a flat place for a house. But these, and other, violations of the California Coastal Act happen all the time, and small wonder. The state Coastal Commission has only one full-time enforcement officer, and all that she can do to stop a diligent violator is line up in the state’s crowded court system.

A bill to change this has passed the state Senate and is working its way through the Assembly. The new enforcement powers and higher fines it provides are crucial to prevent further irreparable damage to the coastline. The Assembly should rush the bill to Gov. George Deukmejian, who should reconsider his position on coastal protection and sign it.

Sponsored by Sens. Herschel Rosenthal (D-Los Angeles) and Ed Davis (R-Valencia), the bill gives the commission’s executive director authority to order violators to cease and desist. This way damage will not pile up while the commission waits for a judge.

Borrowing an idea already in force in Santa Barbara, the bill would create a system in which enforcement of the coastal law would pay most of its own way. The state commission, or local agencies that enforce the law in their own areas, would bill a violator for what it costs to handle his case. This is important because one reason the commission is down to a single enforcement officer is that the governor systematically cut its budget during much of the 1980s. The new approach to the costs of enforcement would protect the commission as well as the coast.

For the first time, willful violation of the law would be a criminal act, punishable by fines as steep as $10,000 for each day the violation continued and up to a year in jail. Civil fines would increase as well, and the commission itself could impose fines without going through the courts.

About five violations are reported every day, either by local officials or people who stumble across such things as canyons being turned into landfills by the light of the moon. Nancy Cave, head of enforcement for the commission, thinks that twice as many violations go unreported. One thing they do know: Of the reported cases, half are in Los Angeles and Orange counties.

Our coast is one of the wonders of the world. Trying to protect it with a law that can’t be enforced could be worse than no protection, because it creates the impression that everything is all right. The Rosenthal-Davis bill will help.