Rights to Beach Paths: Gone With the Tide? : Failure to act could cost the state hundreds of access routes

Although the state Coastal Commission holds its monthly meeting this week in Eureka, on California’s northern coast, unfinished business in Southern California should be uppermost in members’ minds. Indeed, that matter should be on the agenda as an item for action.

As Times staff writers Dan Weikel and Jeff Rabin discovered, hundreds of access paths to the Pacific acquired for the public over the last 20 years are still closed because state and local governments have been slow--if not downright reticent--to take responsibility for them. Although there are unclaimed access sites in each of California’s 15 coastal counties, the great majority is in Los Angeles, Ventura, San Diego and Orange counties.

By passing Proposition 20 in 1972, California voters created the state Coastal Commission to maximize the public’s coastal access and to control waterfront development. For the last two decades, the commission has required hundreds of property owners to offer strips of land for public access as a condition for building on or near the beach.

GUARANTEED BY LAW: The escalating pace and lavishness of beachfront development, particularly in Southern California, spurred passage of Proposition 20. Although the public retains historical rights to the use of beaches up to the mean high tide line all along California’s 1,100-mile coastline--in part as a result of the state’s Mexican and Spanish law heritage--that right is almost worthless if access is hindered by “No Parking” signs or blocked by security fences and sprawling waterfront mansions.

At first the Coastal Commission required owners who wanted building permits to record deed restrictions that would allow the public to cross a part of their land. Within a few years, however, this practice was replaced by a policy requiring owners in certain cases to offer to dedicate strips of their land for public use. But a government agency or nonprofit organization must assume ownership within 21 years of the landowner’s offer of dedication; otherwise, the offer expires.

The commission has now 1,269 offers to dedicate property for walkways, trails and viewpoints along the coastline. But only one in five has been secured for public use, and the clock is fast running out on the rest.

Just 248 of the 1,269 offers have been accepted since 1980. There are deed restrictions on 437 more parcels, but state officials say they do not know how many have been honored. The result is that 1,021 offers remain unclaimed. If no government agency or nonprofit organization steps forward to accept, open, maintain and assume liability for them, the offers will expire at an accelerating pace after the turn of the century. If the state later tried to acquire those same access routes, it would have to purchase the land at market value.

ACUTE IN L.A. COUNTY: The problem is particularly acute in Los Angeles County, where the demand for beach recreation is higher than elsewhere in the state and the coastline is more developed.

A shortage of funds and personnel has hampered Coastal Commission efforts to finalize and enforce these dedications. (Only one staffer now handles this task; there used to be 12.) But lack of interest from a commission that, in recent years, has seemed more solicitous of private developers than of the public also has played a part.

To permanently secure the public’s right to these properties will not be expensive, but the commission must put a high priority on this activity and begin now to aggressively search for funding and partner organizations to manage the parcels and develop each trail, viewpoint and path. We are hard-pressed to think of a task more central to the Coastal Commission’s mandate. Or one so long neglected.