Enjoy the Sun, but Stay Out of the Sand

Ever walked down the beach, tripped over a hole dug in the sand and thought, “There oughta be a law?”

There is now.

The Laguna Beach City Council this week banned such time-honored practices as digging big holes in the sand, tossing Frisbees and staking out stretches of beach with oversized umbrellas. The idea is to give lifeguards more authority to make life easier for everyone on crowded beaches.

But the new prohibitions are not without critics.

“There’s an ordinance for everything,” grumbled Keith Hagadorn of Laguna Hills. He had to order his three school-age children to fill in a 4-foot-deep sand pit Thursday after a Laguna Beach lifeguard showed up. “The kids are having fun. That’s what we come here for.”

Up and down the curl of Main Beach on Thursday, beachgoers faced enforcement of the new amendments to Laguna’s 1970s beach ordinance.

Some complained Thursday that the change is a laughable bit of government excess.

“Are you allowed to play in the water any more?” asked Rachel Tilton, 23.

Tilton was among a few supervisors who accompanied 33 children to Laguna’s Main Beach during a YMCA summer program. Tilton and half a dozen youngsters spent about 45 minutes digging a 2 1/2-foot-deep hole at the surf line. The plan was to make a seaside puddle, something to jump into.

Then a lifeguard arrived.

“He said, ‘Don’t make it any deeper or wider, because the Jeeps can’t make it over,’ ” Tilton said. “I think he needs a bigger Jeep.”

Laguna beachgoers are now prohibited from digging holes deeper than two feet or leaving any sand hole unfilled; removing sand; playing sports that involve the throwing of balls, Frisbees or other objects; surf-casting with swimmers nearby; and swimming, surfing or scuba diving in conditions that lifeguards consider hazardous.

Umbrellas can be no bigger than 6 feet wide, to prevent groups from taking up large stretches of beach by putting up tarpaulins.

Mark Klosterman, the city’s chief of marine safety, said the ban on playing catch and putting up tarps would probably not be enforced when the beaches are empty.

The amended ordinance also gives lifeguards authority to order swimmers from treacherous seas.

“The reality is that we don’t order people out of the water due to rough waves,” Klosterman said. “We do go down to people and say there’s a red-flag surf, it’s extremely dangerous and we advise staying knee-deep. . . . [But] if that person says, ‘I don’t care, I’m going out,’ he’ll step out there and we’ll rescue him and bring him back.”

Klosterman said nearly all of the 30,000 annual code enforcement actions involving lifeguards are settled without issuing citations, which can bring fines of $1,000 and six months in jail.

Usually, Klosterman said, a lifeguard who tells someone to stop is obeyed.

“There’s no change,” he said, frustrated at the notion that it’s now illegal to have fun in Laguna Beach. “It is exactly the same thing as we have been doing and all the beach cities have done for 20 years. . . . If you came down to the beach last summer and you were playing a game of football and it was impacting on the safety of others, the game would be stopped.”

Tilton, though, said beach life is different now.

Last summer, the YMCA brought a group of kids to the same beach. They dug a deep hole in the sand, she said, and nobody complained. This year, they got busted.

“It was as deep as I was and three feet across,” Tilton said. “I needed help from another leader to get out. That’s why I was shocked when he came up [Thursday] and said to stop digging.”

There was, she said, a certain humor to it.

“I thought he was going to put me in ‘timeout,’ ” she said.