State Shifts on Access to Beaches

The state Coastal Conservancy edged away Thursday from a policy to open every potential public walkway to California beaches, including many in exclusive oceanfront neighborhoods where resistance is often strongest.

The conservancy agreed two years ago to ensure public access to the most contentious beach easements, according to officials of its sister agency, the California Coastal Commission.

Many of those strips of land are in expensive enclaves in Malibu and Mendocino and Orange counties, where high fences or shoulder-to-shoulder mansions block the public’s access to beaches.

On Thursday, the conservancy’s board voted 4 to 3 for its staff to craft a policy that would repeat its intent to secure those access ways, but also include a list of reasons why the board could reject them.

“They can sugarcoat it, but it’s backsliding from the original commitment,” said Sara Wan, Coastal Commission chairwoman and conservancy board member. “The intent is to find a way to turn these down for any number of reasons.”

From the secluded beaches in Southern California to rugged bluffs in Northern California, some of the most scenic stretches of the state’s shoreline remain off limits to beach lovers, sunbathers and surfers despite the intent of the 25-year-old Coastal Act to improve access.

In the 1970s and ‘80s, the Coastal Commission required hundreds of property owners to offer easements for public access as a condition of building on or near the beach. Many of those public rights of way exist on property owned by celebrities and other wealthy people, such as the Malibu estates of producer David Geffen and “American Bandstand” host Dick Clark.

The agency’s ability to designate access points has been significantly curtailed since 1987, when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled it illegal to force property owners to dedicate access in exchange for building rights. But the courts have upheld the validity of such easements that were dedicated before the ruling.

The vast majority of the 1,269 potential walkways and trails are on beaches and run parallel with the ocean. But others are perpendicular to the coastline, connecting roads to beaches, and those are usually the most contentious.

Only about one in three of the easements has been secured for public use; the remainder remain off limits to the public because of government inaction.

The reason is that for the strips to be opened, a government agency or nonprofit group must agree to adopt them, maintain walkways or staircases and assume liability should anyone get hurt.

Furthermore, most of these legal “offers to dedicate” land were written to expire in 21 years. It was assumed that would give cities, counties, park agencies or others enough time to claim the land, build stairways and install signs and trash cans.

Yet lawsuits have tied up some local agencies and scared off others. In one case, Santa Barbara newspaper owner and billionaire Wendy McCaw has gone to court to to fight public access to the narrow strip of dry sand below her bluff-top estate. She lost twice in Superior Court but has appealed her two lawsuits.

Potential access rights to hundreds of walkways are set to expire in the next five years. Before that happens, the Coastal Commission wants to find agencies to adopt the walkways. The panel is barred by law from performing that function.

It has recruited the State Lands Commission as well as state and local park agencies. Eventually, it turned to the conservancy to handle the most disputed walkways, ones that no other agency would touch. Funded by the state, the conservancy is under the jurisdiction of the Resources Department.