Re: Is California Planning to Steal the Malibu Coastline from Residents?

On 2025-05-28 10:18 PM, BTR1701 wrote:

On May 28, 2025 at 6:43:17 PM PDT, "shawn" <nanoflower@notforg.m.a.i.l.com>
wrote:
 

On Thu, 29 May 2025 00:12:25 -0000 (UTC), BTR1701 <atropos@mac.com>
wrote:
>

On May 28, 2025 at 3:41:33 PM PDT, ""Adam H. Kerman"" <ahk@chinet.com> wrote:
>

  BTR1701 <atropos@mac.com> wrote:

  May 28, 2025 at 12:56:17 PM PDT, Adam H. Kerman <ahk@chinet.com>:

  BTR1701 <atropos@mac.com> wrote:

 

  For the last six months, the rebuilding from the fires in the
  Palisades has proceeded-- unreasonably slowly, to be sure, but
  proceeded nevertheless. The same is true in Altadena, the site of
  the second great fire last January. But the residents of Malibu have
  been frozen in time by the state. Nothing is happening. No debris
  clean-up, no environmental studies, permit applications are held in
  limbo, etc. And now the residents are hearing rumors of the reason for
  this: the state of California doesn't like people living on the beach.
  State bureaucrats have always taken a dim view of homes built right on
  the shoreline but haven't been able to do anything about it because
  those homes were built in an era when people were mostly free to do
  as they liked and the massive regulatory state didn't exist. . . .

 

  I don't think you characterized this correctly. It's my understanding
  that there never were exclusive riparian rights and that the public
  always had access to the beaches but the state never enforced it to
  appeased wealthy people who illegally grabbed the beaches for
  themselves.

 

  The public was excluded but it was illegal to do so, but that's not like
  the Great Lakes in which the law is completely muddled, that the public
  can be legally excluded, and when lots were sold off in Chicago, lots on
  partly or entirely submerged lands were sold off because no one bothered
  to map the shoreline first.

 

  In my opinion, homes might be built a reasonable distance back from the
  shoreline but beach access must never be exclusive.

 

  Of course, you are going to tell me that the distance will be
  unreasonable, and I'm sure you're correct.

 

  The law in California is that the mean high tide line down to the water is
  public property and cannot be owned by anyone from the Mexico border up to
  Oregon. (Technically, there's an exception for the federal government in
  places like the SEAL training base in Coronado, the Army depot at Point
Dume,
  the Marine Corps base at Camp Pendleton, etc. The federal government does
own
  those beaches and can exclude the public from them, especially during live
  military exercises.) . . .

    Thanks for all tnat. We're under that weird Supreme Court ruling that
  tried to interpret whether a common law rule establishing riparian
  rights which wasn't based on parliamentary law but royal decree. The
  decree established riparian rights to the center of water, which might
  have made sense if a small creek divided ajacent lots, but sure as hell
  does not make sense for the Great Lakes or even a navigable river.
    Did common law even apply? Did the federal government's rights get
  inherited by Illinois? I've tried to follow but I get bogged down.
    But we lack access rights except from a public beach and these do get
  blocked.
    So, exactly how far back from the high water mark is California trying
  to preclude rebuilding? It may not be a bad idea but it had damn well
  better compensate land owners.

>
They (theoretically, just rumors, remember) want to take the whole thing from
the west/south side of Pacific Coast Highway to the water.
>
E.g., in the below photo, everything south of the roadway would be condemned
and appropriated by the state.
>
https://ibb.co/9Stqkg1

>
That is a lot of land
A lot of very expensive land.

 Yeah, that's the one thing that makes me think it's just a pipe dream for
them. Yes, they'd love to do it, but financially it's a non-starter given the
state's current dire economic situation.
 

All they have to do is think of a reason to seize the land that exempts them from paying market value for the property.
Here in Ontario, we had an interesting case about 30 years ago. There was a provincial park called Ipperwash on the Ontario side of Lake Huron. The area of the park had originally been an Indian reserve but it was apparently seized by the government during WWII for use as a military base - and never given back after the war. In fact it still had some military buildings and vehicles in a fenced off area of the park when I went there with my family in the early 70s. The Indians apparently made some efforts to get their reserve back (or at least the part that had been expropriated) but weren't having any luck. Finally, in the 90s, they essentially seized the park and the base section and defied all attempts to evict them. There was an armed standoff, some property was damaged, and one Indian was fatally shot by police. The government ultimately backed down and the (former) provincial park and army base remain in the hands of the Indians and the rest of us are forbidden to be on that land. I drove by there a few years back and there's still a burned out car visible from the highway that serves the area; it's painted with a provocative slogan that I can't remember.
If Gov. Nuisance can establish some right of the local Indians to the land between the PCH and the ocean, maybe he can get away with chasing out the folks in Malibu WITHOUT compensation because they "stole" the land from the Indians in the first place.
--
Rhino