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

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.