Who Gets to Use the Beach?

Welcome to Beach Week, a celebration of the best place on earth.

With enough money, you can own the beach. Or at least you can behave like you do. There are a lot of bad actors on this front, but two you’ve likely heard of are tech billionaires Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, who, in 2016, built a wall around their Kauai estate they purchased at the dismay of locals, greatly diminishing access to a stretch of pristine coastline once easily enjoyed by the public.

They’re certainly not the first: Richard Nixon did something similar in the ’70s with his San Clemente, California, estate. He completely shut down the stretch of sand in front of it for five years, albeit over safety concerns, though he continued taking walks there as a sitting president. Ironically, his private strolls gave him the clairvoyance to turn adjacent federal land into San Onofre State Beach, which in turn gave surfers access to some of the best waves in the world.

As it turns out, presidents, tech moguls, and stoners can agree: The beach is a wonderful place. But whose is it? And who decides that?

For many states with a coastline, legally, it belongs to the public. Around the time Nixon resigned and reopened the strand in front of "The Western White House," in response to a string of man-made disasters, California passed a proposition to protect and preserve the coast that also made clear who the beach was for, granting everyone—presidents, tech moguls, stoners, and everyone else—"maximum access, which shall be conspicuously posted." The same goes in Texas, where laws go back even further. In most places, everything below the mean high tide line is yours, yours, and yours.

For years, however, they’ve been acting like it’s theirs. Coastal landowners in the U.S. including Zuckerberg and Chan have a habit of redrawing lines in the sand, so to speak. In Malibu, access to Escondido Beach had been blocked for decades by wealthy residents the Los Angeles Times has reported used considerable resources to do so. Before, in the ’80s, owners of homes flanking an easement that led to the beach had fudged property lines and obscured access by paving new driveways and planting vegetation. But earlier this month, in a huge victory for the Coastal Commission, and the public at large, the easement is now being restored by the current homeowners at no small cost to them, redistributing to many what had been hoarded by a few.

One watchdog looking out for our shorelines is the Surfrider Foundation, which backed the Coastal Commission’s yearslong effort in Malibu, among many others. Since being established there in 1984, the nonprofit and its widespread network of passionate volunteers has protected coasts across the U.S., whether by organizing beach cleanups or blowing whistles when the rich get greedy. Dwell spoke with Angela Howe, Surfrider’s senior legal director, to learn about battles won, new ones being fought in places like Chicago and Texas, and what we can do as individuals to keep coastlines in the right hands: ours.

Dwell: For those who aren’t familiar, can you talk about what Surfrider does?

Angela Howe: Our mission is the protection and enjoyment of the world’s oceans, waves, and beaches for all people. And we really want to make sure that everyone can get to the beach. In turn, if it’s something they love, they often become stewards of the beach. And that’s what Surfrider members are. We do beach cleanups, water quality testing, and obviously want to take care of the beach and the coastline.

So getting people involved becomes a method of creating a larger community around preserving beach access.

Access and protection. Protection and enjoyment, but to enjoy it, you need access.

What are the ways access becomes limited?

You know, there’s always a slew [laughs]. Our grassroots network—we now have 80 chapters nationwide and over 130 school clubs—is always on the ground and using the beaches and we often find out when they’re cut off. It can be anything from gates or misleading signage, to obstacles put in paths to the beach. We’ve run into hired security guards, rock walls, and shrubbery. So you have these physical blockades, but then you also have diminished parking, or all of a sudden parking is only for private residents, and that really erodes meaningful access.

Another complicating factor is the coastal zone to the mean high tide watermark is a public trust resource, depending on the state that you’re in. That’s where you should be able to walk up and down the coast laterally and enjoy those resources that are meant to be taken care of by the state for everyone. And with sea level rise, we’re seeing a diminishing of beach width. Beachfront property owners sometimes put up seawalls to fight oncoming waves, and in doing so, they’re trying to stop Mother Nature, but that obviously affects the amount of beach that the public can enjoy.

What’s the biggest threat to beach access, in your view? Can you share a couple of examples?

As Surfrider’s senior legal director I often do litigation, and one interesting case from the past few years has to do with a beautiful pocket beach in Half Moon Bay, Martin’s Beach, that was used by the public for generations before a property owner decided to make it private. But suddenly it was going to be privatized by venture capitalist Vinod Khosla. So in 2013, Surfrider sued him and won under the Coastal Act. He couldn’t put gates up or higher security guards without getting a coastal development permit.

One other example is in Texas. The state’s Open Beaches Act from 1959, I think the oldest beach access law, proclaims free and unrestricted public access to state-owned beaches bordering the Gulf of Mexico. It originally came from driving on the beach. This year, our chapters there rallied around a fight against bad beach access legislation which tried to diminish access in favor of more privatized beaches, basically giving rights to beachfront homeowners. Because our network is more and more savvy, we’re able to unite at the statewide level and help defend against these kinds of threats.

And why is it important to preserve beach access from where Surfrider stands?

I think there’s definitely that creating-stewards-of-the-beach angle. But we’re also learning more and more about the mental health benefits of going to the beach, being outside, having somewhere where you can play and relax and gather with your family. And for surfers too, and water sports people, there’s definitely that angle where you can get exercise and relief from day-to-day stress.

It seems like a slippery slope. If you don’t fight the battle against the venture capitalist in Half Moon Bay, then more and more beaches will shut down at a quickening pace, and before you know it, there’s very little beach access left. Does that feel true?

The threats are many. It’s people cutting off entire stretches through blocking a perpendicular path to the beach, and sea levels rising, and property owners wanting to protect their private property, so they build out into the water. So you’re getting less horizontal beach. We’re really trying to protect against many threats to public access.

It feels like a fundamental right to be able to step up to the end of the earth, so to speak. And the ocean isn't the only place that happens. Can you talk about your work in Chicago, or other places that don’t have an ocean?

I know our chapters were activating because North Shore Beaches were charging residents and non-residents different fees. If you’re effectively keeping out a segment of the society, that’s a lack of equitable access. Barriers to beach access can extend beyond physical barriers. They can include economic, social, and cultural barriers. And those come from policies, regulations, and planning programs.

Do things feel like they’re getting better?

I’ve been with Surfrider for 16 years now, and I’ve actually seen our network become more sophisticated and more engaged, at the local level especially, but even at the state and federal level. We’ve gotten better at understanding policies and how they affect the health of our coast lines, but also how they affect our ability to access it.

Top image by Mike Killion/Surfrider Foundation

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