California Surveyors Forums

Here is another beach access dispute brewing in my area.

http://www.ksbw.com/news/coastal-commis ... c/40215126

It is a public beach, but it appears you can gain exclusive access for the low price of $100 a year!

Thanks Mike, that case popped into my head when I first read the article. The issue is, there is access, but it has been closed off and they charge $100 per year for a key to use access. There are also many factors we do not know.

I made a comment on facebook, on this article, about how one of the parties should just hire a Professional Land Surveyor instead of dropping a ton of money on litigation, this is a popular comment I received back;
"It comes down to mean tide line. There is no provision to actually establish a basis of what that is. Another example of legislators writing laws with out actually thinking through if they are complete enough to be understandable. In short, nobody defined a time period to judge the historical mean tide line. Do you go 20 years back? Do you go 50 years back? Do you go 100 years back? You get different answers based on what version of historical you use. No surveyor is going to put their name on that."
This bothers me. If you have some wiring issues at home, you call an electrician, if you have a backup problem in your bathroom, you call a plumber, if you have an issue about property, you should call a land surveyor ... not a lawyer!

Sorry to take my own thread on another bearing, but that's the way this traverse worked! Just FYI, I did reply back and inform the commentor about tidal bench marks and their 19 year epoch periods and a land surveyor's role using this information.

As you may know, I am the expert working on the Martins Beach case. There is a lot of misunderstanding as to ownership rights and what the law says by the Coastal Commission and the State Lands Commission. Both agencies only consider the notion of sovereign rights and not private rights. It is a pronounced defect in how these state agencies think and act. This has been proven time and time again. As you know, in any boundary dispute, there are a minimum of two parties involved. These state agencies act as if they are the only parties of interest and they act as if they and only they can dictate what the law is, i.e. the King has spoken. it is really unfortunate as their lack of understanding and resultant actions create a lot of headaches for private property owners.

Check out the attached as a good example.

Do you think the appeal court got in wrong in this Martin's beach case, by allowing the public rights to the road, parking lot and beach?

I am curious as to other's thoughts.

Imagine if the court upheld Friends' interpretation of Article X, Section 4.
And imagine if charging a nominal fee and granting permission to enter private property was to be considered a right of the public, a prescriptive right.

The public would have right to cross every privately owned oceanfront parcel from Imperial Beach to Crescent City in order to access the public trust lands seaward of the mean high water line. That is an insane infringement on private property rights. Revolutionary War type infringement.

I can't believe it went this far. I talked to those Friends lawyers four years ago when this got started and asked them to imagine exactly what I stated above. The response I received from them was "we shall see."

I've surfed up and down the California coast for the better part of my life, but Hell No on that!

imagine there was a war and that property that was held and owned by your family for hundreds of years was in dispute and you now had to spend decades defending your property and thousands upon thousands of dollars only to be told that you did not own the property afterall.....

Sounds like a California story to me Mr. Ince.

Or like how the City of Oakland was created.