TEN MILES NORTH OF SANTA CRUZ, just south of the RMC Lone Star cement plant, Highway 1 curves and dips into Davenport, a hamlet snuggled against the hills on the inland side of the road. If you’re driving south you could easily miss it, for the view of Monterey Bay is entrancing. Should you pull off the road, as many travelers do, and follow one of the meandering footpaths across the bluff, you would find a classic view of the California coast: a sandy beach, steep sea cliffs, and waves breaking against rocky shores.

The only building on the ocean side of the Coast Highway in Davenport is a low-slung wooden shed. It was built for the railway, then used as an agricultural packing shed, then leased to Odwalla Juice Company until 1998, when Odwalla moved to Dinuba. Now the building’s owner, Fred Bailey, and his partner, Greg Steltenpohl, a founder of Odwalla, are trying to convert it into a complex with a juicery, restaurant, spa, greenhouse, three visitor accommodation units, two residences, offices, and possibly some conference and retail space. They have proposed to put a 66-car parking lot on the bluff—a bluff they refer to as a “dusty lot,” and others call a “precious meadow.”

The Coastal Act encourages appropriate visitor-serving development. But it requires that environmental and other factors be considered before a permit is issued. If built as proposed, the complex would be more massive and more conspicuous than the weathered old shed, and its roofline would rise up to six feet above the shed’s current 24-foot height. The parking lot would occupy open space that people have long used to get to the beach, sit down for picnics, or just look out on the ocean. It would bring more tourists, some jobs, and other economic benefits to Davenport but also more traffic and demand for water. It would impinge on ocean views from Highway 1, and could also trigger the process that has led to urbanization in many rural areas. Other old barns and sheds stand on blufftop terraces, amid row crops and pastures, with a truck or tractor the only vehicle in sight. Other landowners will want to convert them, or sell to developers who will. If land speculation begins, the survival of farming in the region would be endangered.

Davenport is the kind of village that is disappearing along the California coast. Many of its 200 or so residents live in modest cottages. The town has a school, a church, a post office, a bakery, three small restaurants (one also sells handicrafts, another has a bakery, bar, and grill), a 12-unit bed and breakfast, a knife-maker’s shop, and a glassblower’s studio. The proposed multi-use complex would be the biggest structure and business in town and could become a catalyst for development of a more luxurious kind.

The California Coastal Act, passed in 1976, was a trade-off. Private development would continue, in an orderly fashion, within the designated Coastal Zone, but it was not to impose on the public the costs of any negative impacts on the environment. The public’s right to reach the sea was to be protected, as were coastal farms, natural resources, and the special character of coastal communities. One side of the deal has been kept: more than 90 percent of all coastal permit applications are approved. But the public is being shortchanged, partly because the cumulative impacts of development often go unnoticed and are not considered over time.

“Cumulative impacts are the combined effects of a series of development activities or natural effects,” a Coastal Commission report states. “Although an individual project may not greatly affect the natural environment, the cumulative impacts created by many different projects over time may significantly alter these environments.”

The construction of new buildings—be they large or small, in densely urban areas or on the rural coast—is not the only source of troublesome cumulative impacts. Local restrictions on beach access and parking, and small private encroachments on public space also combine to create substantial effects, not just locally but on entire regions.

By the year 2040, California’s population is expected to be almost twice that of 1990. Recent data also show that while the country as a whole has been getting older, this state is getting younger. One in eight of the nation’s children and young people under 20 lived in California in 1990. By 2040 one in five will live in California, and one in 13 in the Los Angeles area alone. All will have the right to enjoy the shore. How well they will be able to exercise that right depends in large part on the cumulative impacts of uncounted small battles now under way—for a wild open bluff and an open view from the road, for a trail used informally for generations, for 10-foot-wide pathways from road to sand, against encroachments into public right-of-ways, the opportunity to hike or ride the length of the 1,100-mile coast, the right to watch the sunlight move across natural bluffs.

“A Delicate Balance”

THE DAVENPORT COMPLEX was approved by the County and appealed to the Commission by local resident Susan Young and others. The Commission considered the appeal in July. Hardly anyone opposed the project completely; but many residents and their allies contended that it’s too big, out of scale, and out of character with the community. Mostly, they wanted to keep the parking lot off the bluff, which is a popular whale-watching spot. Gray whales are easy to see during their migrations, and, if you’re lucky, you might even see a blue or humpback whale. They asked the Commission to imagine their “small but precious meadow . . . packed with cars glistening in the sun.”

Supporters of the project as proposed praised it as “visionary,” and “elegant,” and said it would benefit whale watchers because benches and one or two trails would be built. They evoked the unknown future: What if the owners decided to sell to someone with “deep pockets” who could wait until the makeup of the Coastal Commission changed to a more favorable blend?

Commission staff recommended that the current “footprint” and “skyprint” of the packing shed be maintained, so that the ground occupied by the new building, and its size, stay the same. It recommended that parking stay at the bottom of the bluff, where people now park, and on the grounds of the building, and that the owners have the option to park some vehicles within the building, on the lower floor.

Executive Director Peter Douglas said that a “delicate balancing act” was required. The Commission instructed the permit applicants to work with Commission staff for a smaller and more appropriate project. In this case, it appeared that the Coastal Act was working.

Where’s the Beach?

THE COASTAL ACT WAS NOT MEANT to stop growth. It was adopted to make sure that public and natural resource needs get a share of the benefits, and that they are considered before development forecloses options.

Once public access across private lands is lost, for example, it may be nearly impossible to regain it—especially in urban areas with homes on the beach. The fight it takes does not pay off with a commensurate reward in terms of access. Local government is likely to shy away because the voice of the oceanfront property owner, who feels he’s defending his home, is louder and more powerful than that of all the people who merely want to go to the beach.

A vivid case in point is Malibu, where beachfront homeowners have blocked the public from exercising its right to reach the shore. The Malibu situation was a major catalyst for the 1972 voter initiative embodied in the 1976 Coastal Act.

On a recent hot Sunday, Ford Lowcock drove with his wife Josie and their little daughter from the San Fernando Valley to Malibu, intending to spend a cool afternoon on Broad Beach, which they had not previously explored. Lowcock, a professional photographer, packed his camera, his wife carried a picnic lunch, and Heather, who is six, took her pail and shovel. They are not likely to go to Broad Beach again, at least not for relaxation.

“I was really upset,” Lowcock said. “There were private property signs at each house. A private security guard was sitting under an umbrella at a table in the private section of the beach, watching up and down the beach with binoculars. The property owners, or their friends, were sitting on knolls overlooking all the people who wanted to be where they were, and they seemed to be helping the guard on cell phones. The guard would get into a three-wheeled motorcycle ATV, ride on the beach, and tell people to leash their dogs. But property owners’ dogs were running wild and free. Two of them hopped on our blanket and ate my daughter’s chips, but nobody seemed to care. It was pretty amazing, very split, the haves and the have-nots. Chains run down along the alley we came on, and people sit on blankets between these chains because it’s warmer there than by the water, where the other people are. It’s pretty amazing.”

Broad Beach is one of the most pleasant beaches in Malibu, being reasonably remote from the highway, and wide enough to accommodate a lot of people. But although it adjoins Zuma County Beach, the most heavily used beach in California, it remains, by-and-large, the private reserve of beachfront residents, who have defeated decades-long efforts by public agencies to enable the public to share more of this beach. The same holds true along much of the Malibu shoreline. A wall of private homes blocks access from the inland side much of the way, while on the beach the public is confined to the water’s edge by signs, guards, and other deterrents.

But aren’t our beaches public? Don’t we all have a common-law right to enjoy them? The answer isn’t a simple yes or no, according to Curtis L. Fossum, senior staff counsel for the State Lands Commission, which has jurisdiction over the state’s tidelands. In Europe the beaches have been open to everyone since Roman times. In the states of Oregon, Texas, Hawaii, and Washington, and also in Mexico and British Columbia, the public has the right to be on the sand up to the vegetation line. But California’s public trust doctrine, as it has been interpreted by the courts thus far, limits public access to below the Mean High Tide Line (MHTL)—a line that does not really exist. It is only a statistical construct, difficult to establish and in constant flux.

In the absence of official surveys and definitions, property owners produce their own surveys monthly and post the results on their signs. These may or not be accurate, and they certainly are not official, but they keep people at the damp edge of the beach.

There are some places where the public’s towels might stay dry: the Coastal Commission requires property owners who seek permits for seawalls or other protective barriers to offer an access easement on the beach to compensate for beach loss. The state Lands Commission has agreed to accept 124 such easements thus far. But these easements are not officially mapped or marked.

The Commission has also required that property owners who build along beaches offer to dedicate public access easements from the nearest road or street to the shore. In Malibu, 15 such easement offers (OTDs) have been made, but to date, 11 of them continue to exist only on paper because nobody has come forward to build the accessways and manage them. “Every attempt to open these OTDs to the public has been opposed by the owners,” says Brenda Buxton, the Coastal Conservancy project manager who has most recently struggled with this problem. “Some have mature trees growing in them by now.”

Much of Malibu’s shoreline was in private ownership long before 1972, but for years people crossed private lands to reach the sand. The use of such trails across private property for five years or more can create a prescriptive right that enables the public to continue to use private property to access the shoreline. That right needs to be established through a legal process, however, or it can be lost to private development.

As the public is kept away from some beaches, other beaches become more crowded, and conflicts between visitors and nearby residents increase. Complaints about noise at night have led to beach curfews. (See Coast & Ocean, Summer 1995.) The unintended effect has been more noise on beaches without curfews, and further complaints, leading to more curfews. Each small action, by itself, might not seem like a big deal. Together, they are nibbling away at the public’s ability to reach and enjoy the coast.

Along California’s urbanized shoreline, there may be no other community so fiercely committed to keeping the beach private as Malibu. But many other urban beachfront communities limit beach access primarily to nearby residents by imposing various kinds of restrictions, barriers, and private encroachments.

For more on this, read the Summer 1999 Coast & Ocean.

The First Regional View

IN 1993, WITH HELP OF FEDERAL funding, the Coastal Commission undertook a multi-year pilot Regional Cumulative Assessment Project (ReCAP) for the Monterey Bay region, encompassing an 83-mile coastline, from the San Mateo–Santa Cruz County line to Point Lobos in Monterey County. The study was based largely on records of permit actions by local governments and the Commission, with a focus on the years between 1983–93. A similar ReCAP was completed in 1998 for the 32-mile Ventura County–Malibu area, from Point Mugu to Topanga Canyon. A third is planned in San Luis Obispo County.

The Monterey Bay study found that the public’s ability to use coastal access sites had become more constrained, even while some major access facilities were built. In the Ventura–Malibu area, parklands were expanded, but public access was lagging. Two County beach areas including blufftop area suitable for parking in Malibu—Dan Blocker and El Sol Beaches—are not open, while Malibu Bluffs State Park, bought in 1979 with $6.8 million in bond funds, is still being “temporarily” used for community ballfields. Signs stating “Private Beach” and “Private Property” were on beaches “throughout much of the ReCAP area.”

The Fortified Coast

A MAJOR FINDING in the Monterey Bay ReCAP study was that “current coastal policies support the use of public shoreline and public resources to protect private property, and if the current situation continues, more and more of the shoreline will be lost as a public resource.”

Riprap and vertical walls to protect private properties are usually built on the public shore at “substantial public cost, both in terms of subsidies such as low-interest loans, disaster relief funds, and joint public/private ventures, as well as loss of beach area, beach access, and coastal aesthetics.”

Because riprap walls encroach at least 20 feet onto the public beach and vertical walls take up at least four feet, the public has already lost 25 acres of beach to these structures on Monterey Bay and could lose about 60 with continued implementation of existing policies. That’s not counting the damage to beaches from loss of sand from the bluffs, a natural source of beach replenishment. In Monterey Bay more than one-eighth of the shoreline was already armored in 1993, and one-third is likely to be in time. In Malibu, 45 percent of the shoreline—14.8 of 32 miles—was armored, to protect the Pacific Coast Highway as well as private property.

“As the shoreline continues to erode, the beach in front of these walls will become smaller and ultimately the walls will be in the surf zone with little or no beach,” the Monterey Bay study states. The continued fortification of the California coast seems virtually unstoppable.

In Oregon, seawalls are simply illegal. If you build in harm’s way, you must be ready to accept the damage. In California, the Coastal Act discourages such armaments but leaves giant exceptions. If a structure is endangered, the current interpretation of the Act is that it can be protected. In an emergency situation, structures are allowed without the customary permit process (though a follow-up regular permit is required to make this work permanent). And, if it is destroyed by a natural disaster, it can be rebuilt without a permit, as long as it is on the same site and no more than 10 percent larger or higher.

The Coastal Commission has been trying to put the brakes on the process by requiring that people who seek to build in hazardous areas forego their option to build protective barriers, even in emergencies. During its four-day July meeting, which lasted more than 12 hours without a dinner break, the Coastal Commission considered several proposed seawalls and other fortifications. In two central coast cases, blufftop residential development was allowed only with the condition that no shoreline armoring would be allowed in the future. The property owners were required to record this prohibition in their deeds.

With more funding available to the Coastal Conservancy and the Coastal Commission, some new initiatives are under way to address several aspects of the cumulative impact problem. The Commission, in consultation with the Conservancy, has developed a Public Access Action Plan to serve as a framework for guiding future actions by the two agencies. Priorities include: concerted effort to open trail easements to the public, steps toward completing the California Coastal Trail, identifying and securing prescriptive access rights to informal trails, and efforts to reduce or eliminate public financial assistance to property owners who build in known hazard zones. The combined effect of these separate measures—together with acquisition of lands for their protection—could go a long way toward securing the California coast’s future for the benefit of the crowds to come.