Some California beaches have been off-limits, but public outrage is changing | Hacker News Reader

Some California beaches have been off-limits, but public outrage is changing

latimes.com

37 pointspetethomas26 comments

Wow that title was hard to parse - two sentences as in the article would be much clearer - or maybe just reword it.

Article: These California beaches have long been off-limits. But public outrage is changing the tide

edit: it's been fixed nvm (original: public outrage is changing the tide of off-limits California beaches)

Doesn't help when it includes a pun.

I've taken a crack at shortening the title to fit 80 chars in a more straightforward way, but if anyone can do better, we can happily change it again.

Public outrage is opening up California beaches that used to be off-limits

Regardless of the title, the key to this issue is that while California beaches below the high tide line are open to the public, access over private land is not part of the deal.

One could walk along a beach, or arrive by water, or access from and over public land, and be within one’s rights, but there is no right to walk thru somebody’s private land to get to the public beach.

Note that the Khosla / Martin’s Beach case also contains an issue of changing public access without a permit from the Coastal Commission. That’s complicated.

The Martin's Beach issue involved a long-existing easement (a road across the property to the beach).

Is opening all beaches to the public really in the best interest of...the public?

Should no natural spaces be private? We allow other parcels of land to be private in name name of conservation, why should a beach be any different?

Why can National and State Parks require entrance fees (and thus be operationally private though nominally public), but not privately owned land?

This may seem like a valid viewpoint, but it does not sound completely correct. I am not sure that we allow parcels of land to be private in the name of conservation. Perhaps ecologically sensitive parcels of land should not be private. Wetlands, mountains, forests and perhaps beaches (that's up for debate right now) should be considered "commons" or "protected" with general access to the public. The fees in National and State Parks go for conservation, not for profit.

Here's one organization that engages in private lands conservation. You can now be sure that we allow parcels of land to be private in the name of conservation:

https://www.nature.org/en-us/about-us/who-we-are/how-we-work...

Thanks, this is news to me. I am not sure where I am with respect to this. What prevents the entire society deciding to use the land for some other purpose?

Nothing except the rules of that society, which is why organizations like the Nature Conservancy actively seek to have their landholdings added to national and state parks so they can be permanently protected. But the political appetite to do that doesn't always exist, which is why private conservancies are there - to protect natural land that the government won't.

> which is why organizations like the Nature Conservancy actively seek to have their landholdings added to national and state parks so they can be permanently protected

This is foolish. Land can't be given with a perpetual conservation requirement attached; as long as the Nature Conservancy owns the land, it's able to ensure that the land is used according to its own preferences. Land given to the government is protected much less permanently than that.

You have to look at it in context. The government can do things that private landholders cannot - for instance a private owner doesn't own the subsurface by default. In some places, private landholders can be forced to provide an easement across their property for certain types of activities, including railroads and mining claims. And if you want to protect a vast tract of wilderness, it costs money to monitor it for things like illegal hunting. The government has far more resources to use on enforcement actions to protect parkland.

> In some places, private landholders can be forced to provide an easement across their property for certain types of activities, including railroads and mining claims.

This isn't a point in favor of transferring ownership to the government; it's always easier to give yourself permission to run a railroad than to compel someone else to give you the same permission.

On what rationale can you decree that all lands in need of conservation should be held by the "public"?

Certainly you must have some evidence, then, that private entities are necessarily less capable of and effective at conserving land than public entities?

Beaches and coastline are most certainly not like other natural spaces so it's unfair to equate the fight for public beaches to the idea that this means no natural space should be private.

There are 3.7 million square miles of land in the US, but only 88k miles of coastline. It's a vastly more rare resource. There are lots of places across the US which are still untouched wilderness, both private and public. I would argue that there are no unexplored beaches on the California coast. It's a very finite resource and there not that much to go around, especially in the most desireable areas.

But the article is actually addressing ocean access. You clearly can't own the ocean, the property owners already acknowledge that. They know thier property ends at the mean high tide line. The real fight is that if you can own and control the land that let's you access the ocean, in practice you effectively have your own private area of ocean. That's not fair. We wouldn't stand for it in other circumstances. You couldn't buy up all the land around Disneyland and then charge people for access to cross your land. It's the same for natural spaces and public resources. You can't keep everyone out just by buying up all the reasonable access points.

  But the article is actually addressing ocean access.

No. Actually the article is talking about beach access via traversing private property.

  There are 3.7 million square miles of land in the US, but only 88k miles of coastline. It's a vastly more rare resource. There are lots of places across the US which are still untouched wilderness, both private and public. I would argue that there are no unexplored beaches on the California coast. It's a very finite resource and there not that much to go around, especially in the most desireable areas.

So simply because there is no "unexplored" coastline, and because there is only 88k miles of it...it should all necessarily be open to the public?

Your argument then is that relatively scarce lands should be necessarily open to the public. Where does that end? Beaches? Waterfalls? Rock formations? Absurd.

And the downvote is just so petty. You guys need to downvote someone that you disagree with to exercise your little power play. Pathetic.

It's simply too arduous to adress arguments like "should no natural spaces be private"? No, nobody said that.

Let me reply to your complaint about your comment's vote with "Shouldn't people be allowed to vote however they like?"

HN guidelines:

> Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading

At what resolution did they measure 88,000 miles of coastline? The "general coastline" is only 12,383 miles.

in germany if the only way to access your property is through someone elses private property, then you have a right to cross that private property.

if the beach is public property, then the public should have a right to get there. any arguments by the private property owners that they are protecting the beach is irrelevant, because the beach is not theirs to protect.

In this case the beach (at least the portion below the mean high tide line) is already public under California law. The issue tends to revolve around access to existing public places.

Also, it's not just about conservation. (Public access and conservation are often at odds.) Per the article, "The issue has taken on new meaning as conversations of equity dominate politics."

The Pacific Ocean is neither privately owned nor land. If people do not have access to some part of the commonwealth, it is no longer part of the commonwealth. Different polities have different ways of dealing with this problem. California has chosen to make most shoreline public.

I would fix the law towards the other direction. As a citizen of a Nordic country, the idea that someone can own a big parcel of a natural space that no-one else can access, seems wrong.

Nordic countries have what we call "every man's right". You can own forest land, but everyone has a right to access them:

People can freely walk, ski, ride a bicycle and hike in the forest. They can camp there, pick berries and mushrooms. Hunting requires a permission of the owner but light forms of fishing are allowed: such as angling and ice-fishing.

> Nordic countries have what we call "every man's right". You can own forest land, but everyone has a right to access them:

I've heard this being called "freedom to roam" in English:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_to_roam

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