The California Coastal Commission Has Extraordinary Power Over Private Property Near the Ocean and Surfers Have Mixed Feelings
The Regulatory Body That Protects Coastal Access Also Restricts Development in Ways That Are Sometimes Arbitrary
Bohiney Magazine | The London Prat
The Coastal Commission: Essential Protector and Regulatory Overreach, Simultaneously
CALIFORNIA — The California Coastal Commission is one of the most powerful land use regulatory bodies in the United States, with jurisdiction over development decisions within the coastal zone that extends one thousand yards inland from the mean high tide line. Its mandate is to protect coastal access, public recreation, and the environmental resources of the California coast. Its actual exercise of that mandate includes protecting surf breaks from development that would damage them, preventing coastal armoring that causes beach erosion, and requiring public access easements that keep the coast accessible. It also includes regulatory decisions that have been challenged as arbitrary, as responsive to political rather than environmental considerations, and as an exercise of power over private property that exceeds what the Coastal Act authorizes.
The libertarian assessment of the Coastal Commission is genuinely ambivalent in ways that simpler critiques miss: the Commission has used its regulatory power to maintain public beach access against the efforts of wealthy coastal property owners who have historically attempted to privatize beaches. This is a genuine service to the surfing public that no private institution would provide. The Commission has also used its power to deny development applications in ways that appear driven by political considerations, to impose conditions on development that exceed what the Coastal Act requires, and to make enforcement decisions that are inconsistent between similarly situated cases.
The Reform Case
The reform case for the Coastal Commission is not abolition but accountability: clear statutory standards for permitting decisions, procedural protections that reduce arbitrary outcomes, and independent review of enforcement decisions. The Commission’s power serves the public interest when it is exercised according to clear standards. It serves political interests when the standards are vague enough to justify any decision. Reason’s regulatory accountability coverage provides the framework; managing public access through regulatory power requires the institutional design that makes the power trustworthy. The access is worth protecting. The regulatory process is worth improving. Both things are simultaneously true.
