A Staircase for a Seawall: Can You Pay the Public Back for a Beach?

When California lets an owner armour a bluff it asks for something in return, and a dispute at Pismo Beach turned on whether pumping sand or building a stairway is a fair exchange

Mitigation: What Is Owed for a Lost Beach

The Coastal Act allows a seawall where an existing structure is in danger. It also says the wall must be designed to eliminate or mitigate its effect on the supply of sand to the shore.

That word, mitigate, carries a great deal. It is where the bargain between the private owner and the public is actually struck. And there is no agreement about what it should mean.

A Dispute at Pismo

The question came into focus in a case on the Central Coast. Correspondence submitted to the Coastal Commission in 2023 concerns coastal armouring at a property on Indio Drive in Pismo Beach.

The letters in the file, from members of the public and advocacy groups, make a sustained argument. Seawalls, they say, exacerbate beach erosion and cut off bluff erosion as a source of sediment. The loss of beaches inhibits equitable coastal access and does an economic disservice to coastal towns by destroying what makes their economies thrive.

They then turn to what should be asked of the applicant in return. Mitigation, the correspondence argues, should take the form of real improvements to access: new public stairways to the beach, repairs to existing ones, new coastal paths, or the removal of armouring elsewhere in the region.

And it is emphatic about what should not count. Sand nourishment, pumping sand onto an eroding beach, should be listed as inadequate. Such projects, the letters say, will not meet the criteria.

The file also contains a statement of principle: that the Commission has an inalienable duty to protect the public trust.

This is correspondence, not a ruling. It sets out one side’s view. But it frames the options clearly.

Three Kinds of Mitigation

In practice California has used three approaches.

Money. The applicant pays a fee calculated from the amount of sand the wall will keep from reaching the beach. A 2005 permit for a seawall in La Jolla required a payment of a little over thirteen thousand dollars to a regional beach sand mitigation programme. The money goes into a fund for nourishment projects.

Sand. The applicant, or the fund, places sand on the beach to replace what the wall withholds.

Access. The applicant provides or pays for something that improves the public’s ability to use the coast: a stairway, a path, a viewing area.

Each is an attempt to answer the same question. The public is losing part of a beach. What would make it whole?

The Case for Cash

From an economist’s standpoint, a fee is the cleanest tool.

It puts a price on the harm. The owner faces that price and can decide whether protection is worth it. The public receives compensation which it can spend as it judges best. Nobody needs to negotiate the design of a staircase.

A well-set fee also creates the right incentives at the margin. A shorter wall costs less. A design that lets more sand through costs less. The owner has a reason to minimise the damage.

Why Cash Often Fails

The weakness is in the number.

The La Jolla figure is not unusual for its time. Thirteen thousand dollars, for a structure that will stand for decades on some of the most valuable coastline in the country. It is hard to believe that sum bears any relation to what the public loses.

The formulas commonly used count the volume of sand withheld and multiply by the cost of buying sand. They do not count the recreational value of the beach that disappears, which studies have put at many times that. Newer methods try to include it and produce far higher figures. They are contested.

There is also the question of what the money buys. A fund that pays for nourishment is paying for sand that will wash away. The Pismo correspondence makes that objection directly. A one-off payment is exchanged for a permanent loss.

The Case for Access

The argument for mitigation in kind is that it delivers something durable to the people affected.

A stairway down a bluff lasts for decades. It serves the same stretch of coast that the wall harms. Its benefit is visible and local. A resident who has lost some beach width has at least gained a way to reach what remains.

An earlier article on this site described how California has long traded building rights for paths and walkways. This is the same exchange.

Why Access Is Not the Same Thing

The difficulty is that a staircase does not replace a beach. It makes it easier to get to a beach that is getting smaller. If the wall eventually causes the sand in front of it to vanish, the stairs lead to the water.

There is something uncomfortable about compensating for the loss of a public asset with better access to the asset being lost.

And in-kind mitigation is negotiated case by case. That gives the agency discretion, which critics of regulation distrust for good reason. One applicant is asked for a stairway. Another, in similar circumstances, for something more or less. Outcomes depend on the staff, the commissioners and the political weather.

What Would a Principled Approach Be?

For those who want both property rights and public rights taken seriously, a few things follow.

The harm should be priced fully. If a wall will cost the public a beach worth millions over its life, the charge should reflect that, not the price of a few truckloads of sand. An owner unwilling to pay the true cost has learned something useful about whether the wall is justified.

The price should be set by a published method, in advance, and applied to everyone. Predictability matters more than the exact figure. An owner should be able to know what protection will cost before applying.

The charge should continue for as long as the wall does. The loss is ongoing. A one-time fee for a permanent structure is a mismatch. An annual payment, like rent for the use of public land, fits better. Some recent permits move in this direction by limiting approval to a term of years and reassessing at renewal.

And the proceeds should go to something that lasts. The Pismo letters are right that sand placed on an eroding beach is a poor exchange. Acquiring land, improving access and removing obsolete structures elsewhere give the public a permanent return.

The Owner’s Objection

A homeowner would reply that this turns a legal right into a ruinous charge. The statute says protection shall be permitted. If the fee is set high enough, the right is nullified in practice.

That is a fair concern. The answer has to be that a right to protect your property is not a right to do so at your neighbour’s expense. If the beach were privately owned, nobody would doubt that its owner was entitled to full compensation. Its being owned by the public should not make it cheaper to destroy.

Where This Leaves the Beach

Mitigation is the least glamorous part of coastal policy and probably the most important. It is where the cost of armouring is either placed on those who cause it or passed quietly to everyone else.

For most of the past half-century it has been passed along. The fees have been small, the sand has washed away, and the beaches have narrowed. The argument now being made in letters like those from Pismo is that the exchange was never fair.

This article summarises public correspondence and permit records and sets out competing approaches. The London Prat weighs the going rate for a sea view in its UK satirical news on paying for a view and its British satirical news about steps down to the beach. Bohiney Magazine covers the American coast.

SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/