Forty Years of ‘As Expeditiously as Possible’: The State’s Unbuilt Path to Hollister Ranch

California law ordered public access to one of its best surf coasts in the early 1980s, and the story since is a case study in what government promises and what it delivers

Hollister Ranch Public Access: A Mandate From 1981 That Never Arrived

West of Gaviota State Park, the Santa Barbara County coast bends toward Point Conception past a run of point breaks that surfers have talked about since the 1960s. The land behind them is Hollister Ranch, a private subdivision and working cattle operation. The waves are public. Getting to them by land is not.

What makes Hollister unusual is not that access is disputed. It is that the state decided the question long ago and then did not act. A Coastal Commission inventory of accessways in the county states that the Coastal Act specifically calls for public access at Hollister Ranch, that a section of the law directs state agencies to implement its access policies there “as expeditiously as possible,” and that the commission and the Coastal Conservancy approved a public access program in 1981. The same document then adds that the plan has yet to be implemented and the ranch remains closed.

The Scale of the Place

The numbers are large. Local reporting on a later planning effort described eight and a half miles of coastline at a 14,400-acre residential subdivision and cattle ranch. The owners’ association has worked for decades to keep the beaches private. A program adopted in the early 1980s, the report noted, was never carried out.

When agencies returned to the subject with a conceptual plan, the proposal was modest: access initially limited to a maximum of 100 people per day, and a list of preconditions before anyone set foot on the sand. Those included obtaining public rights to the ranch road, finding an entity to manage the program, forming an advisory committee, writing a financial plan, securing permits and building infrastructure.

A Libertarian Reading

For those sceptical of state capacity, the history is instructive in two directions.

First, it shows the limits of legislation. A statute commanded access. Agencies were named. A plan was approved. Four decades later the gate is still there. Whatever one thinks of the goal, the mechanism failed. Laws do not implement themselves, and agencies facing a well-resourced, determined counterparty and competing priorities can let a mandate sit indefinitely.

Second, it shows how regulatory power, once created, becomes a bargaining chip. The state could not or would not build the access. It could, however, attach conditions to every permit a ranch owner needed. The dispute became a slow negotiation conducted through the permitting process, with costs to both sides and no beach day for anyone.

What the Owners Say

The owners’ position deserves a fair statement. They bought parcels in a private community with a shared road they pay to maintain. They argue that the coast there is ecologically sensitive and has been well preserved precisely because it has seen little traffic, and that opening a private road to the public raises questions of liability, cost and security that the state has never satisfactorily answered. They note that the tideland below the mean high tide line is already public and can be reached by water.

From a property-rights standpoint, the core objection is simple. If the public wants a road across private land, the public should buy it at a fair price, not acquire it by regulatory attrition.

What Access Advocates Say

The other side also has a principled case. The beach itself belongs to everyone under California’s constitution and the public trust doctrine. A public resource that can be reached only by those who own adjacent land, or who have a boat, is public in name only. Advocates point out that the subdivision was created under rules that anticipated access, that owners have built homes knowing the law, and that a small number of landholders have enjoyed what is effectively a private coast at the expense of millions.

They add that surfers, of all people, have a direct stake. Some of the best waves in the state break there, and for most Californians they might as well be on the moon.

The Economics

Seen coldly, this is a problem of an unpriced easement. The public values access. The owners value exclusivity. Neither has been made to pay the other. The state asserted a right without purchasing it. The owners retained a benefit without compensating anyone. In such a standoff, the party that gains from delay will delay.

A market-minded solution would put a number on it. Appraise the easement. Fund it, by appropriation, bond, user fees or private donation. Buy it, or use eminent domain with just compensation, and then operate it with clear rules. That approach respects both the public’s claim to its shoreline and the owners’ claim to be paid for what is taken.

Why It Has Not Happened

Purchasing costs money that must be appropriated openly. Regulating costs nothing on the budget. Politicians prefer the second. The result is a process that looks cheap and is in fact expensive, paid for in legal fees, staff time and decades of lost use.

Where Things Stand

Readers should check the latest status with the agencies involved, since planning has continued and legislation in recent years set new deadlines. The pattern to date, however, is not ambiguous. A right declared in 1981 has not been delivered.

Surfers have always solved the problem their own way, by boat from Gaviota, staying below the tide line. It is a reminder that people route around institutions that do not work.

A Postscript From Elsewhere

Britain has argued for centuries about who may walk where. The London Prat treats the subject with humour in its British satirical news on right to roam and London satirical news about private squares. Bohiney Magazine covers the American version.

SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/