The California Coastal Commission, a powerful state agency that regulates development along the state’s 1,100-mile coastline, can deny property owners permits to build seawalls if their homes or businesses were constructed after 1977, a state appeals court has ruled.
The closely watched case, centered on 10 townhouses near Half Moon Bay, could affect thousands of property owners and beaches visited by millions of people, particularly as the Pacific Ocean continues to rise due to climate change.
In a published opinion released Thursday, the First District Court of Appeal in San Francisco sided with the Coastal Commission and environmental groups, who have increasingly argued that sea walls cause public beaches to erode and eventually disappear.
“We’re very pleased that the court upheld a commonsense reading of the Coastal Act,” said Kate Huckelbridge, executive director of the Coastal Commission.
“Numerous studies have shown that continued shoreline armoring will result in massive losses to California’s iconic beaches as sea levels rise, cutting off public access to the coast,” she added. “This ruling will help ensure that coastal landowners and governments prioritize less harmful approaches.”
Thomas Roth, an attorney for the homeowners based in San Mateo, declined comment.
Private property rights groups called the ruling a setback, and predicted it will be appealed to the State Supreme Court.
“The California Constitution guarantees citizens a right to protect their private property,” said Jeremy Talcott, an attorney with the Pacific Legal Foundation in Sacramento.
“For the first 38 years of the Coastal Act, no one — including the commission — disputed that the act was intended to allow the protection of all structures so long as they had previously been properly and lawfully permitted,” he added. “The Court of Appeal has now signed off on a massive change in that coastal policy with its ruling, stripping away a core protection of private property.”
In 2016, a severe storm caused 20 feet of bluffs to collapse into the ocean in front of Casa Mira, a complex of 10 townhouses on Mirada Road 2 miles north of Half Moon Bay. Worried their homes were in imminent danger, the owners obtained an emergency permit from the Coastal Commission to place boulders, called riprap, along the crumbling shoreline to block the waves from causing more damage.
But when they applied to build a permanent 257-foot concrete sea wall, the commission said no.
“Sea walls eat away at the beach,” said the commission’s chairwoman, Dayna Bochco, during the 2019 meeting. “So someday as this keeps moving in and in, you are going to lose that beach if you have that sea wall. I think it’s anti-access.”
The commissioners voted to allow only 50 feet of sea wall to be constructed in front of an adjacent four-unit apartment building that was built in 1972. They said Casa Mira, whose townhouses were built in 1984, couldn’t have a sea wall.
The reason? California’s landmark Coastal Act, passed by state lawmakers in 1976, says the commission “shall” issue permits for sea walls and other types of armoring to protect “existing structures” from battering waves.
But state lawmakers never clearly defined the term. Property owners have argued “existing structures” means any building present when the permit application is filed. But the Coastal Commission’s attorneys have argued in recent years that “existing structures” only means those built before Jan. 1, 1977, when the Coastal Act took effect.
The Casa Mira Homeowners Association owners sued and won in San Mateo County Superior Court last year. The Coastal Commission appealed.
In its final opinion Thursday, which mirrored a tentative opinion it issued in October, the appeals court overturned much of the lower court ruling, siding with the Coastal Commission and its Jan. 1, 1977, cutoff date.
Justices Victor Rodriguez, Carin Fujisaki and Ioana Petrou ruled that the Casa Mira homeowners still can get the sea wall they want, however. But only because it would protect a portion of the California Coastal Trail that runs between their homes and the public beach below, making it a “coastal dependent” use to improve public access that is allowed protection under the Coastal Act. The ruling requires the commission to reconsider their original application.
But on the broader question, the justices showed how state lawmakers 48 years ago narrowed broad language in earlier drafts of the Coastal Act to allow sea walls only for “existing structures.”
“If the Legislature intended to guarantee any structure shoreline protection — regardless of when it was constructed — it could have retained the broad language,” Rodriguez wrote.
The decision could leave property owners with few choices: Raise buildings, move them inland, demolish them, or in some cases, place more sand on beaches, which often washes away in big storms.
Researchers have shown that sea walls and other shoreline armoring can speed the loss of public beaches. Emergency boulders cover the sand. Also, bluffs naturally erode, providing more sand to beaches. But when they are covered with concrete sea walls, that stops. Lastly, shorelines naturally move back after being pounded by waves, but if a wall prevents that inland shift, rising seas eventually can submerge the beach.
“California can take a stand against unfettered coastal development and protect its beaches,” the Surfrider Foundation, an environmental group, wrote in a brief in the case. “Or it can keep prioritizing the interests of a few wealthy property owners until the once-beautiful coast is reduced to miles of bare rock and concrete against an unforgiving sea.”