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| | From the Archives: Beach Nourishment |
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| Jun 17 -- Jul 7 U.S. Supreme Court Decision Favorable for Oregon’s Beaches |   Beach nourishment project, South Carlsbad State Beach, CA, July 2001
As we reported earlier, the public’s right to use the dry sand portions of Oregon’s beaches, as guaranteed under state law by the Beach Bill, could have been put at risk had the court’s decision in the case been unfavorable.
On June 17, the Supreme Court decided the Stop the Beach Nourishment Inc. v. Florida Dept. of Environmental Protections case in a manner that was not harmful to Oregon’s beach law. The Court held that Florida’s beach nourishment law did not result in a “taking” of beach front owners’ property. These owners had claimed that Florida’s establishment and maintenance of an “erosion control line” took their rights of access to the water and to any future accretions that might attach to their properties.
The details of the situation in Florida that triggered the court case don’t resemble anything in Oregon, yet a decision going the other way might have had unfortunate implications for our state. The issue involved “beach nourishment,” the practice of pumping sand from subsurface areas onto an eroding beach to replenish its sand. Florida law stipulated that beach areas created by public beach nourishment would be accessible to the public, and landowners wanting to keep beaches fronting their property private, even when replenished by the public, sued and carried the case all the way to the Supreme Court.
However, the court in its decision characterized the immediate act of sand deposits for beach nourishment as an “avulsion” (i.e, not merely an imperceptible change, which is what an accretion is), and found that under its pre-existing state law, Florida, not the landowners, had the right to any such avulsion, even if it was caused by state action.
Thus, it appears that Oregon’s law establishing public rights to the shoreline up to the “statutory vegetation line” (surveyed at the 16-foot contour), based on common use of the beaches from time before memory, is not threatened by this decision. Had the decision gone the other way, the anti-land-use-planning group Oregonians in Action seemed to be poised to attack our state’s Beach Law. (See our 3/17/10 article on the potential threat.)
For more background:
3/29/2010: Florida Case on Takings Could Affect Oregon’s Public Beaches
 Contact: Phillip Johnson, CoastWatch Director, (503) 238-4450, or EMAIL
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