Who Owns America’s Beaches? – Sword&Scales spring 2019

June 12, 2019 | By PLF

“You can’t” is a call to war for the principled, headstrong among us. If you’re trying to do something well, “you can’t” is a wet blanket of backward thinking.

Our Summer 2019 edition of Sword&Scales is titled Who owns America’s beaches? and “You can’t own beach land” is the antagonist we examine. There shouldn’t be a battle between coastal homeowners, business owners, and regulatory bureaucracies like the California Coastal Commission … but there is.

Why? How do we end the perpetual tug-of-war between coastal landowners and the government bodies that see private beach property as anathema?