North Carolina's seawall ban

From the Coastal Review, NC Coastal Federation's quarterly pub (sorry, it's print only):

A group of oceanfront property owners once again are trying to establish a beachhead in their decades-long struggle to rid the state of its enlightened ban on beachfront seawalls, groins, jetties and other types of hard structures to control erosion.

... The Figure Eight Island Homeowners Acssociation is pushing to reverse the 22-year prohibition to protect a few dozen vacation homes. It sought legislation that would allow a small jetty, called a terminal groin, to be built as a "pilot project" at Rich Inlet on the northern end of the private island.

It's most definitely a private island. There is a guarded gate and you need some sort of owner's pass to get on the island. I don't hate rich people, but I don't like privately-owned islands whose beaches aren't open to the public. So, I don't like rich people who limit access to public beaches (i.e., public goods).

... To hear proponents of this ill-conceived bill tell it, we really don't know what seawalls, jetties or groins will do to the beachfront environment.

The article goes on to explain that there are plenty of examples where hard structures, designed to protect private property, end up reducing the quality of the public beach and sometimes eliminating it (at high tide).

OK, I think I'm coming to grips with my views on beach management. My advice to rich people:

1. Don't build your house on sand.
2. Undersand the risks before you build your house on sand.
3. Don't ask the public (i.e., government) to help insure against your risk if you build your house on sand (e.g, beach nourishment, etc).
4. Don't suppose that you own the sandy beach and the dunes.

I'm part of the problem as part of the demand side of the beach house rental market. But I'm willing to pay higher prices for a week of a beach house if all of these subsidies go away.

Comments

[Tim Haab]

If the legislation is repealed, would that be called a groin pull?

[joshua corning]

Like this?

View Map

[joshua corning]

I don't hate rich people, but I don't like privately-owned islands whose beaches aren't open to the public. So, I don't like rich people who limit access to public beaches (i.e., public goods).

read: BLEEDING EXTERNALITIES.

Why is it bad for people to own the beach again?

And when did you start hating "rich" people?

By the way,

... To hear proponents of this ill-conceived bill tell it, we really don't know what seawalls, jetties or groins will do to the beachfront environment.

It would stabilize and improve it both by increasing environmental functions and values as well as protecting peoples investments.

[John Whitehead]

Joshua,

What's that map all about.

In answer to your question, I started to hate rich people when I watched Gilligan's Island. That Thurston Howell III didn't lift a finger to help around the island and, I'm sure, his trunk load of possessions certainly didn't help when the tiny ship was tossed.

[Newbomb Turk]

Three things:

1) The jetties at Gray's Harbor, WA have done anything but stabilize and improve the beach front environment. In fact, the jetties have had a *HUGE* negative impact on adjacent shorelines (on the order of several miles) and are responsible for the breach of the South Grays Harbor Jetty in Westport, erosion of the beach near the North Grays Harbor Jetty in Ocean Shores and the massive erosion at the mouth of Willapa Bay.

2) Nobody truly "owns" the beach. Sure private property ownership may extend to the mean high water line, but that line is in a state of constant flux and will probably become even more dynamic in the coming decades as sea level continues to rise, and as storms become more frequent, bigger and more intense.

Now step over the mean high water line and you're standing on a sacred public trust resource that's owned by everyone (hence the term "public") and managed by the state not for affluent and powerful oceanfront property owners who made a lucrative but risky investment, but for everyone...including my kids' kids' kids.

3) Mary Ann, definitely.

[John Whitehead]

Newbomb Turk,

Ginger, definitely.

[joshua corning]

What's that map all about.

It is a jetty in Washington state that benefits both public and private interests.

Might not be applicable to North Carolina. Plate tectonics say that while Washington state is growing into the Pacific, north Carolina being devoured by the Atlantic.

Anyway private jetties may screw public beaches that are down current from them but upcurrent public beaches would see a benefit.

Anyway this really is a property rights issue.

Who owns the sand on your land? You or the guy who will have that sand on his property 10 years from now when it moves down the beach?

erosion of the beach near the North Grays Harbor Jetty in Ocean Shores and the massive erosion at the mouth of Willapa Bay.

I am familiar with the Ocean Shores Jetty...and that beach has grown since it was put in. And by the way beaches constantly erode and move down shore. Jetties only stabilize that movement.

[joshua corning]

sacred public trust

Mark this spot as exactly the point when the failed economic policies of socialism abandon all reason and simply become religious fanaticism.

[worried American]

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