Can US coastal beaches be private?

[newmom2be]

What is the name of your state? California

I heard that coastal beaches, defined as ones touching the Atlantic or Pacific, can not be private to a homeowner, that houses can be built to make access difficult (like in Malibu), but that citizens can not be denied access to a beach, barring an environmental hazard or something. But basically no one person can go off and buy land that includes the beach so that no one else can go there.

An house of Google and I'm not finding an answer, preferably from a .gov site. All I'm finding are scattered mentions on various state sites, but even then, I haven't found any answers.

Thanks in advance for any help.

[divgradcurl]

Originally Posted by newmom2be

What is the name of your state? California

I heard that coastal beaches, defined as ones touching the Atlantic or Pacific, can not be private to a homeowner, that houses can be built to make access difficult (like in Malibu), but that citizens can not be denied access to a beach, barring an environmental hazard or something. But basically no one person can go off and buy land that includes the beach so that no one else can go there.

An house of Google and I'm not finding an answer, preferably from a .gov site. All I'm finding are scattered mentions on various state sites, but even then, I haven't found any answers.

Thanks in advance for any help.

That's true if you consider the "beach" to be the area between the mean high tide mark and where the water currently is (i.e., no automatic public beach at high tide, plenty of automatic public beach at low tide). Whether or not the public beach extends beyond the mean high tide mark may be depedent on a lot of variables. Here is an article discussing caselaw and statutes relevant to the private regulation of beaches, maybe your questions will be answered after a read-through: [url]http://beachlaw.info/mcle/mcle01_body.php[/url]