Drawing Lines in the Sand in Battle Over Broad Beach

Sticklers, take note. If heading to Broad Beach in Malibu, be sure to have tide chart, tape measure and public-access map in hand if you want to be sure to plop your beach towel and boogie board in a legal zone.

Without those tools, beachgoers will be pretty much at sea when it comes to sorting out the crazy quilt of public easements along the 1.1-mile stretch of prime beach. Anyone caught on a private patch of sand -- generally speaking, one too close to a pricey beachside dwelling -- runs the risk of being shooed seaward by private security guards hired by frustrated homeowners.

“You try to be nice,” said Darryl “Chicago” Cruse, a security guard stationed Saturday near one of two public access points along the beach. “But sometimes you get the ones who think they know everything.”

An uneasy truce has descended on embattled Broad Beach in light of a decision Friday by the California Coastal Commission to order an end to the posting of no-trespassing signs and the use of security guards on all-terrain vehicles to chase visitors off dry sand. Guards on foot, like Cruse, are still allowed.

The cease-and-desist order against the Trancas Property Owners Assn. marked the latest development in a long-running skirmish over public access and private property rights on the seaweed-speckled beach, just northwest of Zuma Beach. The area’s homeowners include prominent executives and celebrities, among them Goldie Hawn, Danny DeVito, Steven Spielberg and Dustin Hoffman.

For years, public-access proponents have fought to gain the right for nonresidents to visit the beach undisturbed. Homeowners have repeatedly challenged decisions by the commission, which is charged with overseeing development and protecting public beach access along the state’s 1,100-mile coast.

The commission’s efforts to negotiate a settlement with Broad Beach homeowners broke off recently after homeowners brought in bulldozers and, without state permits, scooped sand off the public beach and built a berm that impeded public access to the beach. The homeowners had also hired guards who patrolled on ATVs and were said by some observers to have roughly treated beachgoers.

Many of the dozens of beachgoers in evidence Saturday said they understood why the beach would engender conflict.

“Broad Beach has long been a where-to-be beach,” said John Holmes of Santa Monica, toweling off after a quick dip in the ocean, “but it has been hard for residents and visitors to find common ground.” As much as he enjoys the area, Holmes said he could understand why residents “are trying to preserve their paradise.”

“I could go somewhere else,” he added.

Theresa Melcher, visiting from Arizona, said she wondered why security guards hovered nearby as she kissed her husband, Marvin, while the surf lapped at their toes. The Melchers were safely in the public zone, but the guards appeared poised to warn them away from moving too many feet inland. Melcher said she had also noticed discreet signs reading “Private Property. Please Respect,” posted on the dune that runs directly behind many of the properties.

Previously, some homeowners had posted signs reading “Private Property, No Trespassing,” but the commission contended that those signs “discouraged people from coming to the beach,” said homeowner Marshall Lumsden. Such signs are still allowed on land that is clearly private and if the homeowner gets a state permit.

“We usually put them up in the spring,” Lumsden said about the signs, noting that some beachgoers would “come up and camp” right at the edge of his backyard.

On his property, Lumsden displays a small, polite sign asking beachgoers to respect his private property.

Other residents complained that beachgoers sometimes use the showers on their decks and leave behind beer bottles and other trash. “A lot of the time, they’ll pee in the corner where my kayak is,” said Krista Levitan as she watched her husband, Steve, surf. “Some will knock on people’s doors and ask to use their bathrooms.”

Still, Melcher, the visitor from Arizona, said limiting the beach to residents would not be fair. “God made the world, and I think everybody should have access to it,” she said.

Of 108 lots at Broad Beach, just under half have public easements. The easements have different conditions. Properties with easements often abut dwellings that have none, creating a situation where a law-abiding beachgoer would have to hopscotch across stretches of beach.

To complicate matters, some easements specify that public access extends 25 feet inland from the “daily high water line.” For others, public access might extend from the “mean high tide line” to 10 feet from the seawall or deck.

Most of this is lost on beach visitors because there are no maps or signs on-site explaining the intricacies. And it’s highly unlikely that the typical sunbather understands the concepts of high water lines and mean high tide lines. To make things more confusing, those lines are ever changing.

As a result, California’s courts have tended to consider the public portion of beaches to be the wet sand.

Steve Hoye, executive director of Access for All, a nonprofit organization that works to improve access to public lands and seashores, said he has contemplated creating a map to help visitors navigate the public easements. But he’s holding off for now. A map is available on the Coastal Commission’s website, but no laptops were in evidence at the beach on Saturday.

“We’d like the homeowners to digest what actually happened [Friday] and perhaps come back to the negotiating table with the commission,” Hoye said.

Hoye says he has high hopes for a homeowner proposal that would provide for a “universal easement” all along Broad Beach. “We’d like to find a way of defusing the whole thing and allow homeowners to come to terms with the public being there,” he said, adding that a universal easement “could be the real solution.”

All homeowners would have to agree to that, however, and it’s far from clear that they would. Still, Hoye said, the Coastal Commission might go for it.

“If there’s some solution that gives the public reasonable expectation to enjoy public access there and satisfies the homeowners so they stop this ceaseless conflict, that’d be great,” said Sarah Christie, legislative director and spokeswoman for the California Coastal Commission.