Word: beaching
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...year after Hurricane Alicia walloped the Texas coast around Galveston last summer, the storm has not entirely abated. Having weathered natural disaster, some 140 beachfront-property owners are facing an even worse legal catastrophe. Texas law gives the public the right to use all the beach in the corridor between the sea at low tide and the natural vegetation line. The violent winds and rain of Hurricane Alicia tore away such large chunks of land that private, $100,000 homes are no longer sitting on privately controlled property. When officials moved in to claim the land for sunbathers and fishermen...
...Such beach battles are by no means unusual. From sea to shining sea, landlocked citizens are asserting what in many states is their traditional right of access to the beaches, even if they have to tramp across private property to get there. At the same time, property owners, especially wealthy residents of exclusive beachfront communities, are becoming increasingly militant about the invasion of beachgoers. In Maine's high-priced coastal enclaves, property owners, many of them from out of state, have built fences, thrown rocks, towed cars and on at least one occasion brandished a shotgun to keep clammers...
...nationally, the trend is otherwise; courts and new laws are gradually eroding private beaches. Earlier this year, for instance, the New Jersey Supreme Court took note of "the increasing demand for our state's beaches" and held that they are a "public trust" to which private-property rights must give way. The theory is a groundbreaking, potentially sweeping one. Courts in Oregon, Florida and Hawaii have also upheld beach access under the more legally traditional "doctrine of custom." When the beaches have always been open to the public, these courts have held, they must remain so. In Hawaii...
...beach legal wars are largely an outgrowth of rapid coastline development. In Texas, for instance, there was little protest from landowners when the Open Beaches Act was passed in 1959, because at that time the Texas Gulf Coast was sparsely developed. Widespread construction of private homes, hotels and high-rise condominiums has come only in the past ten or 15 years. The new objections, in the wake of Hurricane Alicia, are nothing but "the arrogance of affluence," says Assistant Attorney General Ken Cross. "Building on a beachfront is a gamble with nature. When they take that gamble and put their...
...King's law now applies will be decided by the Maine courts in a case involving public access to a prime stretch of coastline called Moody Beach. Assistant Attorney General Paul Stern, for one, believes that the courts "will decide that the public has the right to use the state beaches rather than preserving them for essentially the privileged classes. Why shouldn't a mill worker from Lisbon Falls be able to use the beaches?" he asks. The legal tide seems to be going...