New York Times article on private / public beach fight

[Camellia]

Property Lines - A Stake in the Sand - NYTimes.com

This “nourishment” program, which involves an expensive process of dredging and pumping submerged sand back onto beaches, has been around for four decades and is one of Florida’s more popular public initiatives, a lifeline for many communities in a tourism-dependent state. So it came as a great surprise when, in Destin, the prospect of restoring the shore ran into fierce opposition. The battle over the beach, featuring charges of extremism, selfishness and dirty dealing, started as a typical squabble at town hall. But last December, it culminated with an argument before the United States Supreme Court.
The legal case is complicated, but at its crux, it presents a conflict between private property rights and the public interest, one in which the court is weighing abstruse issues of eroding and accreting power. Yet on a practical level, it has left some legal scholars befuddled. Usually, people protest when they’re losing something, not regaining. “One of the great questions,” says Benjamin Barros, a law professor at Widener University who has closely followed the case, “is why would a beachfront property owner oppose beach nourishment?” To answer that, you have to know the history of another question, one that has long bedeviled Destin: who owns that covetable sand? ...

 

[TableFiveChef]

Great article! Thanks for posting! I grew up in Destin and can remember when Holiday Isle was barren and the fishing was spectacular! It's a shame that it has come to this.

 

[GoodWitch58]

yes, thanks for posting, I remember those parties out on that spit of land...it was much more fun when we did not have all these buildings and all these people and when the beach was respected for the wonder that it was (and still is, in a few spots).

 

[Kurt]

Excellent article - thanks for posting.

 

[Caroling]

private only north of NW Florida's roads

Property Lines - A Stake in the Sand - NYTimes.com

Someone once said that we should have outlawed private property south of 30A from the start. I like imagining the entire beach as public. If that were true for all of NW Florida, imagine that.

 

[Just Curious]

Thank you for posting this. I haven't heard it explained that well before.