Supreme Court to decide if Florida beach replenishment separates land owners from ocean.

[madfloridian]

This is a very interesting case. As they keep replenishing the eroded beaches with sand they bring in from elsewhere...it makes extra space between the present homes and the water. In other words they claim lowered property values.

Court to decide if property lines move with tide in Florida

WASHINGTON — Oceanfront landowners in Florida are pressing the Supreme Court to find that beach replenishment projects unconstitutionally separate them from the sea. The issue, to be argued before the court on Wednesday, began in 2003 when Stop the Beach Renourishment Inc., a group of five beachfront homeowners in Destin in the Panhandle, protested what a replenishment project was doing to their property lines.

Officials with the state Department of Environmental Protection establish unchanging property lines for such projects — at the point where high tide peaked prior to the project — rather than allowing them to shift with the tides. When sand was added to the beach in Destin, the high-water mark moved farther from the homes, essentially creating a sand barrier 75 feet wide between the homes and the water. The angry homeowners demanded compensation for what they said were lower property values.

Florida's Supreme Court ruled that pouring new sand onto a beach at government expense protects Panhandle properties. The state needn't compensate homeowners for changing where waves hit the shore because homeowners still had access to the water, according to the 5-2 decision.

Government officials from coast to coast are closely watching the case because beaches routinely erode during heavy storms. One in four homes within 500 feet of the coast will fall victim to erosion within the next half-century, according to a 2000 report by the H. John Heinz Center for Science, Economics and the Environment and the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

There is erosion of property anyway. If the replenishment is not done the erosion is still there, and if it is done it makes the houses farther from beachfront.

Sounds to me like a problem either way.

Even more:

The Fifth and 14th amendments to the Constitution prohibit taking private property "for public use, without just compensation." And Florida's Supreme Court ruled in 1909 that waterfront property "may not be taken without just compensation and due process of law." It reaffirmed the position at least six times.

They are not "taking" the property though, so much as making "more" property. Interesting.

[MadMaddie]

1. You know what by building those homes on the beaches they

have destroyed a huge part of the buffer that protects the inlands from the storms. Insurance companies end up paying millions in damages.

I say don't replennish the sand and when the next storm hits let it hit. The city and the state should take no extra effort to protect the homes. Once the homes are lost then prohibit any building of structures on the beach.

They have no problem near the Mississippi when poor towns keep getting flooded and the state decides that the town needs to move out of flood plains.

[Blutodog]

2. Beach Replenishment

I agree. Beach Replenishment is a huge waste of money. People that decide to move to home s by the Ocean should not expect everyone else out here to foot the bill to keep beaches in front of their homes, especially when the oceans are all going to rise all this century and probably well into next and beyond. Most of these idiots are part of the climate denial set who seem to think nothing is going to change at the beach ever. Screw them. Let them pay for the sand, especially considering most of these homes are their 2nd and even 3rd homes anyway.

[baldguy]

3. Sort of precarious trying to put a value on property that may be washed away at any time.

Isn't it?

[madfloridian]

5. Yep, it really is.

One can only replenish just so long.

[vadawg]

6. kinda like any home thats built in a flood plain, or in tornado alley,

or in any place a hurricane can come ashore, or were an icestorm can damage them, or where mudslides occue, or wildfires, or any other disaster out there..

[MadMaddie]

7. Bingo!!

Americans have to rethink how they are building and where they are building.

[pscot]

4. Theyé going to have more ocean

than they'll know what to do with, given the rate at which the ice is melting.