AB 1129: Coastal resources: structures: beach access and protection.

Existing law, the California Coastal Act of 1976, provides for planning and regulation of development in the coastal zone, as defined. The act specifies planning and management policies for the location of new residential, commercial, and industrial development in the coastal zone.

The act requires the permitting of revetments, breakwaters, groins, harbor channels, seawalls, cliff retaining walls, and other such construction that alters natural shoreline processes when required to serve coastal-dependent uses or to protect existing structures or public beaches in danger from erosion and when designed to eliminate or mitigate adverse impacts on local shoreline sand supply.

This bill would also require that the permitted construction of those structures be consistent with the policies of the act, including policies regarding protection of public access, shoreline ecology, natural landforms, and other impacts on coastal resources, and would define the term existing structure for the purposes of those provisions.

The act requires any person wishing to perform or undertake any development in the coastal zone, as defined, to obtain a coastal development permit, but exempts from those requirements specified emergency projects undertaken, carried out, or approved by a public agency, as prescribed.

This bill would specify that any emergency permit issued under those provisions is a temporary authorization intended to allow the minimum amount of temporary development necessary to address the identified emergency, and minimize any potential harm or adverse coastal impacts related to addressing the emergency. The bill would specify that any subsequent development that is carried out that is beyond the scope of the emergency permit shall require a coastal development permit and is not subject to emergency authorization granted under those provisions.

The act imposes specified civil penalties on a person, including a landowner, who is in violation of the public access provisions of the act for each violation of the act.

This bill would additionally impose those civil penalties on a person, including a landowner, who has placed or caused to be placed an unpermitted shoreline protection structure on his or her property located in within the coastal zone.