There’s one point on which I wish Mr. Hoye were entirely right, and I was entirely wrong. It’s true that the winter tides taketh away, and the summer tides bring sand back to the beach. But over 19 years of observing Broad Beach on a daily basis, season in and season out, I have seen more than 50 feet of protective dunes vanish. At least part of the annual net loss is due to half a dozen very large storm drains directing runoff from the neighboring hills onto the beach. During storm season, this cuts large channels across the beach, taking hundreds of tons of sand out to sea. Perhaps those “gentle, longshore coastal” drifts will work someday, but so far the benign neglect policy doesn’t seem to be working.
But, of course, facts threaten Mr. Hoye’s knee-jerk hostility to Broad Beach homeowners. Venice Beach and our own Zuma Beach build up huge berms in the winter to preserve the sand. But to Mr. Hoye, Broad Beach’s modest efforts to help maintain the dune area “ravaged the beach.” Moreover, he assumes, without any evidence whatsoever, that it was an attempt to build a barrier between the homeowners and the public.
There might be a homeowner here who is indifferent to the fate of the beach, but I haven’t met one yet. Those I know feel fortunate to have a home here and most share a strong sense of stewardship for the welfare of the beach. No public agency so much as picks up a piece of litter on Broad Beach. Nor does any law enforcement agency regularly keep an eye on it during the summer season, the two and a half months when we employ our “little beach police force.”
Further, I would like Mr. Hoye to know that in my years here on the beach, I have never heard a homeowner suggest anything as silly as restricting the public’s right to their share of the beach. Certainly, the parade of visitors to Broad Beach hasn’t slowed down. If anything, it has increased.
There’s another kind of erosion that Mr. Hoye failed to mention. Over the past 20 years, the California Coastal Commission has been wrongfully taking Broad Beach property without compensation. They have covered this up with a chorus of denunciations in the press against the homeowners, demonizing them by innuendoes and false accusations of interfering with public access. Mr. Hoye sings in the Coastal Commission choir.
Marshall Lumsden