Beaches Belong to Everyone
In California, where I live, we tend to take beach access for granted. Under state law, beaches in the Golden State are truly open to the public, and the California Coastal Commission makes sure they stay that way. We can thank prescient advocates who, in the face of rising coastal development, fought to establish the commission back in the 1970s. Not all of America’s beaches, however, are so accessible. Earlier this summer, I spent time on the Connecticut coast visiting family. When I say “on the coast,” I mean it — we were steps from the ocean. It was beautiful. But that shore was not shared by all. As we arrived at the small Madison enclave we’d be staying in for the week, we were greeted by a “Private Property, No Public Beach Access” sign. The beach, it was clear, was for those in the homeowners’ association only. Similar signs, I soon realized, decorated every nearby neighborhood and driveway along the water. After a bit of research, I learned that Connecticut’s beaches were legally public up to the mean high-tide line. But unlike in California, access was another matter entirely. Connecticut is hardly alone when it comes to limited coastal access. Though US beaches fall under the public trust doctrine, meaning we all have a right to enjoy them, only a handful of states have strong coastal access protections like California. Public access is poorly protected along 90 percent of the US coastline and Great Lakes. (And it’s not as if the rich in California don’t try to cordon off the public from beaches as well, laws be damned.) My family and I enjoyed our days playing in the sand and swimming in the Long Island Sound. But the inequity of the situation was inescapable and uncomfortable. It was yet another example of what Hannah Palmer dug into in our summer cover story — how systemic racism and economic inequity continue to limit many Americans’ access to swimmable waters in the United States. Beaches belong to everyone. It’s beyond time we honored that.
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