State Sen. Mayes Middleton is in his first time period representing Surfside Beach, and he already has run afoul of those that head to the Brazoria County coast for some sand and to surf.
The Galveston Republican has filed a invoice that might change how lawsuits over beach access play out, placing the onus on the state to show a non-public property proprietor is infringing on the public’s assured proper to get to the beach.
Middleton argues in opposition to critics who say his Senate Bill 434 is a menace to the Texas Open Beaches Act that has been the regulation of coastal land since 1959. He authored an an identical invoice two years in the past whereas a member of the House and it handed that chamber earlier than dying in the Senate, he stated.
“Basically it’s a beachfront private property rights bill and it does not impact our open beaches at all,” Middleton stated. “The different sections of the natural resource code that designate our open beaches are protected and they’re not amended any way by this bill.”
What the laws intends to do, he stated, is apply the identical commonplace of proof to beachfront property as is utilized to inland property. Under present regulation, when the state declares land is public beach, it’s as much as a non-public property proprietor to show the state fallacious; for different sorts of land, it’s as much as the state to show the property belongs to the public.
“I’ve been contacted by a number of private property owners that are primarily on the west end of Galveston Island, that when the state is claiming it’s their property, it’s really not a fair fight,” Middleton stated. “When the state is presumed to own it and you have to rebut it, that’s really not fair. If the state is claiming it’s theirs, then they need to prove it.”
Ellis Pickett, founding chairman of the Surfrider Foundation Texas Upper Coast Chapter, stated the invoice is just not as innocuous because it appears.
“What this does is it makes it more difficult to file and pursue litigation to remove Open Beaches Act violations,” Pickett stated. “Who does it benefit? It benefits the 5,000 to 8,000 beachfront property owners in the state of Texas. Who does it harm? Everyone from the second row who wants to go to the beach all the way up to Oklahoma.
There’s like 5,000 to 8,000 people that are going to benefit from this, and 29 million Texans who won’t.”
Every Texan has “the free and unrestricted right to access Texas beaches,” beneath the Open Beaches Act, based on the Texas General Land Office, which regulates beach access. The public beach is the space generally known as the “wet beach,” which encompasses from the water to the line of imply excessive tide.
Pickett believes Middleton’s invoice would infringe on these rights.
“This bill does not protect the people of Texas. It protects the front-row property owners,” Pickett stated. “If you’re not a front-row property owner, you should be against this bill.”
Middleton countered that the agenda of the Surfrider Foundation is what coastal Texans ought to worry.
“Surfrider Foundation is the one that is against the bill, and unfortunately, Surfrider Foundation is extremely anti-private property rights and Surfrider supports managed retreat, which means they want private property owners and business owners on the beachfront to abandon their property,” Middleton stated. “They also want to prohibit anyone from repairing or rebuilding any property that is damaged in a storm.”
Middleton stated that the metropolis of Galveston supported the invoice final session and backed the laws once more this session, although Galveston City Council deliberate to take up that stance Thursday night time throughout a workshop session.
Former Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson, who represented Senate District 11 earlier than successful statewide workplace, believes SB 11 is a “very bad bill” that might make it harder for the public to get pleasure from Texas seashores.
“It’s bad for two reasons. One of the reasons is, it takes the General Land Office out of ability to survey the beaches and determine where the public beach easement is,” he stated. “The General Land Office is the only agency that can do that. It has the skills, it has the experience, it has the equipment, it has the expertise. Instead of the General Land Office determining where the public beach easement is, that will possibly be decided in court.”
Patterson believes if the invoice turns into regulation, Texans may go to a beach they’ve been going to for years and discover “private property” indicators stopping them from accessing it, regardless that it isn’t. The solely recourse could be for that household to sue the property proprietor.
“This bill guts the open beaches tradition in Texas and it takes the responsibility for measuring beach boundaries away from the only agency that can only accurately do it and that’s the Texas General Land Office,” Patterson stated.
Some seashores in Texas are accreting, which suggests the beach is rising in entrance of a beach home, a state of affairs occurring on the west and much east ends of Galveston Island and on the far east finish, Patterson stated. Other locations, akin to Surfside Beach, extra of the coast is disappearing.
“When that beach grows naturally, then that beachfront property owner gains title to that property — that property is now his or hers,” he stated. “If the beach erodes, that beachfront owner loses property because that boundary is determined by the location of the waters of the Gulf of Mexico.”
That shifting boundary delineating personal property vs. public beach is clear in Surfside Beach, stated state Rep. Cody Vasut, R-Angleton, who helps the concept behind Middleton’s invoice.
“If you go out to Surfside right now, there’s people that own beach houses on the line of vegetation,” Vasut stated. “You can see it out there; you might even go rent one, right? You see where they have the little boardwalks that go over the dunes where the line of vegetation is and it goes off to the beach. If a big storm came through and wiped all that out, those landowners may lose their property, particularly if that line of vegetation is moved back behind their house.”
Middleton’s invoice doesn’t change whether or not one thing is a public beach, Vasut stated. It simply modifications who has to show it’s a public beach.
“The reason you do that is because the government has the power, the money, the attorneys, and so it ought to be put to the burden, as opposed to the private property land owner having to defend their property and to incur all of that expense to be able to prove where the line of vegetation is,” Vasut stated.
Vasut thinks it’s a great invoice for personal property rights and it’s a honest course of for figuring out what’s and isn’t a public beach.
Cailyn Anderson, proprietor of Culture Coffee Shop who affords surf and yoga lessons that function out of Surfside Beach, believes the invoice may negatively have an effect on many actions Texans wish to perform on the coast.
“Imagine you pull up with your family or a group of you are getting ready to go surf. You’re not there to trash the beach, you’re not there to disrespect, you’re just wanting to go enjoy your time in nature,” Anderson stated. “You’re sitting on the beach waxing up your board or about to have a picnic with your family and a police officer says, ‘You can’t be here, it’s privately owned.’
“This isn’t for the greater good. This is for people with money and people who have houses on the beach, which is a very small percentage.”
Anderson thinks coastal legislators ought to have larger priorities than defending rich property homeowners.
“You should be focusing on building back our beaches. That’s the kind of stuff we need to be pushing for,” Anderson stated. “It sounds like this is little right now, but it’s going to get bigger and bigger. ‘We want this; we’re going to take the whole 9 yards after.’”
Surf scholar Sue Page sees the invoice as benefiting a choose few.
“When I think about this bill that you can only have access to or I own this strip of land, or my house is in front of it, what does that say? I just want more; I’m greedy, I want more, I want more, I can’t share with you,” Page stated. “And I think about all the people who come here, like from Houston or other areas to surf, and if you limit the access to a certain space on the beach … how does that make sense?”
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