Beach Access

Steve Lopez seems to always conveniently leave out of his beach access columns that there is a beautiful stretch of sandy beach available to everyone, with ample parking; it is called Zuma ("A Concerted Effort to Free Malibu Beaches for the Rest of Us," July 17). There are also the Corral Canyon, Topanga and always-scenic Leo Carrillo beaches. Malibu Beach is great for everyone, and if one wanted to, one could walk at low tide for miles and park oneself on any patch of sand below the mean high-tide line.

Wendy McCaw, the billionaire owner of the Santa Barbara News-Press, has paid $460,000 in fines as part of a settlement over a beach access dispute with the California Coastal Commission. The settlement, however, does not end McCaw's legal battle to block public access to a 500-foot strip of beach below her 25-acre bluff-top estate. McCaw continues to pursue a companion lawsuit to prevent Santa Barbara County from acquiring the easement it needs to open up the stretch of beach to the public.

Construction has begun on a $2-million pedestrian bridge that will connect the inland side of Pacific Coast Highway with the beach near downtown Huntington Beach. The overpass, between Beach Boulevard and Huntington Street, will provide a crossing for guests and visitors to the 519-room Hyatt Regency Huntington Beach Resort & Spa, which is scheduled to open in January. The bridge is scheduled to be completed at the end of June, said Steve Bone, managing partner of Hyatt Regency.

The Laguna Beach City Council is poised tonight to adopt 17 stretches of beach for public use. In order to win California Coastal Commission approval, seaside landowners seeking building permits in past years had to promise that the public could use adjacent stretches of beach. But the easements are in danger of expiring--some in less than a year--if a local agency or nonprofit group doesn't accept responsibility for them.

C'mon, man! Whatever happened to the mellow surfer dude from sunny Southern California ("Too Many Surfers and Too Few Waves," Feb. 24)? One of the greatest appeals of the beach is that everyone from every walk of life can comingle peacefully. Even in ritzy Malibu the wealthy residents cannot legally block the public from beach access. It would be a shame to close off some of the most beautiful bluffs to all but a few whose property lines end just short of the beach but do not include the beach.

It amazes me to read about the struggle for public beach access in Southern California ("Activists Press Geffen for Beach Path," Jan. 29). I just returned from Maui, Hawaii, where multimillion-dollar houses are adjacent to very public beaches, with no access difficulty whatsoever. I can imagine that a homeowner there, attempting to block access, would be confronted with instant rebellion from the locals and tourists. Why have Californians accepted this two-tier beach society for so long?

I think Steve Lopez ("A Walk on the Beach Is No Stroll in the Park," Jan. 4) and the public have this beach access story all mixed up. The uproar in Malibu is not really about public access to a five-foot-wide rocky beach, but about the steps that were taken to make this "beach" a public access point in the first place. The California Coastal Commission is the only true dictatorship in California. What it says goes, and it is as political an organization as you can find in this state.

Re "Making Waves in Malibu" and "'Lifelines' to Sea May Wither, Die," Dec. 30: The coastline from Topanga Canyon north to Zuma Beach and beyond boasts few homes of architectural splendor. Many are stark, white, overblown beach homes among the meandering border of weathered wooden boxes, with the nooks and crannies of the canyons providing noteworthy exceptions. These properties fetch millions for one reason only: our public beaches. There are no true liberals in Malibu. They want no outsiders--in this case, inner-city minorities--to obstruct their treasured lifestyles.

Rugged dunes tower hundreds of feet above a wide, sandy beach, where the screech of a soaring bald eagle is barely audible over wind gusts and pounding surf. Such is the majesty of South Fox Island in northern Lake Michigan, a remote jewel treasured by boaters, hikers and deer hunters. Its beauty and isolation help explain the intensity of a battle over a proposed land swap between its two owners--David V. Johnson, a Detroit developer, and the state of Michigan.

The state Coastal Conservancy reversed course Thursday and agreed to help open dozens of planned public walkways to the beach, especially those that cut between oceanfront mansions whose owners have been most opposed to the expanded access. The policy adopted unanimously was revised from an earlier version that had prompted coastal activists to accuse the conservancy of backsliding on its mandate to expand beach access.