Beaches Of South Walton TDC agrees to support customary use of beaches

I still belive if you take some one's property rights from them that you should pay for it.. Maybe if the county started just buying all of the property in the county that came to them with Development order then we would come out cheeper than all the Law Suites we are having. just think of how much Camping on the Gulf will cost or Jolly Bay?????

I still belive we have enough beach land in the public holdings to hold ALL of the visitors to SOWAL that we should leave the homeowners alone with their beach property they paid for. If you for some strange reason only wont to set on that section of beach then you should approch the home owner and buy it.

Creeklover, there is a major difference between YOU thinking that one thing should be done, and the COURTS, thinking that it shouldn't be done.

Here is a Destin Log article updating the situation. I could not find it on the Walton Sun or Herald site:

In Walton, it's public beach vs. private property | walton, public, div - News - TheDestinLog.com

The mere mention of "customary use" on Walton County's beaches — which pits the rights of the public against private property owners - ruffled some feathers at Tuesday's County Commission meeting.

"It's absolutely socialism," Blue Mountain Beach resident Emmett Hildreth said of a proposal to update the existing beach activities ordinance and comprehensive plan to include the customary use doctrine. "It's taking private property rights and redistribution of wealth and that's nationalization on a county level."

County commissioners have agreed to investigate a proposal by the Tourist Development Council to include the customary use doctrine in the ordinance. The doctrine determines exactly how the public may use the county's 26 miles of beaches, into the ordinance.

"We're asking the commissioners to ascertain if the doctrine of customary use can apply, and if the evidence that's presented to them supports the doctrine. Then we're further asking that they change the ordinance and comprehensive plan to recognize the doctrine of customary use," TDC Director Sonny Mares said after the meeting.

He said the existing law does not clarify exactly what activities the public may enjoy on the beaches or clarify that the public and businesses can freely use the 60 beach accesses.

Mares said the question is whether the doctrine of customary use supports the public's right to use the dry sand portion of the beach for activities such as swimming, fishing, walking and sunbathing.

Property owners are now putting up signs warning people away from their homes and even hiring private security guards, he said.

Those actions "certainly go contrary to this being a tourist destination and does great harm to the tourist industry in Walton County," which is a $1 billion industry, provides about $20 million to the school district and supports 1,200 jobs.

"Tourism has been one of the largest stimuluses for construction, and this is certainly not the time to be downgrading the importance of tourism and thus losing the benefits of the tax revenue to the county," Mares said.

Commissioner Larry Jones said controversy has been sparked recently over whether property owners have the right to exclude people from certain areas of the beach and it is "probably time that it be addressed."

Commissioners took no action Tuesday; they agreed only to study the issue.

The next step will be for those who support the customary use doctrine to investigate whether there is enough evidence to support its inclusion in the beach activities ordinance.

Jones said if that evidence does exist, another meeting will be scheduled for residents to give their input.

"In a public forum, you'll have people speak against what is being presented," he said after the meeting. "It is now the onus of proof to the commission that there would be reason to move forward to strengthen the ordinance to clarify what areas of the beach the public can use. I think it's going to be a fairly lengthy process."

It's on the front page of the Sun today.


"This is evil socialism! " :roll:

People should know when they buy a beachfront lot, they're buying the view, not the beach. :roll:

Now that is an interesting statement. If the deed reads mean high water mark as the boundary, they ARE buying the beach, but not necessarily with exclusive use. The reason I bring this up is because as I understand it, if a beach goer is injured on that "privately owned" property, the owner of the property may be paying damages if taken to court.

That is what is so crazy for me to understand. The property owners claiming rights to the beach, have been allowing the public to use the beach, without objection for years, though if the public is injured on that property, the owner may be liable. Also, the property owner is going to pay taxes based on the assessed taxable value, which is usually directly tied to the size of the parcel. I see at least two very big ways a Gulf front owner could benefit by quit claiming the lower beach elevation of the property, and it seems that they are essentially not losing anything, since the public has always been using that property anyway. I really don't understand their side, and would love to hear an objection to the above thought.

If the property owner IS sued for damages resulting from an accident on that beach property, I bet the property owner's attorney argues that the beach property is really the public's, due to case law, as the one I previously posted. That is the irony -- the private Gulf front property owners may be the biggest proponent of public beach, if they are sued for damages. Can you imagine a top notch professional football player, stepping into a deep hole on the beach, snapping his leg in two, never again able to play football? With an annual salary of $10 million, and 15 more years of playing time, that is going to be one hefty lawsuit of damages.

If you go online and look at plats, you can see that some parcels go to the mean high-water line, and some do not. Like SJ says, the owners of the former pay taxes on that property. In trying to look at it from the point of view of these owners, how can they not have the viewpoint that they own that property? They are buying the beach because that is included in the acreage that they purchased and pay taxes on.

To address the issue of customary use, things have really changed since we first started coming to the area. There weren't the high-density developments north of County Highway 30A that there are now. Back then I wouldn't think that beachfront owners would have minded small numbers of people flowing over into their property from the public accesses. Fast forward to 2008. Now with the proliferation of these high-density developments, there are larger numbers of people from these developments using the public (and private if there's no gate) accesses and thus larger numbers of people flowing over into private property for which, as SJ pointed out, the owner faces liability issues.

In my opinion "customary" is relative. The customs from the past don't relate at all to the situation now because things are different due to higher volumes of people visiting the area and not staying at condos/homes with private beach walkovers.

Someone in Saturday's Walton Sun was complaining that the Planning Commission should approve more projects because the economy is so bad and that people in the development/construction industries need jobs. Isn't that how this whole problem of beach use started? That is, because Planning and then the BCC didn't appear to totally think through the repercussions of approving these high-density developments and approved developments that should never have been approved, these growth issues have occurred?

I'm just trying to look at things from the point of view of a beachfront owner which I am not. It sucks to pay for property and have a boatload of people with all of their beach junk in your front yard (those homes face the beach). Yet it also sucks that people come to "the beach" to vacation and can't use the beach as they once did.

I probably shouldn't post this. Too inflammatory of an issue. There are probably more people who disagree with me than agree. Please don't slam me.

The beach is not their yard. The beach is whatever Mother Nature wants it to be. What if tomorrow we woke up and it was 3 miles to the water? Would that be theirs too?

Oh, and There would be construction on it before you know it, and then the owners don't have beachfront property anymore.

Property lines shouldn't be determined by high tide. The reason they don't have a yard is because they built as close to the water as they could possibly get a permit for.

Don't go building houses on the sand.

I had my trailer set up in the middle of my lot. :roll:

The beach is not their yard. The beach is whatever Mother Nature wants it to be. What if tomorrow we woke up and it was 3 miles to the water? Would that be theirs too?

Oh, and There would be construction on it before you know it, and then the owners don't have beachfront property anymore.

Property lines shouldn't be determined by high tide. The reason they don't have a yard is because they built as close to the water as they could possibly get a permit for.

Don't go building houses on the sand.

I had my trailer set up in the middle of my lot. :roll:

I am not a lawyer, so I can't answer the question in the first paragraph. However, it's more likely that they will lose acreage, as evidenced by what happened in the 2005 hurricane season when some properties fell into the water or were condemned.

Actually where one builds is dependent upon the CCL (Coastal Construction Line). Fairly recently the CCL was moved farther north. People who own beachfront lots can't build on property they've paid for that's south of the CCL. I know of a property which was sold, and the new owner found out that it was virtually unbuildable due to easements, the movement of the CCL, and height restrictions, even if they moved the footprint of a house as far north as practical. The last I heard, the lot is back on the market.

Bottom line: thanks to the new CCL, you can't build a new house on the "beach."

Actually where one builds is dependent upon the CCL (Coastal Construction Line). Fairly recently the CCL was moved farther north. People who own beachfront lots can't build on property they've paid for that's south of the CCL. I know of a property which was sold, and the new owner found out that it was virtually unbuildable due to easements, the movement of the CCL, and height restrictions, even if they moved the footprint of a house as far north as practical. The last I heard, the lot is back on the market.

Bottom line: thanks to the new CCL, you can't build a new house on the "beach."

You've been given some bad information regarding the Coastal Construction Control Line (CCCL) for Walton County as it is the third oldest in the state and is in the same location it has been in since April 1982.

http://www.dep.state.fl.us/beaches/publications/pdf/reestabh.pdf

Currently in the Panhandle, Franklin and Gulf are undergoing relocation landward of the old location.

People who own beachfront lots can't build on property they've paid for that's south of the CCL.

Not true. The CCCL is a line of jusrisdiction, not prohibition. It means if you build south of the CCCL, you need a DEP permit, and you have to build to a different construction standard. It's more expensive, usually, but you can build. You might have to resituate the house on the lot and you might not get to build as big a house as you want, but you can build. Sounds like the people you know have multiple issues that might have reduced the buildable footprint to something impracticle for their needs or wants. Or they might have bought something that was originally a bigger lot and someone split it, maybe even a questionable split, and now it doesn't just doesn't work.

I know that that there are homes near ours that couldn't be built where they are now due to the change in the CCCL (sorry for the mistake in the acronym :roll. I suppose that one could request a variance. I can produce a Google Earth visual of the existing homes and the current CCCL if anyone is doubting my credibility on this. Trust me, we've spent uncountable hours on this issue. Just a little fuzzy because it's been a year since we were actively involved on a related issue.

No splits BTW.

EDIT: BTW I won't post the Google Earth visuals because it would be an invasion of privacy.

The whole idea of "it's my private beach because it's on my plat" is just dumb. Every piece of property in the world has restrictions and easements - even the MOON has regulations about what you can and cannot do on it.

Just because you own a piece of property and pay taxes on it does not mean others do not also have various rights to use it or alter it. Your "private property" may include public sidewalks that you must maintain, drainage or utility easements, fire hydrants that dictate where you can and cannot park, a bike path, a mailbox whose size, shape and location is determined by others, your trees may be cut down or trimmed by power companies, the list goes on and on.

I grew up on a lake and the area of our yard near the water's edge was public property. Not just the area where the waves hit (like wet sand), but an area of dry land as well (like the beach from the water to the dunes). Someone could stand on the shore and fish for hours, walk through the area to get to the water or to continue walking across other yards (all the way around the lake if they wanted), swim, throw for their dog, whatever.

Shorelines and beaches are public areas and there should be no limitations on people using them as long as they follow the laws and regulations (litter, dogs, glass, etc.) How people GET to those shorelines and beaches is the problem. Greedy developers funneling large amounts of people through one small access has created problems, but that doesn't mean we should drastically change the way we all use the beaches. More and more people are going to come to our beaches, so we need to plan for how to reasonably accommodate those numbers. Providing more parks with more parking spaces, bathrooms, garbage disposal etc. is a reasonable solution - having your own security force arresting little kids building for sand castles is not.

The whole idea of "it's my private beach because it's on my plat" is just dumb. Every piece of property in the world has restrictions and easements - even the MOON has regulations about what you can and cannot do on it.

Just because you own a piece of property and pay taxes on it does not mean others do not also have various rights to use it or alter it. Your "private property" may include public sidewalks that you must maintain, drainage or utility easements, fire hydrants that dictate where you can and cannot park, a bike path, a mailbox whose size, shape and location is determined by others, your trees may be cut down or trimmed by power companies, the list goes on and on.

I grew up on a lake and the area of our yard near the water's edge was public property. Not just the area where the waves hit (like wet sand), but an area of dry land as well (like the beach from the water to the dunes). Someone could stand on the shore and fish for hours, walk through the area to get to the water or to continue walking across other yards (all the way around the lake if they wanted), swim, throw for their dog, whatever.

Shorelines and beaches are public areas and there should be no limitations on people using them as long as they follow the laws and regulations (litter, dogs, glass, etc.) How people GET to those shorelines and beaches is the problem. Greedy developers funneling large amounts of people through one small access has created problems, but that doesn't mean we should drastically change the way we all use the beaches. More and more people are going to come to our beaches, so we need to plan for how to reasonably accommodate those numbers. Providing more parks with more parking spaces, bathrooms, garbage disposal etc. is a reasonable solution - having your own security force arresting little kids building for sand castles is not.

So, can we please sell off these gulf front parks now that this movement is underway to declare all the beachfront available for public use? Let me guess:

You want that and more.
You want to take the funds from the taxpayers.
You want to limit new development on private land to keep homes away from it too.

If you actually read my post, I stated that we needed to use our existing gulf front parks (and create additional ones) to provide the access, parking, restrooms, etc. so that we can effectively accommodate the increasing number of people using the beach.

The whole idea of "it's my private beach because it's on my plat" is just dumb. Every piece of property in the world has restrictions and easements - even the MOON has regulations about what you can and cannot do on it.

Just because you own a piece of property and pay taxes on it does not mean others do not also have various rights to use it or alter it. Your "private property" may include public sidewalks that you must maintain, drainage or utility easements, fire hydrants that dictate where you can and cannot park, a bike path, a mailbox whose size, shape and location is determined by others, your trees may be cut down or trimmed by power companies, the list goes on and on.

I grew up on a lake and the area of our yard near the water's edge was public property. Not just the area where the waves hit (like wet sand), but an area of dry land as well (like the beach from the water to the dunes). Someone could stand on the shore and fish for hours, walk through the area to get to the water or to continue walking across other yards (all the way around the lake if they wanted), swim, throw for their dog, whatever.

Shorelines and beaches are public areas and there should be no limitations on people using them as long as they follow the laws and regulations (litter, dogs, glass, etc.) How people GET to those shorelines and beaches is the problem. Greedy developers funneling large amounts of people through one small access has created problems, but that doesn't mean we should drastically change the way we all use the beaches. More and more people are going to come to our beaches, so we need to plan for how to reasonably accommodate those numbers. Providing more parks with more parking spaces, bathrooms, garbage disposal etc. is a reasonable solution - having your own security force arresting little kids building for sand castles is not.

So does this mean it's o.k. with you that the same holds true for our bayfront, bayou front, river front, lake front properties too. Can we set up on someone's bayfront shoreline with a chair, food and drink, radio, frisbee and fishing gear for a family get together?

What, exactly, is the difference?

So does this mean it's o.k. with you that the same holds true for our bayfront, bayou front, river front, lake front properties too. Can we set up on someone's bayfront shoreline with a chair, food and drink, radio, frisbee and fishing gear for a family get together?

What, exactly, is the difference?

I know this one. This refers to navigable lakes and rivers.

"The Ordinary High Water Boundary

I've got 30 years of pictures of myself, family members and friends all up and down the beaches of SoWal to document my "customary use". Blue Mtn. is truly my 2nd home and great escape. My family and I own 2 houses right off the water and a gulf front condo and we believe there's enough beach for everyone. These beaches have always been public.(Unfortunately our condo assoc. doesn't like our view) I'm sick and tired of the "this is my beach" crap. I'm ready to submit my pictures to the commission as proof and I'll testify as a gulf front homeowner as well that these beaches need to stay open and accessible to everyone.

I know this one. This refers to navigable lakes and rivers.

"The Ordinary High Water Boundary

The boundary between publicly owned navigable waters and adjacent privately owned uplands is the ordinary high water boundary. Two seventy-two year-old Florida Supreme Court decisions definitively addressed how the ordinary high water boundary is located in Florida. The first case states that the ordinary high water boundary represents just what the words suggest: the ordinary reach of high water during the year. Thus, the boundary is, in general, the normal or average reach of water during the high water season.(16) The term "ordinary" excludes floods and other unusual high water events but includes the average high water of each year.(17) In determining the location of the boundary, Florida Supreme Court cases recognize the state's unique topography and differentiate between steep-banked and flat-banked water bodies. On steep-banked water bodies, the boundary is located where the presence and action of water has wrested the bank of vegetation and left a visible mark. However, on low, flat-banked water bodies - most lakes and streams south of Orlando - there is no well-defined mark, and the boundary is located where the presence of the water prevents the cultivation of ordinary agricultural crops. In 1927, the Florida Supreme Court also ruled that where the shore of a water body is low, flat, and vegetated, ordinary high water can be determined by locating water marks on local objects such as dock pilings and trees.(18)"
- The Public Trust Doctrine And Florida's Navigable Lakes And Rivers​

Thanks much for your clear and direct response.

Doesn't it sound to you like the intent of the law and Article X, Section 11 of the Florida Constitution preserve public rights in Florida's Navigable Lakes and Rivers for Navigation? The premis is based wholly on the ancient theory of pre-highway navigation for industry.

Thanks much for your clear and direct response.

Doesn't it sound to you like the intent of the law and Article X, Section 11 of the Florida Constitution preserve public rights in Florida's Navigable Lakes and Rivers for Navigation? The premis is based wholly on the ancient theory of pre-highway navigation for industry.

Hmmm. Maybe.

But I know it means I can walk along, sit, and fish from the shore up to the ordinary high water line.;-)

Hmmm. Maybe.

But I know it means I can walk along, sit, and fish from the shore up to the ordinary high water line.;-)

That makes this whole story much more interesting now. There're all sorts of interesting public access versus trespass side effects.

What exactly are the side effects? We live in a community, not a desert island, so other people - whether they be neighbors or visitors - are a fact of daily life.

I really don't understand how people on a beach is different from any other typical use or easement - there are both good and bad aspects of it. I grew having to close my drapes so I didn't give the fisherman a show from my backyard/lakefront window, policing the illegal actions of people in the park next door, shoveling sidewalks so other people could walk on them, and will spend time tomorrow removing the trash people on the multi-use path have thrown in my yard.

What exactly are the side effects? We live in a community, not a desert island, so other people - whether they be neighbors or visitors - are a fact of daily life.

I really don't understand how people on a beach is different from any other typical use or easement - there are both good and bad aspects of it. I grew having to close my drapes so I didn't give the fisherman a show from my backyard/lakefront window, policing the illegal actions of people in the park next door, shoveling sidewalks so other people could walk on them, and will spend time tomorrow removing the trash people on the multi-use path have thrown in my yard.

This sounds eutopic to me and I'm glad it worked for you. It would be great if brother and sisterly love would spread across the country.

I hear you saying that this issue of the beach being in the public's domain is not limited to gulf front beach, but also all other shorelines in Florida. That concept expressed evenly is not hypocritical at all. I think you are correct in that if the State and County grant the beach as trespass free then they also grant the shores of the bay, bayous, rivers and lakes as trespass free.

Some people have an expectancy of privacy on the land in their Deed. There's also an older principle about a man's home/castle.

people walk along the shore and shallows of the bay all the time, crabbing and fishing. I never ran them off or saw them run off by anyone else.

This sounds eutopic to me and I'm glad it worked for you. It would be great if brother and sisterly love would spread across the country.

I hear you saying that this issue of the beach being in the public's domain is not limited to gulf front beach, but also all other shorelines in Florida. That concept expressed evenly is not hypocritical at all. I think you are correct in that if the State and County grant the beach as trespass free then they also grant the shores of the bay, bayous, rivers and lakes as trespass free.

Some people have an expectancy of privacy on the land in their Deed. There's also an older principle about a man's home/castle.

People may not get privacy on their deeded land adjacent to a navigable waterway nor a public roadway, golf course, etc. Inside their home/castle, they do.

A man's home is his castle - not his yard! That's why you can't walk around your front yard naked.

P.S. If you want privacy in your home/castle, the solution is called "curtains" not "private beach".

people walk along the shore and shallows of the bay all the time, crabbing and fishing. I never ran them off or saw them run off by anyone else.

So we are all talking about the same thing then, whatever freedoms to recreate on the beach we are granting we are also going to grant the public for bays, bayous, lakes, etc.