SJ, I too have wrestled with this as one of the "cons" of beach renourishment. And yours is a most excellent question.I believe I understand that which you are saying, but let's say that the ECL is established, the sand is pumped, the beach is extended 50ft. A powerful set of storms blow in, and remove all of the sand back to the ECL, the line where the original private property was deeded to. Now, the original deeded private property no longer has State beaches in front of it, so wouldn't we be back to where we are now with the legal battles of the public not being able to sit on the dry sand beach, which is landward of the ECL?
Let's assume the county gets past the Supreme Court "hurdle" and renourishment takes place.
It doesn't take a crystal ball to see your concerns.
After renourishment, the public will be able to use the beach south of this ECL line. Let's say life goes on for a few years without hurricanes or big storms. "Most" everyone is happy! Right?
Now, as you suggest, a storm wipes away most or all of the sand south of the ECL line. Now the public, who has paid significant amounts of money to come down to the beach on vacation or buyers of homes with their private accesses to "nowhere", ALL OF A SUDDEN find themselves not being able to get to many areas of the beach because there is no "public beach" left (south of the ECL).
Just like the debate that takes place on this thread, many will feel like they will still be "entitled" to the beach regardless of where the "ECL" line is. Gulf front private property owners will know and react otherwise.
Unless there is a mechanism in place to address this, all hell is going to break loose when this event happens (not if but when).
Of course the beach can get renourished again and again, but this takes a lot of time and a lot of money. So during the interim after a major storm, there will be confrontations that will dwarf anything we're seeing today because of the continued growth and increasing pressure on the beach as a resource.
A possible solution would be for the county to enter into a "short term" license agreement with property owners. With an investment of 40 to 60 million dollars, to keep tourism going, then not to have a COMPLETE "recovery plan" in place regarding the above issue would be disastrous.