In Malibu, a skirmish over lines in the sand

The head of the California Coastal Commission (CCC) calls it "the most egregious, arrogant, inexplicable behavior ever" by homeowners on the California beaches.

"They basically stole the public beach ... leaving the public to walk in the water," says Peter Douglas, the CCC's executive director. "It's incomprehensible."

The president of the local homeowners association counters that residents "were just trying to repair and restore damage from heavy winter storms."

Whatever the rationale, a new high- profile confrontation over who owns which beach has erupted just weeks after Tinseltown titan David Geffen gave up his world-famous battle to keep the masses off the sand in front of his Malibu house. Just two weeks ago, local beach-access activists celebrated the opening of a nine-foot-wide public pathway to the ocean next to Mr. Geffen's property on Carbon Beach - ending several years of litigation.

Now, local and far-flung beachcombers are calling authorities, shocked that homeowners on Broad Beach, just miles away, have bulldozed 1.1 miles of beachfront sand off the public stretch, pushing it toward their homes.

"This is the ultimate in [the] Malibu-locals-only mentality, gone berserk," says Susie Duff, a two-decade Malibu resident. She and others say there has long been a social rift between some wealthy beachfront property owners who think they own the sand and others in this enclave of 13,000 who are happy to share.

"There has been a despicable undercurrent of war about this issue here for years, and this is just more evidence that some haven't learned a thing from the Geffen experience - [that] the beach is owned by the public," says Ms. Duff.

To many homeowners, though, the bulldozing is a simple matter of keeping their beaches intact. "There are drains placed improvidently by local and state government which dump huge amounts of storm water," says Marshall Grossman, head of the Trancas Property Owners Association. "They were eroding our dunes."

The current Malibu beach battle is important, legal analysts say - both within the state where dozens of similar cases are pending in courts, and beyond, to states from Massachusetts to Hawaii - both in setting precedent and raising public awareness. Activists say property owners try to intimidate the public with "keep off" signs, video cameras, security guards, and more. Homeowners say the beach visitors abuse their rights, knowingly or not, by trespassing, littering, and worse.

By California law, beaches are strictly public from the "mean high-tide line" (MHTL) to the water. (The line is calculated by averaging high-tide water marks surveyed throughout the year.)

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