Where is the beach a public beach in Palm Beach County? What is the Erosion Control Line? and Where is the Erosion Control Line located in Palm Beach County?
Lots of talk these days about beach access on Palm Beach and the wealthy folks there posting the beach with “No Trespassing” posts. BTW, the erosion control line is to the beach as the bulkhead line is to inland waterways.
Now, everything seaward of the mean high water, or first vegetation, line on the beach is owned by the State of Florida. It is public land and the public has an easement on this land for public use and enjoyment. The statute definition changed recently and as:
161.021 Definitions. ”In construing these statutes, where the context does not clearly indicate otherwise, the word, phrase, or term:
(1) Access or public access as used in ss. 161.041, 161.052, and 161.053 means the publics right to laterally traverse the sandy beaches of this state where such access exists on or after July 1, 1987, or where the public has established an accessway through private lands to lands seaward of the mean high tide or water line by prescription, prescriptive easement, or any other legal means, development or construction shall not interfere with such right of public access unless a comparable alternative accessway is provided.
So, there is a line where the sovereign (State of Florida) land is separated from the privately owned uplands. The FL statute requires that prior to any beach re-nourishment which utilizes public funds that this separation line be located. This is called the Erosion Control Line. The Town of Palm Beach put together a very nice public document to discuss this prior to their last beach re-nourishment project. Basically the state wants to know before we go adding anything artificially to the “beach” we want to know where the state land is and where the private land is. Generally speaking one can not spend public money to improve private property except if in this case it benefits the public. If we artificially add any sand that changes where the mean high water line is then that DOES NOT infer that the land above the new high water line now belongs to the upland owner. This is because the high water line is said to be ambulatory (it can and does move) in a natural setting but NOT if the movement is man made.
Destin FL had a great summary…
“An Erosion Control Line is a requirement by the State of Florida to establish the limits of upland ownership by the State before a beach restoration project can commence. This is a completely separate issue than a construction easement. All sand placed seaward of the Erosion Control Line is placed in state waters and therefore remains the property of the State. All sand placed landward of the Erosion Control Line remains in ownership of the upland landowner.”
In Palm Beach the surveyor hired to establish the Erosion Control Line was told by DEP to set a contour line at +0.45′ elevation line from the 1988 NAVD datum as this line. Odd that this 19 year period is called a tidal ‘epoch’ by NOAA and the last one placed MHW at +0.37′ NAVD so it’s not clear to me where this +0.45′ came from.
Once the ECL is established, the land seaward of the ECL is property of the State and landward of the ECL remains in the possession of the upland property owner. During times when the shoreline has retreated landward (eroded) and the ECL is submerged, the property terminates at the mean high water line. Conversely, during times when the shoreline has advanced seaward of the ECL (accreted), the upland property terminates at the ECL.
NOTE AS STATED ABOVE THAT IF THE BEACH ERODES LANDWARD OF THE ECL THEN THE BOUNDARY ‘REVERTS’ BACK TO THE MEAN HIGH WATER LINE.
The location of the Erosion Control Line can be a closely guarded secret but I did find this web site that has a collection of them and shows the ones on the west coast of Florida but NOT the east coast…
