Global Breaking News - Monday, December 23, 2024

Beachfront Access
The owner of a popular surf beach in California has closed it to the public — setting off waves of outrage and a legal battle. Though the rules of public beach access differ from state to state, the “public trust doctrine” ensures that the water and the part of the beach covered by high tide belong to all. But that can be rendered moot when property owners close off access to the public. Is privatization of beaches appropriate? Should those with beachfront homes have to open their land to all comers?
* set off = 유발하다(일으키다)/ outrage = 격분, 격노/ legal battle = 법적 싸움(투쟁)/ public trust doctrine = 공공신탁 원칙/ ensure = 보장하다/ high tide = 만조/ render = (어떤 상태가 되게) 만들다/ moot = 고려할 가치가 없는/ privatization = 사유(영)화, 민영화/ beachfront = 해변에 위치한(이웃한)

 해변에 위치한 집들 해변가의 사유화가 적절한가요? 그 집 소유자들은 그들의 땅을 모든 이들에게 개방해야 하나요?

1. An American Right and Environmental Necessity
Broader public access to beaches will put us in a better position to manage the effects of climate change.

2. Allow the Free Market to Protect the Environment
People tend to take care of the things they own and neglect the things they don’t.

3. Private Property Should Not Be Confiscated
Privatization is not a threat. The threat is a government that can take over private property without compensating the owners.

4. Assets in Which We’ve All Invested
As Americans, we expect to see benefits from the taxes we pay. Much of the nation's coastlines have been shaped by federal, state and local dollars.

Sample Essay

Private Property Should Not Be Confiscated

Where do we draw the line between private and public?

When it comes to our beaches, the law varies from state to state. But in almost all states, the public part of a beach extends inland only as far as the mean high tide line. This area of land — the “wet beach” — is public. The upland “dry beach” is not necessarily so.

There is no danger that the traditional and lawful public beach area — the wet beach area — will be privatized. The real problem comes when interest groups and government entities try to expand the public beach area onto private property without paying the owners a dime.

As erosion squeezes public beach areas between the water and developed uplands, local governments from Texas to North Carolina have sought to create public areas out of privately owned beaches, to give the public a wider strip of shore. These governments contend that the public gains access to private beachfront land for recreational use, without any due compensation to the owner, whenever erosion strips away the natural vegetation so that land becomes a dry sandy area.

Such uncompensated "public-ization" of present and future dry beach areas deprives homeowners of privacy and, in some cases, threatens private homes. Once the government asserts that the public has rights to the dry beach, it may try to forcibly remove any beachfront home — again without payment — on a lot that has become a part of the dry sand beach (for instance, after a storm denudes the vegetation from the lot) on the theory that the home “encroaches” on a public area.

In Texas, “rolling easement” laws that extended public property to the sand — no matter how far back it moved because of wind, erosion or weather — were nullified in 2012.

In North Carolina, however, the controversy is still brewing about whether private beachfront properties can be targeted as “nuisances” because the underlying land of the property has turned to sand.

Privatization is not a threat. The threat is a government that redefines private areas as public, without paying compensation to the owners. After all, if the government can evade the Constitution on the coast, no property is safe. Confiscating private property isn't the American way and it isn't appropriate for American land -- whether far inland, or next to the sea.