Coastal Protection
An Oregon Birthright

The next time you visit Cannon Beach, walk down the steps at the ocean end of Harrison Street. Then turn just a bit southwest as you head to the water.

You will be standing at ground zero for one of the battles for Oregon’s public beaches.

In 1989, a landowner applied for a permit to build a seawall 100 feet toward the ocean from the edge of his two beachfront lots. He intended to fill in behind the seawall to create enough dry land to build a motel.

This application startled many local residents, including retired realtor and former 1000 Friends of Oregon board member Janet Rekate. Rekate thought Oregon’s public beaches had been forever protected from private development by a series of enlightened measures: the legislation passed under Governor Oswald West in 1913, the 1967 Beach Bill, a 1969 Oregon Supreme Court decision, and Statewide Planning Goals 17 and 18 ("Coastal Shorelands" and "Beaches and Dunes"), adopted in 1976.

Defending the Public’s Birthright
1000 Friends staff attorney Keith Bartholomew attended the local hearings, urging the City to deny the permit. So did many other people. And the City did, as did the Division of State Lands, which administers permits for seawalls on the beaches.

In 1990, the motel owner appealed those denials to the Clatsop County Circuit Court and then to the Oregon Court of Appeals, arguing (among other things) that Goal 18 violated the U.S. Constitution, which prohibits the government from taking private property for public use unless it pays compensation. He lost.

The motel owner then persuaded the Oregon Supreme Court to review the case. Bartholomew filed a "friend of the court" brief on behalf of 1000 Friends of Oregon, the League of Women Voters, and the Oregon Shores Conservation Coalition defending the basic principle that no individual may usurp the public’s right to enjoy Oregon’s beaches.

On July 1, 1993 the Oregon Supreme Court decided that the property owner was not entitled to compensation for a property right he had never owned in the first place: the right to develop the dry sand area of the beach used by the public. In March 1994, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear the case on appeal.

No Victory is Final
"This one victory over a small piece of land means that all of Oregon’s beaches are now protected–for our children and their children," says Janet Rekate.

No protection is absolute, and many beach access issues remain unresolved. Access across private land is frequently blocked by development (especially by gated communities), despite the provisions of Goal 17, which explicitly mandate that access be retained. Challenges like these ensure that 1000 Friends and its allies will still be needed to protect Oregon’s beaches and citizens’ access to them well into the future.

On July 5, 1997, Oregon Shores Conservation Coalition organized a 30^th anniversary celebration of the passage of the Oregon Beach Bill. Staff and members of 1000 Friends of Oregon participated in the event.

As the group walked from City Hall to the site of the celebration, a figure standing on a motel balcony hurled epithets at them for their efforts to thwart development on the beach. The Pacific may be cold but passions over Oregonians’ public right to use their beaches remain hot.