Jesse Reiblich (University of Rhode Island) et al. have posted Protecting California’s Surf Breaks Using the Coastal Act’s Local Coastal Programs on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
Surf breaks are important resources for many reasons, including their recreational value for surfing and many related wellbeing and societal benefits. Protecting these resources is a relatively nascent endeavor. Furthermore, surf breaks are typically overlooked or undervalued in coastal planning processes. Surf breaks are particularly valuable and important to California, where surfing is the state sport and surfing and coastal visits account for a large part of its economy and personality. But even California has faced surf break destruction, and its breaks are routinely under threat from development and environmental degradation. Efforts have been made to use laws designed for other purposes to protect California surf breaks (e.g. using the National Historic Preservation Act to protect Malibu), but more comprehensive tools and approaches are needed to protect against further destruction of surf breaks. Local Coastal Programs (LCPs) provide one important option. LCPs are mandatory coastal policy and land use plans that local governments in California’s coastal zone must prepare to control how development and land uses are managed in these communities. These long-term planning documents can be used to prioritize and directly protect surf breaks, or at least make sure that they are reliably considered in coastal development planning processes. This paper assesses the current policy implementation gap for these potential roles by identifying and evaluating LCPs that already reference surf breaks. We then discuss how surf breaks can be consistently addressed in all LCPs in future iterations.
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