This is one of those wacky can-you-believe-this? things, so we’ll just provide you, dear readers, with a quote from the L.A. Times and let you judge for yourself — Tony Barboza, A Public Beach In Malibu With Few Amenities For the Public, L.A. Times, January 8, 2012:
“A prime stretch of Malibu coastline has been in public hands for decades, but
you wouldn’t know from looking at it.“Dan Blocker County Beach has no official parking spots, no welcome sign, no permanent
restrooms or other visitor-friendly amenities. It spans a mile of Los Angeles County’s most stunning coastline on Pacific Coast Highway, but there is no pathway down the steep, roadside bluff to the sand. And a third of the property is blocked off with a chain-link fence that beachgoers must go around, scale or squeeze through to reach the seashore.“The county Department of Beaches and Harbors has owned the 11-acre beachfront property for 16 years and operated it even longer, but has so far failed to develop it into a beach most people can
actually use. In fact, officials discourage visitors from trying to reach the shore from the highway above out of concern that they will be injured scrambling down the 20-foot bluff.”
So what we have here is that, first, the law in all her majesty requires the creation of public beaches and public access thereto, and then the selfsame law causes the county to prevent access to them because under our freewheling tort system, somebody might get hurt there.
In the meantime the County is sitting on some $700,000 allocated for improvement of that beach, which it hasn’t used. Your tax money at work.
Oh yes. We almost forgot. The City of Malibu wants to take over that beach and improve it so that it can be used by the public but the County of L.A. won’t let it. Don’t you just love it?