This is hilarious. The U.S. Corps of Engineers has dangled a $42 million carrot to replenish sand on beaches in front of expensive houses but the homeowners don't want it at the expense of having to create public access easements (because federal dollars can only go towards improving public, not private, beaches). This town is going to get annihilated by the next big storm because these little tyrants want to keep their beaches private.
How are these beaches private to begin with? I thought land right next to the ocean was basically accessible to the public.
Fucking private beach, get fucked.
It’s similarly bad on the west coast of Florida, south of Fort Myers. The massive Estero Bay is just on the edge of a huge population, and mercifully most of the mangroves between land and the water are protected, but all of the water access is privately owned either by hotels or golf club communities. Your average joe has to drive 30 minutes to the next closest boat launch and pay $40 minimum, or has an hour ride down the Estero river out to the bay or the Gulf.
I just don’t understand how they let this happen. I mean, I do.
The issue is that there is no public access that connects the beaches to the rest of the land.
There was a similar case in California where rich assholes enclosed the common pathways that connected the beach to everything else
Public roads in Wyoming have stuff like this happen as well. A popular picnic stop at the top of a small mountain I went to once had a public road all the way to the top until a guy bought the land on both sides of the road and closed it off. Now you have to park about an hour's walk down and hoof it to the top.