Rebuilding On The Beach May Not Happen
It turns out that the law in Texas is the same as the law in Florida – The land between the average low tide mark and average high tide mark is public land, and no one can build on it or block it. The storm surge moved those marks inland.
The story is at MSNBC: Some Ike victims may not be allowed to rebuild
The reason: a 1959 law known as the Texas Open Beaches Act. Under the law, the strip of beach between the average high-tide line and the average low-tide line is considered public property, and it is illegal to build anything there.
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The former state senator who wrote the law had little sympathy.
“We’re talking about damn fools that have built houses on the edge of the sea for as long as man could remember and against every advice anyone has given,” A.R. “Babe” Schwartz said.
…“Every one of them was warned of that in their earnest money contract, in the deed they received, in the title policy they bought,” he said. “And whether you like it or not, neither the Constitution of the United States nor the state of Texas nor any law permits you to have a structure on state-owned property that’s subject to the flow of the tide.”
Another problem is that to determine the average high and low tides requires monitoring the shore line during all four seasons, so it will be a year before the new lines are drawn. No one is even talking about hauling in more sand, so you can forget rebuilding the beach. If people repair their property and in falls in the tidal zone, it will be condemned.
2 comments
As frustrating as it may seem, this is a good law. Without it, wealthy people would buy up and seal off beaches, cutting off ordinary mortals from an important source of food and (of course) recreation. And as Schwartz reminds us, people know damned well what they’re getting into when they buy near-beachfront property in Texas; it’s one of the hazards of owning in such a location.
I regret the loss of Galveston’s beaches. They’ve been among my favorites within about an hour’s drive of here; it really saddens me to think of all that was lost.
I assume the Texas law was passed for the same reason as the Florida law – to preserve the right of public access to the beach.
We replenish the beaches because the trend over here is for the Gulf to leave sand, so we are just accelerating the process, not trying to fight it, and it provides more protection for inland areas. If the Gulf was eroding sand without storms, it’s a fool’s errand to fight it.
After over 50 years, people should be aware of the law and what it means, although I doubt the real estate agents highlight it. I don’t doubt that the title insurance people do highlight it, because they are off the hook if it happens.