A significant bill that changes what’s considered public beach and what’s considered private beach in the State of Florida recently was passed in the Florida House of Representatives. The beach that you may have, for many years, used like a public beach and considered public, and a beach that was in fact considered public according to “customary use” laws and policies, could be converted to private use starting on July 1, 2018.

The bill gives the property owners along the beach, who are thought by many to own the beach behind their property (obviously debatable),  the rights that are usually entitled to property owners.  This law gives property owners the right to uphold their own policies on their property, a right that can now be enforced, and not removed by local legislation.  Property owners are now entitled to do what they please with their property.  According to one person I spoke with today, property owners could essentially put up a fence around their piece of the beach, which in most cases goes down almost to the waters edge. Property lines for property on the beach go all the way down to what’s been called the high water line, or as a rule you could think the wet or dry sand.  If it’s dry it’s probably private property assuming it’s in front of private property, but if it’s a wet part of sand along the water it’s probably public property.

Something many people are wondering is, what does this mean when the time comes to renourish the beaches.  Will tax dollars be used to fund the renourishment of private beaches?  I would certainly hope not.  Oh wait just one second, that’s what’s about to happen.  The Army Corp of Engineers awarded a 36 million dollar contract to a company to create private property in Pinellas County from Sand Key to Redington, for private property owners all along the coast. The renourishment project was expected to begin at the beginning of this month, April 1st.

Some other things to note are that many beaches that are highly commercialized are already highly regulated by hotels, condo, and simply the industry as if the previous policies didn’t matter.  If you were to look at ariel images of the private properties you’d see places like hotels and condos have their own sets of rental umbrellas that go almost right up the the waters edge. That would only be possible if that was permitted or private land (private land in this case).

You have to be wondering how many of the condominiums, hotels, and homes along your favorite beach will be using this bill to enforce their private property rights, and I assure you, they are many.  There may also be a limited amount of observable change, because highly commercialized areas want to maintain the inviting atmosphere of the beach. You might have considered the beaches of Clearwater Beach, Jacksonville Beach, or Miami Beach mostly public before, but in reality that just isn’t the case.

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