W hile handfuls of silvery fish mottled the shimmering aquamarine surface about 20 yards off Vanderbilt Beach, a school of well-dressed Neapolitans nearby ignored them.
First, the humans marched down the boardwalk from The Ritz-Carlton, Naples, and out onto the white sand. Then they gathered, either facing each other or studying the rank and file of big development in both directions.
Southward, they could see Pelican Bay high rises and estate homes stretching for nearly three miles, from The Ritz at the western end of Vanderbilt Beach Road almost all the way to Pine Ridge Road and Clam Pass. Northward, they viewed solid development along Gulfshore Drive extending toward Delnor- Wiggins State Park, with its parking lots, observation tower and restrooms about two miles away.
Donned in trousers, dress shirts with ties, sports jackets and even high heels, they stood out like exotic flora.
Such counterintuitive scenes — full dress on a beautiful stretch of sugar sand — could also be replayed along other Gulf beaches, according to officials of the state Department of Environmental Protection. The future of public and private rights on many Florida beaches appears to hang in the balance.
That's true not only in front of The Ritz, whose employees have kicked passersby off beachfront claimed as private by the hotel and as public by irate citizens, but up and down the Gulf coast, from Estero Island to Manasota Key near Englewood to Destin.
The legal rules ensure that the Florida coastline is surrounded by a strip of public land where every American has a right to go.
But where exactly is the line between public and private on any given beach? Often, that's been anybody's guess.Mr. Iglehart, the DEP official in white shirt and tie, said to the hotelier, "I understand." Then he explained the state's position.
Traditionally, the public owns every inch of beach from "the mean high-water line" seaward, Mr. Iglehart said. But when beaches are renourished with public money — which is why the beach in front of The Ritz and beyond it is so broad and sugary — a permanent line is established that doesn't change with tides, winds, storms or lines of chairs and umbrellas.
That line is called the Erosion Control Line. To place it, state officials determine a traditional mean high-water line, survey that line on the beach and call it the ECL. Although the mean high water line can change as the beachfront topography evolves from wind and wave action, the ECL does not change once it is determined.
"As a result of the local governmentsponsored beach restoration projects on this beach, the state set an Erosion Control Line (ECL)," wrote Harold "Bud" Vielhauer, deputy counsel for the state DEP. "The ECL and not the mean high-water line is the boundary between the state-owned public beach and the hotel's private property.
"Waterward of the (ECL) is state-owned public beach," Mr. Vielhauer continued. "The public has the right to put down chairs, towels and blankets, swim and sunbathe and otherwise use the beach for recreation."
So where exactly was this illusoryseeming Erosion Control Line?
In short order the state surveyors did their work, verifying the location of the ECL — the arbitrary boundary based on where the mean high water mark once was before public sand was spread on the beach. They demonstrated that the Ritz's beach ownership extends seaward about 70 feet from each of its four boardwalks, covering roughly 200 yards of beachfront. But it doesn't extend all the way to the water.
Beyond that 70 feet of white sand, hotel employees will no longer be able to stretch a long unbroken line of signature blue beach chairs and umbrellas, as they have done in the past, according to many beachgoers, effectively forming a corral that excludes the public.
The public, meanwhile, is left with 25- 30 feet of beach seaward of hotel property, according to state officials — and that Erosion Control Line extends north and south of the Ritz, too.
Source: floridaweekly.com
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