Surfside: Separate But Equally Deserving of a Berm Say City Leaders

Despite objections that Surfside’s beach is public in name only, a split Seal Beach City Council voted Monday night to fund the construction of an annual sand berm to protect the gated colony from winter storm flooding.

The council voted 3-2 to spend $9,000 a year on a Surfside winter berm with Councilmen Gordon Shanks and Gary Miller objecting to spending public money for a beach that is largely inaccessible to the community.

However, City Councilwoman Ellery Deaton, who championed the Surfside cause, argued that Surfside residents pay taxes and deserve the same berm protection given to the rest of coastal Seal Beach.

“I believe we put up a berm on east beach (Seal Beach east of the pier) to protect private property. It’s easily the same thing, and the people of Surfside pay property taxes like everybody else, and they get treated like a stepchild,” said Deaton. “Evidently we have a real sharp problem with Surfside or something because they are not asking for anything that east beach doesn’t get, and their homes are just as valuable to them as the homes in east beach are to the people there.”

Each winter the city builds a berm east of the pier to protect the low-lying coastal community from flooding caused by winter storms. Similarly, the 280 homeowners of the gated Surfside community pay to build their own protective berm. Just like the east beach berm, the Surfside berm is built on a public beach to protect private property. Unlike east beach, Surfside’s beach is difficult for the public to access. And that is no coincidence.

In 1982, Seal Beach constructed a stone revetment under emergency conditions to protect Surfside from flooding. The California Coastal Commission allowed the project but required Surfside to grant easements and take other measures to make the Surfside beach more accessible to the public. The residents of Surfside fought the requirements and won in court. Today the beach is used primarily by Surfside residents because anyone else would have to trudge long distances along the sand to get to the Surfside shoreline.

Wedged in between Sunset Beach and Anaheim Bay and walled off from Pacific Coast Highway, Sursfide has always been a little closed off from the city and sometimes at odds with it.

“For practical purposes, it’s basically a private beach for the people who live there,” said Shanks, who voted with Miller against funding the Surfside Berm.

“There was a time when Surfside let people in the gates,” added Miller. “It’s just that it’s a private beach, and I don’t like the precedent-setting action of it all.”

In the end, the council’s decision to pay for the annual berm was a compromise. The residents of Surfside had asked for much more. In a letter to the mayor from the Surfside Colony Board, the Surfside residents asked the city to pay for the annual berm while also paying $75,000 every five years to replenish the sand lost to erosion. The residents also asked the city to adopt some of the responsibility for maintaining the community’s rock revetment, which is located beneath the sand and technically on private beach property adjacent to the homes.

Having earned a partial victory, Surfside residents said they intend to continue to push for more help from the city.

It’s a complicated issue given that the dividing line between the public beach and Surfside’s private strip of sand literally changes with the tides, said Surfside Colony Board members.

“They think we are a private beach and have all the money in the world and should be paying for it ourselves,” said KC Coultrup, Vice President of the Surfside Colony Board.

“The bottom line is that Surfside has been paying the city’s portion, and we are just asking them to pay for their portion.”