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 Big
Brother Just Got Bigger in California
The law of the coast…
[Steven Hayward] 8/11/05
Life on the central coast lives up
to the clichés of Lotus-land loopiness, starting with
the story in the paper this week about a couple who planned a
sunset wedding out at the beach, except that the minister who
was planning to perform the ceremony failed to show up. No problem:
This is California.
After a short detour to a local restaurant, the
locals rousted the town’s “hippie minister,” as the local
paper described him, who performed the ceremony on the restaurant’s
creek-side deck. Sounds like an even happier place than Disneyland,
but not if you happen to be Dennis C. Schneider, for whom the
central coast has become a Neverland nightmare.
Contributor
Steven Hayward
[Courtesty of Pacific Research Institute]
Dr.
Steven Hayward is Senior Fellow in Environmental Studies
for the Pacific
Research Institute. He is also nationally recognized
for his recently released book, The Age of
Reagan: The Fall of the Old Liberal Order 1964-1980 (Prima
Publishing, 2001), and Churchill on Leadership:
Executive Success in the Face of Adversity (Prima
Publishing, 1997). [go to Hayward index] |
Schneider owns a 41-acre parcel of coastland
out of sight and over the hill from Pacific Coast Highway,
on which he proposes
to build a 10,000 square foot residence—a mere bungalow
by California standards these days. Even though the proposed
house could not be seen from any point on land, the California
Coastal Commission denied Mr. Schneider’s building permit
application on the grounds that the Commission needed to protect
the view from the ocean that is enjoyed by kayakers, boaters,
and surfers. The Commission told Schneider that he could build
if he cut the size of his house in half, dropped plans to build
a barn and guest house, and moved the location of the house 1,000
feet further away from the ocean.
Schneider sensibly went to court. Unfortunately,
he didn’t
count on meeting Superior Court Judge Roger Picquet, who sided
with the Coastal Commission, commenting that “It is clear
to the court that the beauty of a sunrise from a vantage point
offshore is afforded the same protection as a sunset seen from
land.”
Following this logic, why can’t the Commission
ban boats from spoiling the ocean view from my house and scaring
away the
migrating whales I like to watch? Boat traffic on this part of
the central coast is very light, and nobody kayaks or surfs at
this remote location, so it is clear that the Coastal Commission
is looking to widen its power to regulate.
This case reveals the anti-human animus that motivates the Coastal
Commission, a body dating from the administration of Jerry Brown.
The Golden State did very well without the Commission, which
narrowly survived a challenge to its constitutionality. One Commissioner
served time on corruption charges for shaking down movie stars
in return for approval on building projects.
Are houses that ugly? Even Judge Picquet acknowledged
that the planned home was “a beautifully designed residential project” whose
Commission-proposed restrictions was akin to “being nibbled
to death by ducks.” But Commission director Peter Douglas
says such houses “have a huge impact in visual resources.”
Here’s a thought experiment: Imagine the dialogue between
the Coastal Commission and William Randolph Hearst over Hearst’s
idea to build “La Casa Grande” at San Simeon. “You
want to build what?! Maybe we’ll let you build a little
circus tent cottage.”
Come to think of it, I wonder how long it will
be before the Coastal Commission demands that Hearst Castle
be torn down to
improve the view of the mountains. Or perhaps we will see a proposal
for the state Interior Commission to make similar demands based
on "visual resources" in the Sierra. After all, this
is California. CRO
copyright
2005 Pacific Research Institute
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