SUPREME COURT TO HEAR BEACH WALKING CASE?

Sorry for the lack of posts lately -- news has been slow.

The Great Lakes Radio Consortium reports that shoreline property owners are asking the nation's Supreme Court to revers a ruling that says the public has a right to walk along the beaches of the Great Lakes. The petition is available on the Save-Our-Shoreline site:

Save Our Shoreline announces that it has aided Richard and Kathleen Goeckel with a Petition for Writ of Certiorari filed today with the U.S. Supreme Court. The Petition asks the high court to review a July decision of the Michigan Supreme Court which for the first time held that private Great Lakes beaches are subject to public use. That ruling changed a 1930 decision that limited public rights to the water’s edge. The July ruling extends public rights to the dry
shore up to a so called “ordinary high water mark.” The decision also extends the public’s rights, historically limited to fishing, hunting, and navigation, to include recreational beachwalking. Finally, the decision opens the door for future courts to authorize further public uses which may be considered “inherent in the exercise of” hunting, fishing, and navigation.

Although many commentators focus on the right of beachwalking, SOS is primarily concerned with the expansion of public control over Michigan’s beaches through the so-called “public trust doctrine.” If the Michigan decision stands, then government, and not individual
owners, will decide how the beaches will be used, and whether fees will be charged for beach use. For example, state and federal government officials have opposed beach maintenance along the Saginaw Bay on the basis that it violates the public trust doctrine. Those same government officials steadfastly oppose beach grooming at the Bay City State Park Recreation Area, whose once widely renowned beach has been converted to a vast wetland inundated with nonnative, invasive species.