With summer comes clashes on the beach

Fighting over beach access isn’t as fun as Destin’s July 4 fireworks, but it’s just as much an annual summer event.
“It’s publicized on TV that we have a 20 foot buffer zone upland for the public to use,” City Councilor Tom Weidenhamer said at Monday’s council meeting, “yet that message doesn’t seem to get to the proper people, even our own law-enforcement.”
Weidenhamer said he’d been told by a Destin woman that while visiting the beach along Silver Shells, a staffer there had told her and other beachgoers to leave because it was private property. The resident replied that she could legally walk up to 20 feet above the wet sand.
Weidenhamer said that shortly afterwards, an Okaloosa County Sheriff’s Deputy approached the woman to “reinforce the Silver Shells employee’s discussion.” The deputy, Weidenhamer said, told the woman that the property was private all the way to the water’s edge, and that if she didn’t leave he would “have to take some action to have her removed.” She left.
Silver Shells Vice President of Operations Tom Hart told The Log that wasn’t so: “It was probably somebody where they shouldn’t have been, doing something they shouldn’t have been and they decided to get even.”
Clashes between beachgoers and beachfront owners have been around for at least a decade: Beachgoers want to walk freely up and down the shore, property owners want trespassers off their property. In 2003, Florida State University’s law journal found the legal questions interesting enough that it used Destin as a case study.
While some owners claim ownership extending to the water’s edge or even further, the city’s position is that wet and submerged areas are state property, therefore public, unless the owners have a state-registered survey to back up their deed. Destin policy is that beachgoers are free to walk or sit up to 20 feet north [EDITED to correct distance] of the wet sand area, which owners say shows a bias in favor of tourists.
The city says it’s unreasonable to expect someone walking up the beach to have to track the property lines. Owners, however, have complained of tourists walking off the beach and into their gardens, using their private pools and sitting on their decks.
In 2000, the City Council proposed making all beachfront areas public except for a 25-foot buffer zone around beach buildings, but backed off in the face of threatened lawsuits.
Despite the 20-foot access policy, each summer brings recurring reports of security guards or condo occupants ordering beach visitors away, or vendors positioning deck chairs to block pedestrian access to the wet sand.
The council has also objected to owners putting out No Trespassing signs, but City Manager Greg Kisela said that the wording on beach signs is governed by the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, not the city.
Monday, Councilor Dewey Destin pointed out that Silver Shells is a special case: Developer Tom Becnel’s development agreement guarantees public access to a 25 foot wide grassy path behind the condominiums, and to five dune walkovers from the path to the beach.
“They have an absolute right to be there under the agreement,” the councilor said.
When Silver Shells access came up in 2007, however, Land Use Attorney Scott Shirley said the agreement didn’t give the public any rights on Silver Shells’ beach. Kisela said at the time that the public still had the same 20-foot access right as anywhere else.
Monday, Kisela said he and Mayor Craig Barker had met with new Okaloosa County Sheriff Edward Spooner to make sure the Sheriff’s Office is on the same page about beach policy. Kisela said the city will also contact Silver Shells.
Councilor Dewey Destin said the city should also contact the beachgoers involved and apologize.
Hart said the only rule for Silver Shells security is to stop people setting up their own deck chairs and beach umbrellas; otherwise, visitors mean more business for the beach vendors.
“We want people to stop by as often as they can possibly do so,” Hart said.