Oppose AB 2373 – Prevent New Loophole to Add Armoring Along California's Coast

Surfrider Foundation Helps Stop AB 2373, Closing a Coastal Act Seawall Loophole

A bill that would have undermined nearly 50 years of California coastal protection is dead. AB 2373 (Dixon) died in the Appropriations Committee this session, thanks largely to Surfrider Foundation's opposition — and California's beaches are safer for it.

AB 2373 proposed adding "neighborhood scale adaptation" language to the California Coastal Act. The framing sounded climate-forward, but the practical effect would have been a significant rollback of one of the Coastal Act's most important protections: the prohibition on hard armoring — seawalls, revetments, and similar structures — for new development. Since 1977, that prohibition has helped slow the erosion that seawalls accelerate and preserved public beach access against privatization pressures.

The bill would have allowed new developments, currently ineligible for armoring, to connect into larger contiguous seawall projects alongside pre-Coastal Act properties, creating a workaround that could have opened the door to a new generation of hard armoring up and down the coast. With scientists projecting sea level rise could eliminate up to 70% of California's beaches, this was exactly the wrong direction.

Surfrider Foundation supports proactive, nature-based sea level rise adaptation that extends the life of beaches, not hard armoring that sacrifices public shoreline for private property protection. AB 2373's defeat keeps California on the right side of that line.