The Surfrider Foundation and our Oregon partners are celebrating a recent victory in the Oregon Supreme Court that that better ensures local jurisdictions have the ability to enforce their coastal protection standards for coastal development. This victory is an important win for Surfrider’s Oregon Beaches Forever campaign, which focuses on safeguarding Oregon's public beaches for future generations and ensuring the preservation of our coastlines and communities as we adapt to climate change.
Last year, Surfrider, alongside the Oregon Shores Conservation Coalition and the Oregon Coast Alliance, and represented by Crag Law Center, got involved in a lawsuit in Oregon’s Cannon Beach, home of the famous Haystack Rock. A developer sought to build a home and a private road on the coast, which would have been highly vulnerable to coastal erosion. When the City of Cannon Beach denied the permit application, reasoning that geologic hazards were too great, the developer challenged the denial. The case made its way up to the Oregon Supreme Court, and Surfrider and our partners filed an amicus curiae (“friend of the court”) brief in support of the City of Cannon Beach.
Essentially, the developer wanted to build a private road on public land to connect the home to a nearby road. When challenging the City’s permit denial in court, the developer argued that the road was necessary to the “development of housing.” Oregon state law requires local ordinances governing housing development to be “clear and objective.” The geologic hazard standards applied by the City of Cannon Beach were subjective. Thus, the developer’s argument went, because the road is part of a housing development, the City of Cannon Beach cannot apply the standards and deny the permit. However, this would have had immense negative impacts on local jurisdictions’ ability to protect vulnerable coastline from hazards like erosion.
Surfrider and our partners filed an amicus brief to support the City of Cannon Beach. We emphasized that a win for the developer would hamstring local government’s ability to effectively regulate coastal hazards, which is necessary for public safety, coastal conservation, and the preservation of public beach access. We highlighted how the City of Cannon Beach was well within its right to deny construction of a private road on public land, especially in the context of coastal erosion and public beach access. We also argued that interpreting “development of housing” to include building a road would be a dangerous slippery slope that would allow countless projects to evade local restrictions.
In mid-July of this year, the Oregon Supreme Court affirmed the permit denial, reasoning that the City of Cannon Beach was well within its right to regulate the construction of the road. The Supreme Court held that building a road cannot count as “development of housing,” even where the road is necessary for accessing the property. So, the City of Cannon Beach could permissibly apply the local geologic hazard standards and deny the permit for constructing the road.
Without this victory, coastal developers would have been able to evade regulation by the local communities they develop in. Simply by categorizing a project as “development of housing,” a developer would have been able to ignore local ordinances unless those ordinances were “clear and objective.” However, the Oregon Supreme Court has now made clear that Oregon localities can permissibly regulate this kind of coastal development through subjective regulations, giving local communities the necessary flexibility to address coastal erosion and to preserve beach access.
"This decision is a big win for coastal governments' ability to regulate natural hazards like erosion and flooding,” says attorney Eric Wriston of Crag Law Center, who represented Surfrider on our brief. “If the developer got their way here, Cannon Beach would have been prevented from considering the hazard to the beach and public presented by the development of this road on a dangerous bluff overlooking the beach. The authority recognized by the court's decision is crucial to local governments' ability to respond and adapt to the impacts of climate change."
This win for local governments is a win for Oregon’s beaches. Local governments can act with greater confidence when denying permits for unsound and unsustainable coastal development projects. Local communities have a greater say in which projects may proceed and which may not. And preventing the development of this road will protect Cannon Beach from worsening coastal erosion.
Surfrider is grateful to Crag Law Center for its leadership and expertise representing Surfrider and our partners in this amicus effort. Surfrider has supported and will continue to support local efforts to preserve our coastlines for all of the public to enjoy.
To learn more about the Oregon Beaches Forever campaign, click here.
Header Photo by Andrew Baum, licensed by Shutterstock.