2026/May

Students and Mothers Testify Against AB 1740

During Wednesday morning's general comment period, several Santa Monica residents and neighbors turned out to oppose AB 1740, a bill that would gut Coastal Act protections for broad categories of development in Santa Monica. Several high schoolers delivered especially compelling testimony, including the Co-President of the Brentwood High School Surfrider Club. Two of the student's mothers also spoke. One described her previous frustrations with the Commission's permitting process while building a new home in the Pacific Palisades. But after experiencing the recent wildfires there firsthand, she has come to understand why Coastal Act review matters and opposes AB 1740 as a result. This stunning turnaround serves as a reminder that even those who find the Commission burdensome understand what’s at stake when legislators attempt to exempt entire categories of development from Coastal Act review.

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Ventura Promenade Armoring Approved with Conditions - Surfrider Will Be Watching

The Commission approved two CDPs for the City of Ventura's Promenade, a pre-Coastal Act beachfront walkway that has been increasingly threatened by wave attack over the last quarter century. The approvals included formalization of previous emergency armoring, placement of additional armoring, drain repairs, and the replacement of a damaged beach access staircase among other promenade improvements.

Combined, the two CDPs authorize approximately 2,668 cubic yards of rock across 600 linear feet of existing revetment on the beach, roughly a third of the promenade's total length. Notably, the City's own consultants identified 900 linear feet of revetment requiring proactive attention, meaning additional armoring requests may be forthcoming.

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Surfrider has voiced concerns about riprap placement at this site since 2001, when the City floated the idea for riprap that was eventually placed in 2011. Chief among those concerns was that the City had not adequately considered impacts to public beach access and recreation. Fifteen years after the riprap was placed, history has proved Surfrider right. The beach continues to erode, dislodged riprap takes up ever more beach space, and the staircase and promenade foundation are hammered at high tide, necessitating emergency repairs and, now, additional armoring. This cycle of armoring and beach loss continues with no long-term plan and is happening steps away from the Surfer's Point managed retreat project, the gold standard in sustainable coastal adaptation.

Surfrider opposed additional armoring but did support the Commission's conditions for it. Most significantly, the revetment additions are authorized for a limited 10-year period only, after which the City must return with a long-term hazards management plan that evaluates feasible alternatives to continued armoring. That plan must harmonize with the City's forthcoming Beach Management and Adaptation Plan, which will guide long-term coastal adaptation for the downtown shoreline. Surfrider requested that both planning processes include meaningful public participation opportunities, and staff agreed, revising the conditions accordingly. Surfrider also requested that the staircase replacement be moved to a safer location or set landward of the existing structure rather than merely prohibited from extending further seaward, but staff declined, citing extensive design coordination already completed.

Lastly, Surfrider requested that any additional armoring requests be wrapped into the existing 10-year authorization period established here, and that any additional emergency armoring requests be denied outright. The Coastal Act reserves emergency authorization for genuinely unforeseen situations. The Promenade has required armoring for over a decade, including multiple rounds authorized via emergency permits. Wave damage along the Ventura Promenade is a predictable consequence of maintaining hardened infrastructure on an eroding shoreline. Surfrider will be watching, and will challenge any additional emergency armoring at this site that attempts to bypass the careful planning standards the Commission established here.

Laguna Beach Blufftop Home: Property Rights vs. Coastal Protection

The Commission approved a new single-family residence at 31451 Coast Highway in Laguna Beach, a vacant oceanfront blufftop lot that has been the subject of a lengthy appeals process dating back to 2024.

The case pushed against the limits of the Commission’s authority to restrict private development. Strict application of the Laguna Beach LCP's bluff setback rules would have left the property owner with so little buildable area that denying the permit may have exposed the Commission to a lawsuit for unconstitutional taking of private property. 

The Commission's geologist determined that the true bluff edge sits much further landward than the applicant's claimed edge, meaning nearly the entire proposed 7,231 square foot home and all accessory structures would sit on the bluff face, which the Laguna Beach LCP explicitly prohibits. Under strict LCP application, only about 775 to 1,168 square feet of the lot would be buildable. Staff concluded that forcing development into that footprint risked a constitutional takings claim under federal and California law, and recommended approval of the larger project with protective conditions.

Surfrider Foundation submitted comments arguing that the Commission's authority under Coastal Act Section 30010 is to approve enough development to avoid a taking , not necessarily a project of this scale. Echoing the appellant, they noted that the Coastal Act and the certified LCP were both in place when the property was purchased in 2004, and that the proposed home was substantially larger than many blufftop residences in the immediate neighborhood. 

Ultimately the Commissioners sided with staff. Several factors likely influenced that outcome. The Commission's geologist found the bluff to be relatively stable with no significant erosion risk anticipated over the structure's lifetime, and staff found no environmentally sensitive habitat on the site. Critically, a neighboring property, permitted locally and never appealed to the Commission, is currently under construction significantly further seaward on the bluff face. This makes it difficult to justify denying this project on coastal resource grounds when a more impactful one had already been allowed next door. The Commission also secured meaningful protections: the structure's height is capped at under three feet above Coast Highway grade, a 16-foot public view corridor is protected by deed restriction, and the applicant has permanently waived any right to future shoreline armoring.

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ActCoastal stands by Surfrider’s position that Section 30010 would have permitted approving a smaller development further landward from the bluff face. However, we sympathize with the position the Commission found itself in. They faced a plausible takings lawsuit, limited coastal resource justification for requiring a smaller footprint, and an awkward precedent set by the neighboring approval. A lawsuit over this property could go either way, and a loss could further erode the Commission's authority to enforce bluff setbacks that ultimately protect the beaches below. They decided this was not the "bluff" to die on.

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