Coastal Commission votes to tear down illegal seawall, double recommended fine on Laguna Beach homeowners to $1 million

Environmentalists are celebrating a precedent-setting vote Thursday by the California Coastal Commission to tear down a seawall protecting an oceanfront home in Laguna Beach.

After the previous owner received retroactive approval for the previously unpermitted seawall, Jeffrey and Tracy Katz bought the home on Victoria Beach. They performed an extensive remodel, which was completed in January and increased the value of the home from $14 million to $25 million.

But a condition of the commission’s seawall permit was that it be removed if there was new development on the site.

The commission is tasked by the Coastal Act with beach preservation and public access. It had previously approved the seawall to protect the home because the house was constructed before the 1977 Coastal Act.

The Katzes’ lawyer argued that the work qualified as “repair and maintenance” and so did not required a commission permit. The 11 commission members were not only unanimous in agreeing that the extent of the work required a permit, but doubled to $1 million the fine recommended by staff.

The Katzes are expected to pursue a pending lawsuit that could reverse the decision. If the suit is unsuccessful, removal of the seawall is likely to require demolition of at least a portion of the 4,900-square-foot home because of unprotected exposure to winter waves.

While environmentalists cheered the the decision against the Katzes, they also pointed to broader implications of the vote as sea levels rise and shrink the size of many California beaches.

“This was a huge, hard decision,” said Jennifer Savage, California policy manager for the Surfrider Foundation. “We know that our future means a loss of beaches. Hopefully, this means fewer seawalls and an extension of the life of our beaches.”

The need for beaches

Seawalls interfere with the natural flow of sand along the coast, of erosion that helps replenish beaches and of the landward creep of beaches that accompanies sea-level rise.

Susan Jordan, director of the California Coastal Protection Network, said the commission decision could prove a sign of more aggressive enforcement by the commission, and a deterrent to other property owners who build illegal seawalls and unpermitted remodels.

“We need homeowners to site their homes out of harm’s way,” Jordan said.

Steve Kaufman, the Katzes’ attorney, argued to the commission that the remodel didn’t trigger the need for a permit because it didn’t increase the square footage or footprint of the house. He also contended that it wasn’t a major remodel because less than half the structure was changed.

But the commission showed no hesitation in siding with its staff, which argued that it was an extensive remodeling and displayed photos of new walls, flooring, ceilings, roof beams, decks, plumbing and wiring throughout the house.

“Every part of the house appears to have been replaced or, as in the case of the wood framing and decks, has been effectively replaced by the addition of new, reinforcing beams, framing, and other materials, including: installing new roof framing (including steel beams); adding new exterior wall framing or framing “sistered” to existing framing; adding new (larger) joists sistered to existing joists and/or adding new joists; installing glue lams and steel beams and adding new window/door framing,” according to the staff report.

‘Shouldn’t be there’

Before the Katzes bought the home, the previous owners had been turned down by the commission when they’d sought to rebuild the house. Several commissioners expressed concern that the Katzes had deliberately tried to skirt the Coastal Act.

“In my mind, this is a case where the property owners decided not to be bound by the law governing development on our coast,” Commissioner Donne Brownsey said.

Lisa Haage, the commission’s chief enforcement officer, said when the commission retroactively approved the seawall in 2015, it did so with the presumption that the house was approaching the end of its lifespan, and would be replaced by a new dwelling sited farther away from the ocean.

“This house shouldn’t be there,” Haage said. “It’s in the wrong place.”