Closing a park is hard; closing a beach is even harder. But that’s just what Gov. Jerry Brown has proposed for four local state beaches. The beaches—Twin Lakes and Seabright in Santa Cruz County and Zmudowski and Moss Landing in Monterey County’s northern reaches—are among nine beaches up and down the state set for closure by next July. Due to the unique public access issues posed by beaches, the question of how exactly that will look—or if it will even work—remains entirely unanswered.
Statewide, the shuttering of 70 state parks, beaches and structures will save California $22 million, or less than one-tenth of 1 percent of its $26 billion budget deficit. Compared to this small savings, the potential problems related to the closures are huge, from vandalism and decay to crime and public safety. Elsewhere in Santa Cruz County, Castle Rock State Park, Portola Redwoods State Park and Santa Cruz Mission State Historic Park are slated for closure—yet the prospect of closing beaches proves particularly daunting.
Nowhere is that more true than at Seabright and Twin Lakes, sister beaches within walking distance of downtown Santa Cruz. Not only are they set amidst a population center, they’re also highly permeable—accessible from multiple points and interconnected with other coastal properties. They require regular maintenance and policing plus infrastructure including parking lots, restrooms and trails. But what happens when those are gone or boarded up?
Not even Santa Cruz District Superintendent Chet Bardo of California State Parks has an answer. “Suffice to say that closing a beach is going to be difficult at best,” he says. “I don’t know what to do, and it kills me that I don’t.”
One partial solution floated at the state level is Assembly Bill 42, which would permit partnerships between the park system and private nonprofit organizations for the “development, improvement, restoration, care, maintenance, administration, or operation” of threatened state parks.
Locally, Friends of Santa Cruz State Parks already plays an important stewardship and interpretive role at Santa Cruz State Historic Park. Last year, the group raised funds to help keep lifeguards at local beaches. But Executive Director Bonny Hawley said she’s skeptical about the closure plans for Seabright and Twin Lakes. “It’s hard to know how we could go about helping in that effort,” she says. “I imagine people are going to go anyway.”
Beyond all the logistical hurdles, there are legal questions, too. For one, Twin Lakes has been a recipient of federal Land and Water Conservation Funds, an arrangement that requires the state to keep the beach open to the public. The mandate appears open to interpretation. Then there’s the California Coastal Commission, which wields the power of state law and is unlikely to approve any restriction of public access.
“Any actions that state parks is proposing that would close public access to the beach or coastal areas … would have to be consistent with the Coastal Act, which has pretty strong regulations [protecting] public access,” says spokesperson Sarah Christie. “Historically, the Coastal Commission has been very supportive of those policies.”
The state of Minnesota got a taste of what California may be headed for when it abruptly closed all 68 of its state parks on July 1 after its existing budget expired. Over the weekend of July 4, visitors flocked to the parks anyway, resulting in reports of traffic jams, vandalism and theft. Perhaps with a plan a year in the making, California will be better off—though two months after the proposal was first floated, solutions are still slow in coming.
“We don’t have any answers,” says Jerry Emory, director of communications for the California State Parks Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to supporting the parks. “We’re just focused right now on finding creative solutions.”
