NJ - Jersey Shore Beach Access Battle Has Precedent Dating Back 2,000 Years
The fight over public beach access vs. the rights of private property owners has been extensively litigated, and repeatedly upheld in NJ.
POINT PLEASANT BEACH, NJ — Who owns the beach? Who has the right to say who can be on it? The battle over beach access has been fought for decades in New Jersey.
The latest fights, between the state Department of Environmental Protection and Jenkinson’s Pavilion and the NJDEP and the Ocean Grove Camp Meeting Association, are just another chapter in the argument that goes back to ancient times.
In Ocean Grove, the Camp Meeting Association says its closure — for three hours on Sunday mornings — is a religious observance, and as such should supersede public access.
In Point Pleasant Beach, Jenkinson’s has chained and locked all of its beach access points. The company, which owns nearly all of the oceanfront beach in the borough, has not answered questions on the matter. It is facing a lawsuit claiming the company failed to warn people of the seriousness of the danger of rip currents and blaming Jenkinson’s for a man’s drowning in 2020.
The NJDEP has told both organizations that the closures violate their agreements with the state — agreements they made when they received permits for construction on their properties. The Camp Meeting Association received a violation notice on Sept. 14. On Tuesday, Jenkinson's Pavilion was warned its chains and locks are a violation and that it must remove them.
"The Permittee cannot limit vertical or horizontal public access to any dry sand area covered under this permit nor interfere with the public's right to free use of the dry sand for intermittent recreational purposes connected with the ocean and wet sand," the state warned in letters to both.
That right to public access is called the Public Trust Doctrine, which has its roots in Roman civil law and English Common Law, according to the NJDEP website.
“By the law of nature these things are common to all mankind – the air, running water, the sea, and consequently the shores of the sea,” the DEP website quotes the Roman civil law as saying. “No one, therefore, is forbidden to approach the seashore, provided that he respects habitations, monuments, and the buildings, which are not, like the sea, subject only to the law of nations.”
When the 13 original colonies, including New Jersey, were created, the public trust doctrine was maintained.
