Opinion ID: 1747260
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 6

Heading: Doctrine of Avulsion

Text: In its opinion, the First District stated that beach restoration under the Act will cause the high water mark to move seaward and ordinarily this would result in the upland landowners gaining property by accretion. Save Our Beaches, 31 Fla. L. Weekly at D1177, ___ So.2d at ____. This statement fails to consider the doctrine of avulsion, most likely because the parties did not raise the issue before the First District. As a result, the First District never considered whether the Act is facially constitutional given the doctrine of avulsion. [12] Under Florida common law, hurricanes, such as Hurricane Opal in 1995, are generally considered avulsive events that cause avulsion. See Peppe, 238 So.2d at 838; see also Ford v. Turner, 142 So.2d 335, 339 (Fla. 2d DCA 1962); Siesta Properties, Inc. v. Hart, 122 So.2d 218, 222-23 (Fla. 2d DCA 1960). As explained previously, avulsion is the sudden or perceptible loss of or addition to the land by the action of the water or a sudden change in the bed of a lake or the course of a stream. Sand Key, 512 So.2d at 936; see also Peppe, 238 So.2d at 837; Siesta Props., 122 So.2d at 223. Contrary to the First District's statement about accretion, under the doctrine of avulsion, the boundary between public lands and privately owned uplands remains the MHWL as it existed before the avulsive event. [13] In Peppe, this Court expressly applied the doctrine of avulsion and held that title to a narrow strip of land that was submerged until a 1926 hurricane brought it to the surface remained in the State, not the adjoining landowners. 238 So.2d at 838. This Court first determined that the hurricane was an avulsive event. Id. Then, we reasoned that the parcel in question was originally sovereignty land; and it did not lose that character merely because, by avulsion, it became dry land. Id. Therefore, we found that the plaintiff-respondents were charged with notice that the sudden avulsion of the parcel in controversy gave them no more title to it than they had to the water bottom before its emergence as dry land. Id. at 839. Significantly, when an avulsive event leads to the loss of land, the doctrine of avulsion recognizes the affected property owner's right to reclaim the lost land within a reasonable time. See generally 1 Henry Philip Farnham, The Law of Waters and Water Rights § 74, at 331 (1904) (If a portion of the land of the riparian [or littoral] owner is suddenly engulfed, and the former boundary can be determined or the land reclaimed within a reasonable time, he does not lose his title to it.). In State v. Florida National Properties, Inc., 338 So.2d 13 (Fla.1976), this Court specifically explained that affected property owners can return their property to its pre-hurricane status. [14] In Florida National Properties, littoral owners had exercised self-help by dynamiting obstacles from a drainage canal to return [Lake Istokpoga] to an ordinary level ... following the historic 1926 hurricane. Id. at 16. This Court stated that the self-help by the [littoral] owners did not affect [sic] a lowering of the water level below the normal high-water mark; instead, as the survey notes show, the action merely returned the water to its normal level and did not expose any lake bottom. Id. at 18. In that circumstance, the Court determined that the littoral owners retained title to the present MHWL, which represented the pre-hurricane MHWL, and to the land they had reclaimed through lawful drainage of the lake. Id. To summarize, when the shoreline is impacted by an avulsive event, the boundary between public lands and private uplands remains the pre-avulsive event MHWL. Consequently, if the shoreline is lost due to an avulsive event, the public has the right to restore its shoreline up to that MHWL. In light of this common law doctrine of avulsion, the provisions of the Beach and Shore Preservation Act at issue are facially constitutional. In the context of restoring storm-ravaged public lands, the State would not be doing anything under the Act that it would not be entitled to accomplish under Florida's common law. Like the common law doctrine of avulsion, the Act authorizes the State to reclaim its storm-damaged shoreline by adding sand to submerged sovereignty lands. See generally §§ 161.088, 161.091, 161.101. And similar to the common law, the Act authorizes setting the ECL and the boundary between sovereignty lands and private uplands at the existing line of mean high water, bearing in mind ... the extent to which ... avulsion has occurred. See § 161.161(5). In other words, when restoring storm-ravaged shoreline, the boundary under the Act should remain the pre-avulsive event boundary. [15] Thus, because the Act authorizes actions to reclaim public beaches that are also authorized under the common law after an avulsive event, the Act is facially constitutional.