Court Opinion

ID: 9731771
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 15:57:33.527142+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:26:21.090269
License: Public Domain

WOOLPERT, J.
I respectfully dissent. My dissent finds no clarity in the pertinent parts of the applicable sections of law, and seeks to resolve the uncertainties by reference to some of the guidelines used by the majority and others.
We deal with the right of the public to use the navigable streams of this state. The right is in the nature of a privilege jealously guarded by the California Constitution (Cal. Const., art. X, §§ 3, 4; formerly art. XV, § 2). Thus, “[Hjunting of wild game ... is a privilege which is incidental to the public right of navigation. There is no private property right in wild game. The wild animal or bird, not in captivity nor tamed, becomes the property of him who takes or kills it. Any person has the right to take and kill such wild birds or other game in any place where he may find them. He has no lawful right to trespass on the premises of another for that purpose. But wherever he may lawfully go, he may take and kill such game as he may find there, subject, of course, to the restrictions of the game laws.” (Forestier v. Johnson (1912) 164 Cal. 24, 40 [127 P. 156].)
The public trust rights, often defined in terms of navigation, commerce and fisheries, “have been held to include the right to fish, hunt, bathe, swim, to use for boating and general recreation purposes the navigable waters of the state, and to use the bottom of the navigable waters for anchoring, standing, or other purposes.” (Marks v. Whitney (1971) 6 Cal.3d 251, 259 [98 Cal.Rptr. 790, 491 P.2d 374].)
The extent of the public ownership and trust depends upon the nature of the waterway. If tidelands, the public owns the land “in trust” between the lines of mean high tide and mean low tide, but if “shoreline” along nontidal navigable lakes and streams, the private property extends to the “low water mark.” However, the private ownership of the land between the high and *1230low water marks is subject to the same public trust incidents applicable to tidelands. The private owners may use the privately owned shoreline “in any manner not incompatible with the public’s interest in the property.” (State of California v. Superior Court (Lyon) (1981) 29 Cal.3d 210, 232 [172 Cal.Rptr. 696, 625 P.2d 239].)
For over 100 years our state Constitution has contained the same protective language: “Sec. 4. No individual, partnership, or corporation, claiming or possessing the frontage or tidal lands of a harbor, bay, inlet, estuary, or other navigable water in this State, shall be permitted to exclude the right of way to such water whenever it is required for any public purpose, nor to destroy or obstruct the free navigation of such water; and the Legislature shall enact such laws as will give the most liberal construction to this provision, so that access to the navigable waters of this State shall be always attainable for the people thereof.” (Cal. Const., art. X, § 4.)
As indicated in Forestier in 1912, once the public right is clear, its exercise is a free one, subject to game laws or other reasonable police power restrictions consistent with the right. It has been found that an ordinance prohibiting all rafting and boating on about 20 miles of a river is unconstitutional. “However laudable its purpose, the exercise of police power may not extend to total prohibition of activity not otherwise unlawful.” (People ex rel. Younger v. County of El Dorado (1979) 96 Cal.App.3d 403 , 406 [157 Cal.Rptr. 815].) However, it has also been held that “[i]t is a political question, within the wisdom and power of the Legislature, acting within the scope of its duties as trustee, to determine whether public trust uses should be modified or extinguished (see City of Long Beach v. Mansell [1970] 3 Cal.3d at p. 482, fn. 17 [91 Cal.Rptr. 23, 476 P.2d 423]), and to take the necessary steps to free them from such burden. In the absence of state or federal action the court may not bar members of the public from lawfully asserting or exercising public trust rights on these privately owned tidelands.” (Marks v. Whitney, supra, 6 Cal.3d at pp. 260-261.)
Our decision will affect substantial rights. There are some; 4,000 miles of shoreline along 34 navigable lakes and 31 navigable rivers. “[T]he shore-zone has been reduced to a fraction of its original size in this state by the pressures of development.” (State of California v. Superior Court (Fogerty) (1981) 29 Cal.3d 240, 245 [172 Cal.Rptr. 713, 625 P.2d 256].)
It is evident that continued increases in the state population have caused a more conservationist flavor to the high court’s discussion of these constitutional privileges. I compare the language of Forestier, quoted above, with that of more recent cases. In Marks, the 1971 court observed: “The public *1231uses to which tidelands are subject are sufficiently flexible to encompass changing public needs. In administering the trust the state is not burdened with an outmoded classification favoring one mode of utilization over another. (Colberg, Inc. v. State of California ex rel. Dept. Pub. Wks., 67 Cal.2d 408, 421-422 [62 Cal.Rptr. 401, 432 P.2d 3].) There is a growing public recognition that one of the most important public uses of the tidelands—a use encompassed within the tidelands trust—is the preservation of those lands in their natural state, so that they may serve as ecological units for scientific study, as open space, and as environments which provide food and habitat for birds and marine life, and which favorably affect the scenery and climate of the area. It is not necessary to here define precisely all the public uses which encumber tidelands.” (Marks v. Whitney, supra, 6 Cal.3d at pp. 259-260.)
More recently, in 1981, the court used the same language when describing the importance of the shorezone.
“The shorezone is a fragile and complex resource. It provides the environment necessary for the survival of numerous types of fish (including salmon, steelhead and striped bass), birds (such as the endangered species: the bald eagle and the peregrine falcon), and many other species of wildlife and plants. These areas are ideally suited for scientific study, since they provide a gene pool for the preservation of biological diversity. In addition, the shorezone in its natural condition is essential to the maintenance of good water quality, and the vegetation acts as a buffer against floods and erosion.
“The close relationship of the life forms in the shorezone to one another and to the condition of the bed of the stream or lake, the delicate balance among them, and the adverse effects of reclamation and development of these areas have been documented in numerous studies and reports. ...” (State of California v. Superior Court (Fogerty), supra, 29 Cal.3d at p. 245.)
The Fogerty court concluded: “The exercise of the police power has proved insufficient to protect the shorezone. The urgent need to prevent deterioration and disappearance of this fragile resource provides ample justification for our conclusion that the People may not be estopped from asserting the rights of the public in those lands.” (Id., at p. 247.)
Therefore, the city was not to be concerned with only the right to enter to shoot waterfowl or to land fish. The city had a duty to observe all the constitutional, statutory and judicial guidelines and restrictions, with the difficult task of accommodating the ever-increasing conflicting demands and *1232needs of people and places. Priority cannot be given one purpose to the detriment of another.
Examples come to mind of the failure of the police power to protect natural resources when there is unlimited public access. Who can find a Pismo clam at Pismo Beach? Where are the once plentiful abalone? Some will say the otter is the culprit. However, clams and abalone thrived along with the otter until people, making unimpeded use of the beaches at low tide, turned the plenty of the postdepression years to the nothing of the present. Only 200 years ago the state wildlife fed many native people, and almost overnight herds of elk and antelope, and other forms of wildlife, became extinct. The police powers belatedly exercised in the form of licensing and game limits failed to protect wildlife in terms of numbers, and even kind. Indeed, licensing on a nondiscriminatory basis may endanger plant life along the shoreline if free access is permitted along much of its length.
A practical distinction must be kept in mind. Along beaches there is a wide band of traversible sand and rock, except at high tide. Public access is concerned only with getting to the beaches. No easement along the private frontage is necessary. In contrast, natural lakes tend to have only slight tides, and rise and fall only with seasonal water from the watershed. However, even in the case of lakes, the Legislature has not provided for a mandatory easement along the water frontage. Instead, other provisions of the law, optional with the local agency, may be used to require the dedication of areas within a subdivision for parks, recreational facilities, etc. (Gov. Code, § 66479.) This option is available if private property is subdivided along navigable streams.
In further contrast, the provisions we construe today relating to streams and rivers apply to waterways in which there is little or no strip of land between high and low waters. Therefore, the public right to traverse the edge of the waterway may be of little practical purpose without an adjacent dedicated easement. Thus, it is important that such easements be obtained whenever the public trust reasonably demands a grant in favor of the public and in limitation of the potentially destructive private uses of the future. We all agree on this subject.
Our entire written law is concerned with the importance of diligently protecting the public trust in all its aspects. Numerous statutes seek to provide protection of natural resources. For example, the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act contains this legislative declaration: “It is the policy of the State of California that certain rivers which possess extraordinary scenic, recre*1233ational, fishery, or wildlife values shall be preserved in their free-flowing state, together with their immediate environments, for the benefit and enjoyment of the people of the state.” (Pub. Resources Code, § 5093.50.) One person’s favorite form of recreation need not be encouraged by a paper easement if its exercise would endanger the environment, or another, more reasonable trust interest. Just as the hunter’s shotgun may upset the fisherman’s solitude, the boots of both may destroy the native plant life. An easement in the wrong place may encourage unreasonable access to accomplish the user’s goal. The private landowner whose frontage is subjected to the public easement is not required to improve the route. (Gov. Code, § 66478.14.) Must the local agency obtain a shoreline easement to make fishing or hunting appear possible when the land in its natural condition is inaccessible? Must someone clear a path? The majority seems to indicate an easement must be obtained unless the personal safety of the fisherman or hunter would be risked. If the nature of the entire shoreline of the subdivision makes all public uses impracticable, must the local agency disregard that fact and obtain a right of way? Must public funds be used to assure that the ecology is not disturbed by those wishing to use the mandated easement? The majority suggests easements must be obtained, but does not address questions of compatibility and relative utility.
The discussion so far has been one of what must the local public agency require of the subdivider. Without question, ample authority permits the setting of reasonable conditions to the approval of subdivision maps, including the dedication of private land to certain public uses. However, the issue is not whether such policy determinations can be made. In its most simple terms, the issue is whether the Legislature in its ambiguous language meant to mandate that a public easement must be dedicated in the case of every subdivision, with safety being the sole exception. The answer is not to be found in whether one favors fishing, hunting or swimming. Likewise, the answer probably does not find itself in an overemphasis of an “ecology” point of view. The answer lies in the statutory use of the word “reasonable.”
The constitutional protection is of the “right of way to such water whenever it is required for any public purpose . . . and the Legislature shall enact such laws as will give the most liberal construction to this provision, so that access to the navigable waters of this State shall be always attainable for the people thereof.” (Cal. Const., art. X, § 4.) The subject matter of the constitutional provision is the access to the water. The shoreline is not made private property, although it may be subject to the public trust.
Sections 66478.1 through 66478.10 of the Government Code were enacted to carry out the constitutional directive to insure continued public access *1234to the water. The Legislature has spoken of increased public access to public natural resources as the goal. (Gov. Code, § 66478.3.) The public access takes two forms. The first obvious one is a route from public property to the shoreline fronting the waterway. (Gov. Code, § 66478.4.) The second form of access, along the shoreline, is termed a “public easement.” Whether called an “easement,” as found in section 66478.5, or “public access by fee or easement” as it appears in section 66478.4, at this point the precise terminology is unimportant. Both the route to the shoreline, and thus to the water, and the route along a portion of the shoreline, to enjoy the water and shoreline, are to be determined by the same criteria. And even then, the pertinent sections make frequent use of the word “reasonable.”
In its ambiguous language, section 66478.5 speaks of an easement “along a portion of the bank of the river or stream. ...” Does the word “portion” limit the length or the width of the easement, or both? I agree with the majority that it is not necessary to acquire an easement along the entire length of the shoreline if that would be unreasonable. The next sentence in the section states: “The extent, width and character of the public easement shall be reasonably defined to achieve reasonable public use of the public waterway river or stream consistent with public safety.” (Italics added.) When using the word “extent” in contrast to “width and character, ” the fair conclusion is that the word “extent” is either synonymous with “length,” or at the very least, includes length. Therefore, the local agency must seek reasonable access to the shoreline, and thus to the water, and reasonable access along the shoreline. The nature and extent of that access also depends upon an effort to reasonably accommodate the public and private interests in the shoreline, risk of trespassing on the adjacent private property being one of the statutory criteria.
The next section disclaims any intent to limit any powers or duties of other public agencies. Immediately following, there appears another ambiguously written section—66478.8. Of considerable importance, section 66478.8 commences with: “Nothing in Section 66478.1 through 66478.10 of this article shall require a local agency to disapprove either a tentative or final map solely on the basis that the reasonable public access otherwise required by this article is not provided through or across the subdivision itself. ...” The easement exception requires a finding that “such reasonable public access is otherwise available within a reasonable distance from the subdivision.” Contrary to the majority position, section 66478.8 does not read in terms of alternatives to the “access to” the riverbank. The reference is to “reasonable public access otherwise required by this article.
*1235The words “public access” appear frequently in the sections incorporated in section 66478.8. Because the form of “public access” may be by fee or easement (§ 66478.4), it is not likely that the Legislature intended to use the ambiguous language in sections 66478.5 and 66478.8 in any narrow sense which would make the exception apply only to the route to the shoreline and not to the route along the shoreline. Each easement serves the same purpose: providing access to the waterway and its shoreline.
In searching the legislative history of the sections, one finds further ambiguous statements. Counsel have provided us with various legislative points of view, including legislative committee reports, the digest of Legislative Counsel, and even the Attorney General’s recommendation to the Governor that the bill be given favorable consideration, protecting as it does the “principle of home rule and flexibility in local application by providing that the local governing body shall implement its provisions, and determine the reasonableness of the public access provided.” The language of the legislative committees predating the Legislative Counsel’s Digest is far from conclusive.
Counsel have also referred to comments from two state department heads. However, each department head follows the approach of Legislative Counsel by combining the two kinds of public access (entry and along the shoreline) and then noting the “public access” may be accomplished through nearby property. The majority view that this is an erroneous statement disregards the probability that it more reasonably interprets the section than the alternative of requiring a shoreline easement even when reasonable public uses are not foreseeable.
The majority cites this court’s California Teachers’ Assn. v. Governing Board (1983) 141 Cal.App.3d 606 [190 Cal.Rptr. 453], for the proposition that if the digest of Legislative Counsel conflicts with the statute, it must be disregarded. However, the case tells us more. We are to disregard the digest when the conflicting language of the statute is clear. This is so because when statutory language is clear there is no room for judicial interpretation. Because this language is most uncertain, and the majority spends some time in finding it so, “it is appropriate to examine the digest in order to ascertain legislative intent.” (Id., at p. 613.) Appellate courts are well aware that proposed bills are regularly accompanied by a Legislative Digest. Presumably the legislators and Governor consider the digest when reading and approving the legislation.
When language is used which at some length ambiguously provides for a course of action, and an alternative would have been easily phrased, appel*1236late courts are reluctant to overlook that fact: “If the Legislature had desired to require . . ., it could have done so simply and unambiguously.” (Id., at p. 615.)
It is not necessary to rely on Legislative Counsel in this case. The broad provision of section 66478.8 and its incorporation of section 66478.5 (as further explained by § 66478.4 in its reference to public access as being by fee or easement), makes it most likely it was intended that the public agency may accept alternate entry routes and shoreline access. This does not mean that it must do so; to the contrary, in many cases that would be poor judgment as it may require further action to obtain access when conditions change. Public funds might be involved at that time. It does mean that the Legislature has not demanded that local agencies always obtain shoreline easements, irrespective of surrounding circumstances and conditions.
Section 66478.5 requires that the agency consider potential trespass upon the adjacent private property. The majority gives little attention to that consideration. The risk of trespass may far outweigh the public benefit of entry and use of some shorelines. Increasing access elsewhere may justify limiting or waiving access in another location.
The majority considers the city action in this case to be “ironic.” To the contrary, it may have been realistic in its approach to area-wide planning instead of merely focusing on artificial property lines. Absurd results may follow if property lines become the major consideration. There may be numerous small property owners near a larger property ownership. Some may not wish to subdivide. Many may not be able to subdivide, for financial or topographic reasons. Others may wish to subdivide, but not want to risk trespassers after the shoreline is opened to public access. A few may purposely subdivide nearby property, but not land adjacent to the waterway. It may be reasonable to encourage the use of a single point of entry, and all of the shoreline, thus avoiding several points of entry. Or, if the shoreline of the property to be subdivided is rough and impractical for any real use, and the public uses are therefore minimal, the agency may seek to gain extra easements in nondivided property retained by the owner, as in this case. Numerous variations of such circumstances are possible and no doubt could not be legislatively solved in advance.
To require an easement along the shoreline within the subdivision itself may defeat reasonable negotiations. Thus, although the city in this case did not require easements within the subject property, it may not have acted contrary to the public interest when it obtained easements elsewhere. We are not in a position to say that the result was contrary to the public interest. *1237The trial court avoided resolving this question when it determined the city lacked such discretion.
If the city had required an entry route to a telephone-booth-sized shoreline easement, this court would be concerned unless, of course, no other reasonable course of action was available. Even an observation platform may serve a public benefit where other forms of public enjoyment are impossible. A reviewing court should always look to the surrounding facts before substituting its judgment for that of the agency.
Because the trial court has misapplied the law, the attorney fee award is cast in doubt. I would reverse the judgment and remand for further proceedings consistent with the views expressed herein.
The petitions, of defendant and appellant and real party in interest and appellant for review by the Supreme Court were denied October 31, 1985.