Coastal property owners and cities want to build or extend seawalls to protect homes, infrastructure, and roads from rising seas and storm damage; but environmental advocates and scientists oppose these structures because they can worsen beach erosion over time and because they violate laws meant to preserve public shoreline access, reported The New York Times.
Some of these conflicts are playing out in court across the country. In California, a state appeals court in December indicated it would uphold rules limiting the construction of sea walls along the coast, denying a complex of 10 townhomes the chance to build a permanent 257-foot concrete sea wall along the crumbling shoreline.
In March, the state supreme court denied the townhomes' petition for review.
"This is not just a California problem," Charles Lester, director of the Ocean and Coastal Policy Center at the University of California, Santa Barbara, told the Mercury News after the appeals case had been decided.
"There are houses falling into the ocean in North Carolina, in Hawaii, and other places. We're not going to stop the ocean from rising.
"The question is: What do we choose to protect over the long run? What's in the public interest? Some of these developments have arguably reached the ends of their natural lives, if you want to protect the beaches."
The problem will get worse, according to scientists who say most of the world's sandy coastlines are "likely to face severe beach loss" due to climate change.
"There is a lot of armoring going on," Erika Lentz, a geologist with the U.S. Geological Survey's coastal research center in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, told the Times. "And if there is no place for the beach to migrate landward, there is going to be a lot of squeezing going on."
Solange Reyner ✉
Solange Reyner is a writer and editor for Newsmax. She has more than 15 years in the journalism industry reporting and covering news, sports and politics.
© 2025 Newsmax. All rights reserved.