This sand's not your sand; this sand is my sand

MANTOLOKING, N.J. — Some Jersey shore beach towns have plenty of ways to keep outsiders off their sand: Limit on-street parking, prohibit food and drink, and have no public bathrooms.

One town literally walls off the public from much of the ocean with a protective stone seawall, and offers virtually no parking for miles along it.

Beach access has become a long drawn-out court battle in many coastal states. And now in New Jersey, the state Department of Environmental Protection is bowing to complaints from some local governments and private property owners that state access rules are too strict.

The department is letting each shore town decide for itself what level of public access is appropriate, though the state agency will still have to sign off on each plan. The new policy has some beach advocates fearing towns will become even more restrictive.

"This is extremely frustrating," said Ralph Coscia, who co-founded Citizens Right to Access Beaches, or CRAB, after the beloved Point Pleasant Beach was bulldozed to make way for oceanfront luxury homes about a decade ago. "This sets us back 15 years. Everything we've tried to do all these years is falling apart."

The department says its goal is to maintain public access while applying common sense to beach access rules and giving towns and property owners latitude to take local conditions into account.

"We believe the Jersey shore and the coastline should be open to everyone," said department spokesman Larry Ragonese. "But there can't be carte blanche to go anywhere, on anyone's property you want."

Under the Public Trust Doctrine, a legal concept adopted by New Jersey that dates back to the Roman Emperor Justinian, the public has the right to swim in coastal waters and walk along their shores. Courts have held that the public has the right to walk or sit on the sand up to the mean high water mark — even on beaches where most of the sand is privately owned.

But many oceanfront homeowners either don't know or don't care, and routinely call the police when someone sets up a beach chair or a towel too close for their liking.

Battles over who rules the sand are being fought all over the country. It's not just about unbroken ocean views, either. In New Jersey, tourism is a nearly $40 billion industry and its beaches are a primary draw.

The U.S. Supreme Court last week ruled that Florida can undertake beach-widening projects without compensating beach-front property owners who lose exclusive access to the water.