Photos: Battle over public access to Broad Beach
A Los Angeles County harbor worker sweeps water off the steps leading down to Broad Beach, which was shut off for five months due to unsafe construction. (Mel Melcon / Los Angeles Times)
The Coastal Commission allowed Malibu homeowners to block access to Broad Beach while crews built an emergency seawall to protect the multimillion-dollar homes from being battered by encroaching waves. The seawall was completed in April, but access to the beach was only partially restored on Monday. (Al Seib / Los Angeles Times)
During high tide, Broad Beach all but disappears. A permanent seawall will need to be built, but until then officials and nonresidents are getting angry over the lack of public access to the beach. (Al Seib / Los Angeles Times)
Construction was to include an overhaul of the public pathways and the installation of stairs and handrails to give visitors a way over the 8-foot-high rock seawall. But it took months after the wall was finished before contractors finally installed concrete steps and metal handrails -- a pathway inspectors deemed them deficient and unsafe, forcing the gates to remain locked. (Al Seib / Los Angeles Times)
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Unless drastic measures are taken, rising sea levels and heavy sand loss from severe storms and a stationary seawall are likely to cause what was once one of the widest expanses of open beach in the region to disappear. (Al Seib / Los Angeles Times)
Brendan O’Neal, a frequent visitor to Broad Beach, looks out at the ocean. Beach-access advocates suspect that Malibu homeowners were purposely stalling to keep nonresidents off the beach. (Al Seib / Los Angeles Times)
