Monica Yant Kinney: New Jersey muddies the water on beach access

It's been nearly 10 years since I marched with the Raleigh Avenue Rebels, but I remember the steamy hike as clearly as the sparkling water the day we tried, and failed, to reach Diamond Beach.

Some feisty retirees had invited me to their summer paradise between the Wildwoods and Cape May to show how a developer had taken the beach hostage.

For decades, folks walked onto the sand at the end of their block with impunity. In 2002, a corporation called the Atlantis Beach Club stationed a bouncer seeking $750 for admission to the sand for the season or $10,000 for a lifetime pass.

So we took a six-block detour to the nearest public access point, doubling back in the wet sand. Except that, too, was off-limits. Atlantis claimed control of swimmable sea out 1,000 feet - which burned Bucks County's Bob Olszewski:

"Whoever heard of anyone owning the ocean?"

The beach blanket imbroglio soon drew police, lawyers, the Attorney General's Office, the Department of Environmental Protection, and even the state Supreme Court.

Three years later, the sunlovers scored a landmark victory when the state's highest court declared sacred the public's right to enjoy both sand and surf. As such, even private owners must provide access to the entire beach. They may charge reasonable fees to cover costs, but they cannot gouge.

After the Raleigh Avenue decision, the DEP sent a message to dozens of towns along the 127-mile coast: no access, bathrooms or parking, no state aid.

But then a lower court, in a case involving Avalon, claimed the state had overreached. All this talk of being reasonable about beach access was, apparently, unreasonable.

Now, we're back to debating if, when and where - not to mention how - a fisherman or family can have fun in the sun.

The pendulum has swung so wildly that the DEP now intends to let 267 beach and tidal municipalities - including those known for trying to ban the riffraff - call the shots by drafting their own public access plans.

DEP explains its reasoning at www.state.nj.us/dep/cmp/access/. Adds spokesman Larry Ragonese, "We want to make it easier for people to understand where they can go to the beach."

But Ralph Coscia, from the group Citizens' Right to Access Beaches (CRAB), laments the shift from a DEP that "sought to close loopholes impeding public access" to one that erroneously believes that access already is "wonderful and magnificent, with just a few problem areas."

For edification, I rang up lawyer Stuart Lieberman, who won the Raleigh Avenue case.

"It's a nightmare and a half," he groans. "There's no reason to believe that municipalities are going to be fair and honest. And there's no reason to believe the DEP is going to do anything about it."

"I fear we're about to go back to the 1970s, when we had limited hours, very few bathrooms, and not a lot of dry-sand access," he says. "These rules represent that 'us vs. them' mentality. I thought we were past that."

(Gov. Christie's hallmark "common sense" governing may be a goal, but Lieberman predicts the opposite: more red tape with "all these municipalities adopting their own plans, requiring more bureaucrats to review them.")

My own unscientific research - a dip at the packed Ninth Street Beach in Ocean City - shows the public plenty willing to pay $5 a day to frolic. But, given the price, showers would be nice.

A recent Quinnipiac University poll suggests the public remains conflicted, with 48 percent saying the state makes it too difficult to use beaches and 43 percent feeling no such burden.

One issue unites everyone under the sun: bathrooms. More than 80 percent of respondents said when they're at the beach, they need more places to go.