El Sol County Beach Park-Public Access (low tide) (Malibu, California)

 beach, nature conservation park / area

El Sol County Beach Park: Public Access to Park currently is by beach walkers making a 20-minute trek at low tide (care with scrambling between algae-slick rocks and onrushing waves) - or by kayaks. El Sol just needs a bit of construction so the public can have dry, safe, all day Park access.
- Alternate legal access tours & info: www.laurbanrangers.org/
- " The Parks Dept. promises: “ When improved it will provide an excellent location for walking, swimming, sunbathing, surf fishing, surfing, scuba and skin diving, kayaking, and other water-related activities."
www.coastal.ca.gov/access/accessguide.html
- " All land is owned by the County to provide full Park access, and has been for over 30 years, since 1974. El Sol has wide PCH frontage for safety; has plenty of flat land to create a parking area; and has a spacious mesa for nice trails (with ocean views) towards the sandy Beach. It just needs a durable stairway built from the mesa top down El Sol’s tall bluff face to the beach and cove below. "

- Full L.A.Times article on issues: travel.latimes.com/articles/la-trw-malibu-el-sol-beach-...
- some quotes from article:
- " State officials have nudged the county over the years to ignore objections of the affluent neighbors, offering hundreds of thousands of dollars to build a needed public stairway to the beach below. The latest state grant of $700,000, which was intended in part to open El Sol Beach, was instead used elsewhere by the County. " However, still no public access via land.

- " Its bluff-top access way remains locked away behind a rusted chain-link and barbed-wire fence plastered with no-trespassing signs. The sandy beach below is effectively walled off by private multimillion dollar properties and 2 rocky points of land at each end. As a result, this public strip of beach serves as a private enclave for adjacent property owners only. "

- " El Sol’s affluent neighbors originally supported the beach's public purchase because they didn’t want big ugly McMansions to go up, , but then they rallied to make sure it wasn't developed as park. both repeatedly mount aggressive lobbying campaigns to halt any activity for the park to publicly open, and repeatedly offer to purchase the County property “to foreclose the possibility that it become publicly accessible.” County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky has said; "In addition to rejecting Michael Eisner’s and other offers for the land, we’ve told people – I’ve told Eisner personally – that we are not going to sell it”."

- " Outnumbering public voices say " We want the Park for everyone now, we do own it."