Beach Closed, Keep Out: Billionaire Tries to Block Surfers - NBC News.com

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COURTESY OF SURFRIDER FOUNDATION13 hours
Beach Closed, Keep Out: Billionaire Tries to Block Surfers
BY ANDREW BLANKSTEIN AND KEVIN MONAHAN
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The beach is so central to California’s identity that the right of surfers and sun lovers to access the sand is guaranteed in the state Constitution.

But now so many local landowners want to block public access to their chunks of the coveted coastline that there are several hundred alleged violations pending before state officials, including a highly charged case in which Vinod Khosla, a green energy billionaire with ties to President Obama, is fighting surfers over access to a beach south of San Francisco.

Property owners and the public have clashed over beach access nationwide. In Hawaii, for example, the state has sanctioned landowners whose overgrown vegetation blocked paths to the strand. But the fight has proven particularly rancorous in California, where two-thirds of the state’s nearly 40 million people live in the counties that hug the coast.

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“We’ve been involved in beach access cases in New York, New Jersey, Florida, Maine, Hawaii and Texas,” said Chad Nelsen, environmental director of the non-profit Surfrider Foundation, “but California continues to stand out because of the intense development pressure . . . in combination with the incredible popularity of the beaches.”

Along California’s 1,271 mile coast, from San Diego to the foggy coves near the Oregon border, there are more than 1,150 access points, or nearly one per mile, meaning points where the public is supposed to be able to reach the beach. They range from state parks to stairways to narrow sand paths. In areas where the public has "historically used private property" to reach the shoreline, the state creates access points through that property via easement or purchase of a sliver of land. Otherwise, the public is not supposed to cross private property.

In densely populated Southern California, however, only 60 percent of the access points are actually open to the public, according to the state agency that monitors access, the California Coastal Commission. The issue is most pronounced along the world-famous Malibu beachfront, a 23-mile-long strip north of L.A. that is home to many celebrities. Of 20 points that should be open in Malibu, say state officials, only nine are usable.

COURTESY OF SURFRIDER FOUNDATION
Surfers were arrested in 2012 after bypassing a locked gate to reach Martins Beach in San Mateo County, California.
Some residents use tricks to protect their property – everything from security cameras to fake garage doors and traffic cones to block parking. Others just hire lawyers. Government officials and beach access advocates say that landowners are using the legal system to delay enforcement.

Linda Locklin, who leads the coastal access program for the Coastal Commission, said it comes down to “the private beachfront homeowner who wants to maintain a private beach feeling.” Some, she said, “will use all resources to keep it that way.”

Attorney Marshall Grossman, who is on the board of the Trancas Beach Homeowners Association in Malibu, said those cases are few and far between. He said the right of property owners deserves equal weight with the rights of the public.

“That’s something that is lost all too often by those who claim that the beach belongs to them without distinguishing between that part that is owned by the public and the part that has been purchased, paid for and where taxes are paid each year by individual property owners,” said Grossman.

In the most famous Malibu battle, entertainment mogul David Geffen tried to block the public from his beachfront property. When Geffen purchased the property, he initially agreed to an easement that would allow beachgoers to reach the oceanfront. Later, in a protracted and unsuccessful legal struggle, he tried to block access. Now the public can reach the beach via a gate next to his home.

IMEH AKPANUDOSEN / GETTY IMAGES FOR UCLA FILE
David Geffen, philanthropist and entertainment mogul, in 2014.
'Bureaucratic Overreach'

The highest-profile current case, however, is unfolding far to the north, on Martins Beach near Half Moon Bay.

Entrepreneur Vinod Khosla made billions by cofounding the computer firm Sun Microsystems, and has since poured some of his profits into green energy ventures, and some into Democratic Party coffers. He contributed $1 million to a pro-Obama SuperPAC in 2012, and last year hosted a fundraiser at his home in Portola Valley, south of San Francisco, in which attendees paid $32,400 to have dinner with the president.

He also spent his wealth on an 89-acre parcel overlooking Martins Beach, a stretch popular with surfers. His new purchase included a private road off of the Pacific Coast Highway that provided the only direct access to the beach. Because of California law, the family that had owned the property for the previous century had permitted surfers access to the beach via the road, and had also built a parking lot and charged surfers from $2 to $10 to use it. For decades, locals used the lot and enjoyed the beach.

But after Khosla purchased the property for more than $30 million in 2008, he wanted to do things differently.

San Mateo County warned Khosla that he would need to maintain the beach access provided by the previous owners and mandated by the Coastal Commission. Khosla sued the county, and lost.

In 2010, after complying with the county’s wishes for two years, Khosla permanently locked his gate, blocking the road and the parking lot. He added security guards and signs reading “Beach closed, keep out.”

In late 2012, a group of surfers ignored the no access warnings, walked down the road and paddled out into the waves. When Jonathan Bremmer and four of his friends came out of the water, they were arrested by San Mateo County Sheriff’s Office deputies.

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Prosecutors promptly dropped charges against the so-called “Martins Beach Five” for criminal trespassing, but the incident sparked civil litigation and legislative action. Bremmer, who said that he had surfed at Martins Beach in order to test the law, filed suit against Khosla, alleging that Khosla was violating state law by blocking access.

The Surfrider Foundation filed a second suit accusing Khosla’s Martins Beach LLC of failing to seek permits necessary to change the access through the property that had been allowed by the previous owners. Khosla is fighting both suits.

“If it came to a discussion about it, then I would win,” said Bremmer. “But it turns out that I'm not the one with billions of dollars.”

STEVE JENNINGS / GETTY IMAGES FOR TECHCRUNCH FILE
Vinod Khosla of Khosla Ventures in 2013.
Khosla scored a legal victory late last year, when a judge ruled that Khosla was not violating the law by blocking Bremmer and the other surfers from his property because of special land rights on the specific tract of land that dated back to its pre-statehood Mexican owner. That ruling is currently under appeal.

Khosla, who declined to be interviewed on camera by NBC News, has said through his attorneys, on his Martins Beach LLC website and in the San Francisco Chronicle that he is simply protecting his freedom in the form of his private property rights and is the victim of "bureaucratic overreach."

“This dispute is about making sure private property rights are not abrogated by a runaway administrative body,” said Khosla.

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Khosla accused state and local officials of being unreasonable. “They have been taking an extreme view and don't want to compromise on anything," Khosla told the Chronicle. “One day out of the blue we got a letter from the county saying we had to have 1973 [parking] prices and be open 24/7.”

In June, California Governor Jerry Brown signed a bill giving the Coastal Commission power to levy fines of up to $11,500 a day against any property owner who illegally blocks public beaches. Where many of these cases used to end up in court, the new law means those cases will be adjudicated by the Coastal Commission, which may mean they will be decided more quickly.

For now, Martins Beach is open to the public. But on a recent summer day at the beach, surfer Mike Wallace told NBC News he knew his years of enjoying the local waves may end if Khosla prevails in court. "It’s really ironic that somebody with those kind of green venture capital credentials is trying to close a beautiful spot like this,” said Wallace.

First published August 28th 2014, 6:27 pm

ANDREW BLANKSTEIN
Andrew Blankstein is an investigative reporter for NBC News. He covers the Western United States, specializing... Expand Bio

INVESTIGATIONS
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American Suicide Bomber Says He Was Watched by FBI, Inspired by Awlaki
BY ROBERT WINDREM
The Florida man who killed himself in a suicide bombing in Syria this May says in a new video released Wednesday that he fled to Syria last year because he believed he was under surveillance by the FBI.

Moner Mohammad Abu-Salha also says he was comforted and inspired by the lectures of Anwar al-Awlaki, the radical American-born Islamic cleric who was killed in a U.S. drone strike in Yemen three years ago.

On May 25, Abu-Salha drove a massive truck bomb into a restaurant in Jabal Al-Arba'een filled with Syrian government soldiers.

The 22-minute video, billed as "Part 1" of an interview, is the third of Abu-Salha released so far by Islamic militants, who apparently shot the footage at a rebel base camp just before his suicide mission. In a previously released video, he set his U.S. passport on fire.

Abu-Salha, a 22-year-old Palestinian-American, says on the newly released video that when he returned to the U.S. after initial training in Syria in 2012, he was aware of FBI surveillance.

BILAD AL-SHAM MEDIA VIA YOUTUBE
A screen grab from a video of Moner Mohammad Abu-Salha by Bilad Al-Sham Media.
"I went back to my home state, which is Florida," he tells his interviewer, never making eye contact. "I stayed with my friend's family. And it was no good. The reason I had to stay with them is that the state I was in, I finally realized I was being watched." He explains that he fled back to his home state “to throw [the FBI] off, to make them think I was somewhere else in the United States.”

Family members said Abu-Salha, known in Syria as Abu Hurayra al-Ameriki, had traveled to Texas and then returned to Florida in 2013.

Abu-Salha also hints at betrayal by a friend. Law enforcement officials have told NBC News that Abu-Salha tried to recruit some of his Florida friends for Syria's violent revolution and that one of them, who had originally agreed to go with him, had informed on him.

American-Born Suicide Bomber Burns His PassportNBCNEWS.COM

Without identifying the friend, Abu-Salha says that the man had abandoned him at a Florida airport and “showed me at the end what a true person he was, and I forgive him."

Twice in the interview, Abu-Salha says al-Awlaki's lectures, which have been widely circulated among English-speaking radicals, had inspired him on arrival in Syria in 2012. He recounts how he had no money other than $20 for a Turkish visa had been comforted by recalling one of al-Awlaki's lectures.

"I put my [faith] in Allah," he says, "In a lecture, Anwar al-Awlaki said when you make [a journey for jihad] it's like a cliff, jump off the cliff and you don't know if the water is deep or shallow. Don't know if there's rocks or if it’s going to be very deep. You just have to jump and put your faith in Allah that it's going to be deep and you won't be harmed, that you’re going to be safe after you land in the water."

First published August 27th 2014, 6:57 pm

ROBERT WINDREM
Robert Windrem is an investigative reporter/producer with NBC News. His specialty is international security,... Expand Bio

AFP / AFP/GETTY IMAGES FILE2 days
INVESTIGATIONS

Ivory Atrocity: Asian, African Crime Groups Speed Elephant Slaughter
BY MIKE BRUNKER AND CHARLES MCLRAVY
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An insatiable Chinese demand for ivory and the increasing involvement of organized crime syndicates in smuggling are causing the mass killing of Africa’s elephants and could trigger a stampede to extinction if unchecked, according to a new report.

“Poaching and trafficking in ivory is at the highest level in 25 years,” driven by skyrocketing prices for elephant tusks, said the report, published Wednesday by the wildlife conservation group Born Free and the data analysis nonprofit C4ADS.

In 2013, a record 50 tons of ivory were seized globally, nearly 45 tons of which were “large-scale consignments that bear the hallmarks of organized crime,” according to the report, titled “Out of Africa: Mapping the Global Trade in Illicit Elephant Ivory.” The report said it’s difficult to estimate the number of elephants killed to furnish the supply, but calculated that “at least 20,000 elephants are being killed annually out of a total population of around 450,000,” adding that “the real number (is) likely significantly higher.”

Yao Ming Aims to Ban Ivory TradeNBC NEWS

The slaughter is being driven almost entirely by demand from China, which is the largest market for ivory and fuels trafficking across Africa and East Asia, the report said. Wholesale prices for ivory have skyrocketed in China, reaching $2,100 a kilogram (about $953 a pound) in 2014, almost five times the estimated price in 2010, it said.

The illegal trade also amounts to a massive financial transfer out of the poorest parts of Africa, it said, to the benefit of “international organized crime syndicates, warlords, corrupt politicians, and even extremists, insurgents and terrorists.”

The reports said a worldwide ban on international ivory trade by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) organization in 1989 initially succeeded in depressing demand and essentially dried up Western markets. But it also triggered a shift from what was previously “an opportunistic and artisanal trade to a multi-million dollar criminal enterprise spanning continents,” it said.

Now, it said, African crime networks typically control operations from the forest to the staging area, at which point the contraband is sold and becomes the responsibility of the Asian syndicates, which handle international transportation.

C4ADS / PALANTIR
“Heat map” shows locations of major ivory seizures from 2009-2014.
Asked by NBC News what surprised him most about the report’s conclusions, Born Free CEO Adam Roberts said it was “the level of organized crime involved in both parts of the international ivory trade, the African syndicates in poaching and bundling, then Asian syndicates to receive and sell the ivory in Asia.”

The report is the second in a series of reports on the ivory trade by the two organizations and focuses on the complex supply chain by which the illegal ivory is smuggled from Africa to Asia, much of it packed in seaborne shipping containers alongside legal goods.

C4ADS focused on more than 500 “significant” seizures of illegal ivory since 2008, using open-source data, media reports and business and tax records to supplement the official Elephant Trade Information System database.

“Chinese ivory traffickers in particular have been arrested across nearly every single African range state and operate at nearly every point along the ivory supply chain.”

The report found that 90 percent or more of the large-scale shipments intercepted were bound for Asia. Asian organized crime groups were almost certainly involved, given the complexity of arranging the transportation, which “necessitates the cooperation or collusion of various individuals, such as freight forwarders, clearing agents, shipping and customs agents, dockworkers and … port officials,” it said.

It also said that Asian mobs were “vertically integrating their operations to maximize profits,” by expanding procurement operations closer to the source in Africa and establishing illegal carving factories in China to prepare the ivory for retail sale.

“Chinese ivory traffickers in particular have been arrested across nearly every single African range state and operate at nearly every point along the ivory supply chain,” it said, noting that ivory prices can increase by as much as 4,000 percent from the African bush to retail markets.

ALEX HOFFORD / EPA FILE
Hong Kong Customs officers display ivory seized from the luggage of 15 Vietnamese passengers at the Hong Kong international airport on June 10. According to Hong Kong customs officials, the combined 790 kilograms of ivory originated in Angola and were bound for Cambodia. Traffic, a wildlife trade monitoring network, said that Cambodia and Vietnam are emerging as key a transit points for ivory bound for China.
Efforts to crack down on smuggled ivory in China are complicated by the existence of a legal ivory market.

After China’s Ministry of Culture declared ivory part of the country’s “intangible cultural heritage” in 2006, CITES approved a “one-off” sale to China of 62 tons of seized ivory to use in support of its carving industry. Since then, the government has released about 5 tons a year to legal operators.

But the report said that “significant enforcement gaps” exist in China’s regulatory framework and that black-market ivory is likely being laundered through the legal system – though it’s unclear how much.

Roberts, the Born Free executive, said the report highlights the need for greater interdiction efforts in Africa.

“The more we can attack the ivory trade before the ivory gets to market, the more we can deter these poachers and profiteers from making money off dead elephants,” he said.

Follow NBC News Investigations on Twitter and Facebook.

And while China has been seizing more ivory at its ports, Roberts said Beijing needs to do more to curtail the bloody trade.

“Clearly China is the problem. Its market is open and it is huge,” he said. “… Numerous Chinese companies are involved and they all know that if they can get the ivory into the country there is profit to be made. As long as the government allows these companies to operate, they’re encouraging the killing of elephants.”

The Chinese Embassy in Washington referred NBC News to the Chinese Consulate in Los Angeles for comment, but a phone call on Tuesday was not returned.

First published August 27th 2014, 12:04 am

MIKE BRUNKER
Mike Brunker is investigations editor for NBCNews.com. He started this role, under the previous title... Expand Bio

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