A California lakefront property owner must tear down his metal fence due to it preventing people from using the public trust portion of a North Tahoe beach.
In California, the public trust is any land below the high water mark of 6228.75 feet. The fence in question prevented people from accessing Speedboat Beach, aka Buck’s Beach, in Brockway, Calif.
The California State Lands Commission voted to tear down the fence, compensate the lakefront owners if necessary for the cost of tear down and ask the state attorney general to file a restraining order against Marc Desautels, the owner of the adjacent lakefront property. Desautels was accused during the commission’s meeting of harassing people trying to use the beach.
Lake Tahoe’s public trust in California was defined by a 1986 court case as anything between the high and low water marks. As of Oct. 28, Lake Tahoe was sitting at 6223.01 – just at the lake’s low water mark.
The beach in question is just over the border of the Nevada/California state line, and the rules are completely different just a few hundred yards away in Nevada.
The Nevada Division of State Lands says that the state owns the bed of the Nevada side of Lake Tahoe up to its natural rim of 6223 foot elevation. So all the land above the natural rim is private property in Nevada.
Maybe Desautels should buy in Nevada – we can recommend a good real estate firm for him if he cares to jump to the other side of the border.
