As the shoreline shrinks, some residents do everything they can to protect their homes — even breaking the law. When a beachfront house collapsed into the ocean just four doors down from Eric Freeman’s property, he remembers having a “total panic attack.” Two years later, the Sunset Beach homeowner faces nearly $1 million in fines for using an unauthorized system of giant sandbags to save his property from erosion.
“There wasn’t time for a two-year permit,” he said at a hearing of the Board of Land and Natural Resources. Freeman isn’t the only Sunset Beach homeowner ordered to pay big fines for using illegal erosion control devices. William and Melinda Kernot are on the hook for $948,000, Rodney Youman and Zhungo LLC for $993,000.
Freeman’s fines totals $937,000. After hours of hearings and testimony, all have been granted contested cases by the BLNR and are requesting mediation. The landowners’ lawyer, Bernie Bays, said they were simply trying to protect their properties, a point he and the owners have made repeatedly at BLNR hearings.
“All they’re trying to do is save their homes,” he said. “Actions and motivations are simple.” As homeowners grapple with the law and the relentless force of the ocean, their neighbors and beach-goers deal with the half-torn sandbags and tarps strewn across the sand as a result of illegal erosion control structures.
The structures are becoming increasingly common along the North Shore, a hotspot for shoreline eros.
