This is a really good thing, but 700 acres isn’t a whole lot, is it?
It’s a start, albeit a small one.
Well, it gives a substantial right of way to the coast that didn’t exist before. Entire problem solved? Not really. Important cultural problem mitigated? Definitely headed in the right direction.
And I assume since this is a private sale (though with funds that aren’t all private) this also gives access to hundreds of miles of public beach and coastline.
Just in time for the whole area to be permanently inundated by rising sea-levels?
Northern California is a lot like Palos Verdes in Southern California. More cliffs with tide pools, less beaches, and trails to get to the water. When the global oceans rise, these Native Americans will finally have beach front property.
Edited to add that Stewart’s Point is near to Sea Ranch, I believe. And the land is significantly higher elevated than the ocean.
Riparian rights are a big thing. Now they will have those rights restored.
Seeing as their current reservation seems to be 40 landlocked acres, it appears meaningful to these folks.
The $6 million deal, put together by the Trust for Public Lands…
I don’t know enough about real estate - is that a lot or a little? $10,000 an acre?
Cali has riparian law? I thought it was a prior allocation state, with no public waters at all.
Ten grand an acre in California next to the ocean? Dirt cheap. Of course I haven’t seen it, don’t know how accessible it is, but that sounds like a screaming deal.
I’m wondering if there’s going to be a land trust involved so that the land is minimally developed.
Just checked out their bookface and more details are coming soon. I would be surprised if it wasn’t a land trust of some sort. I am not a tribal lawyer (even on TV) but I don’t think with a private sale it can be converted to a semi autonomous reservation without a treaty of some kind, right? (Or the enforcement of a previous treaty the government has ignored).
Edit
A federal Indian reservation is an area of land reserved for a tribe or tribes under treaty or other agreement with the United States, executive order, or federal statute or administrative action as permanent tribal homelands, and where the federal government holds title to the land in trust on behalf of the tribe.
So yeah, unlikely to be a reservation. It will be either a trust or private land.
That’s an interesting point. They’ve had to sneak onto private land to access the ocean up to this point, so I guess I assumed there was some sort of riparian law involved.
California water rights are… Fun. Need help going to sleep?
http://www.waterboards.ca.gov/waterrights/board_info/faqs.shtml
Does your tendency to reduce an entire group of people and their stated interests and intentions to egregious stereotypes always spring forth so reflexively?
In general, prior allocation law has this problem where it says that the first to grab the water gets it forever, but most of the water was already being used by red people long before palefaces Manifested their Destiny all over everything. This wasn’t a problem when only white men with land had any legal rights, but now that anybody with bags of money has rights it’s much more problematical.
I don’t really know jack about non-riparian water law, though, so take the above with a large grain of salt and some willow bark tea. (I do know riparian law pretty well. You and I are in riparian states.)
in nearby napa county, 1,000 acres have been flooded with seawater in order to return the area to its original tidal marsh ecosystem. it it supposed to take 20-30 years for the transformation.
Wow, that’s kind of a shitty thing to say. Want to rethink that?
Yup! I know just enough about the subject to be dangerous.
