Encroachment crackdown

As of Monday, the city of Newport Beach could begin charging some Newport Beach waterfront property owners $100 fines for furniture, patios and yard adornments that have crept over their property lines and onto public land.

For others, there’s hope that city officials will create “encroachment zones” where property owners can pay a fee to take up a bit of city space.

Earlier this year, the city identified 138 property owners in West Newport and Peninsula Point who may be encroaching onto city-owned beaches. Around July 12, the city sent a “first wave” of notices to 28 addresses where owners must remove encroachments by Monday or face fines.

Other property owners still may receive letters once the city figures out how to handle plants on environmentally sensitive sand dunes, Assistant City Manager Dave Kiff said.

“Arguably, there are landscaping encroachments we may not want people to remove yet because we want to do an evaluation,” he said. “We’re a little nervous about telling people, ‘OK, go ahead and rip that out.’ The letters are more oriented toward structures ? walls, patios, barbecues.”

The issue is complicated by the fact that West Newport has a legal “encroachment zone” that lets property owners pay annual fees between $286 and $858 to extend between 5 and 15 feet onto city property.

Now, Peninsula Point residents want the same allowance, and Kiff said the City Council is willing to hear a proposal to create such zones.

In West Newport, some property owners have gone beyond the permitted zone. Others have removed their encroachments, such as two neighboring parcels in the 7300 block of West Ocean Front where a crew had removed a lawn from one property Saturday and was pulling weeds from the other Monday.

Residents were either hard to find ? no one answered the door at either house where work was being done ? or reluctant to talk about the city crackdown on encroachments.

“Some of the areas that had been improved looked better” than they will with everything torn out, said Blair Armstrong, a West Ocean Front resident who doesn’t have an encroachment.

He added that a few people may have broken the rules, but the city was put in a position where it had to do something after a newspaper columnist called attention to the issue.

It’s not clear how long the encroachments have existed, but some residents may be frustrated that they’re being penalized now.

“I think some of them are kind of questioning, this has been there for a long time; why all of a sudden is it a problem?,” Newport Beach Public Works Director Steve Badum said.

In some cases, they’ve used excuses. Badum said one property owner claimed the encroachment was put there by someone else.

Kiff said the city planned to check on the properties where violation notices were sent once the Monday deadline passed. For the others, it’s a matter of waiting to see if the city will send them a notice or allow them to keep their improvements.

“There are a number of folks who are kind of sitting back and waiting to see how serious we are about this,” Kiff said.dpt-25-encroach-1-mcd-CPhotoInfo741T8N0820060725j2xkmzncCredit: MARK DUSTIN / DAILY PILOT Caption: (LA)A man waters some plants in the sand of the city-owned beach property behind a home on the 7400 block of W. Ocean Front in West Newport Beach Friday. The city recently sent out notices to residents demanding they remove the illegal encroachments.