Worries Grow About the “Coastal Squeeze”
July 24, 2025
With sea levels rising, conflicts are increasing over rules governing the use of “public trust” portions of the nation’s beaches, often defined as the area below the high-tide line, Cornelia Dean reports in The New York Times. She earlier explored this controversy in a letter for Issues commenting on Wilko Graf von Hardenberg’s discussion of how “our ideas about sea level, why we measure it, and how it varies have changed radically over the centuries.” In keeping with such flux, Dean notes, uncertainties remain over just what should comprise the public trust area of beaches. “That,” she argues, “is a good question for coastal geologists.”