City rules that any wave holding a fixed address for 72 hours owes back taxes and a parking permit
LAGUNA BEACH, CA — The famous standing wave at Aliso Creek, which awakens only when hurricane swell meets outflowing creek water, has been surfed so continuously during Hurricane Genevieve that the City of Laguna Beach has moved to classify it as a permanent resident and bill it for utilities.
The wave, a beloved local novelty that forms where the creek empties into the sea, ran for multiple days during the recent swell, as documented in Surfer’s coverage of skimboarding champion Blair Conklin’s sessions. City officials say any entity that maintains a fixed address in Laguna Beach for more than 72 consecutive hours triggers residency review, “and frankly the wave has been here longer this month than most of the people renting on Airbnb.”
The Assessment
City assessor Herbert Vane-Coughlin conducted the formal evaluation on Tuesday, standing at the creek mouth with a clipboard while the wave, in his words, “failed to produce identification but was clearly domiciled.” His report classifies the wave as a single-occupancy hydrological structure with unpermitted water features, an illegally operating entertainment venue, and, during peak flow, a code-violating short-term rental sleeping up to nine skimboarders at once.
“We calculated its footprint at roughly 40 feet of prime coastal frontage,” Vane-Coughlin said. “Do you know what 40 feet of Laguna Beach frontage is worth? The wave is sitting on eleven million dollars of real estate and paying nothing. It does not even have a parking permit, and it created its own parking problem, which took three of our lots out of commission by filling them with sand. That is a municipal offense. We checked.”
The sand incident refers to Genevieve’s storm surge, which pushed so much material inland that vehicles were reportedly trapped in beach lots, an event the city has formally attributed to the wave as “property damage by an uninsured resident.”
The Wave Retains Counsel
Local surfers have rallied to the wave’s defense, retaining attorney Sandra Okonkwo-Briggs, who has previously represented a haunted lifeguard tower and the concept of beach access. Okonkwo-Briggs argues her client cannot be a resident because it is only present during specific swell and creek-flow conditions, making it, at most, a seasonal visitor. “My client is a snowbird,” she told reporters. “You do not bill snowbirds for sewer hookups. Also, and I want to be delicate here, my client IS the sewer outflow. The city would be billing the creek for delivering the city’s own runoff. We welcome that conversation under oath.”
The runoff point has proven awkward for officials, given that the wave is powered substantially by inland water the city itself failed to manage. Asked whether Laguna Beach was attempting to charge rent to its own drainage, Vane-Coughlin stated that the city “does not comment on active hydrology.”
Conklin Named Unindicted Co-Conspirator
Blair Conklin, whose viral footage of the wave attracted what the city estimates as “thousands of dollars in unpermitted joy,” has been classified in municipal documents as the wave’s property manager. Conklin’s crew reportedly rode the standing wave for hours before paddling out to hollow sandbar tubes formed by the same creek flow, which the assessor’s office has separately classified as “an unlicensed second unit.”
“The sandbar is an ADU,” Vane-Coughlin insisted. “An accessory dwelling unit. The wave built it without permits, without inspections, without a coastal development review. It took our residents four years to get approval for a fence. This wave built an entire second wave in one weekend. People are furious. Not at the wave. At us. Which is worse.”
Regional Implications
Coastal municipalities across Southern California are watching the case closely, aware that a favorable ruling could unlock enormous revenue. Newport Beach has reportedly begun residency paperwork for The Wedge, which has maintained the same address since the 1930s and, in the words of one official, “has sent more people to urgent care than any resident in city history and never paid a cent toward emergency services.” San Clemente is exploring whether Lower Trestles can be charged a business license fee as the region’s largest open-air office, given how many sponsored surfers report it as their workplace.
The satirical press has covered the dispute with appropriate gravity. Bohiney Magazine published a property listing for the wave, noting “open floor plan, water views, motivated seller, sells itself twice a minute.” The London Prat observed at prat.uk that Britain solved this problem centuries ago by making the Crown own all the water, “which is why our waves are so obedient and so small.”
Current Status
As the swell faded this week, the wave ceased to exist, a legal maneuver the city attorney described as “frankly brilliant.” Residency proceedings cannot continue against an entity that has dissolved into the general ocean, and precedent from a 2019 case against a vanished sandbar suggests the city cannot bill the Pacific at large, having tried.
Officials confirmed, however, that the file remains open. The next hurricane swell will reactivate both the wave and the invoice, which is accruing interest. At press time, forecasters were tracking two systems off Baja, and the wave, wherever it currently is, was advised by counsel to stay liquid.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com