ONE FOR THE ROAD
James Deakin
Yes there are private islands and private beach resorts –– Jeffrey Epsiten and his cohorts famously showed the world that –– but the question that keeps coming up, especially as we start to travel again and people head out to get some much-needed Vitamin Sea, is: can owners of these resorts, islands or beach homes block public access and prohibit you from crossing on the shoreline?
This should be a simple and straightforward question to answer, but just like those roadside establishments or arrogant residents that block off the street parking in front of their home/establishments for their own use, customer use, or worse, a workshop, it just keeps on happening and it eventually leads to a situation where the lines get blurred and owners actually believe they are entitled to cordon off public property and restrict access, which leads to nasty, and totally unnecessary, confrontations.
Take the case of a young couple last week who were walking along the San Isidro Beach in Cabangan, Zambales and saw a pop-up café at a Beach Resort (I’ll withhold the name because this is not meant to target a single establishment but the issue at large) According to their Facebook post (a video) last week, which has received over 275,000 views as of this writing, they were on the shore when they were harassed by staff and shooed away.
The video they posted confirms this and shows a female staff member trying to desperately stop them from walking back to their car and blocking their path as she walked backwards in front of the couple and their child, putting her arms out and repeating “You cannot walk here. We pay for the shoreline, this is private, you cannot walk here. You have to exit using another way. Do you know what a shoreline is? Do you know? Do you know? The owner is over there. We own this” or words to that effect.
The post also attracted thousands of comments, mostly angry ones from people who have been in similar situations with resorts (a few calling out a resort in San Juan Batangas that they say claim ownership over a large rock in the ocean in front of their resort and even put a guard there to shoo people away that want to take photos) but what was even more alarming was just how much confusion there still is over this. Welcome to the 2020s. Where everyone is entitled to their own alternative truth, and the veracity of facts are determined by who can scream theirs the loudest.
So I decided to go old school and radical here, and did the unthinkable. I asked the legal opinion of an actual attorney outside of facebook, and wait for it, reached out to the resort owner to get their side. Crazy, I know, but I thought I’d tackle this like it was 1999. By actually communicating directly with people. In private. Away from the digital pitchforks of an angry online mob.
As I host a weekly podcast with a law firm and the topic just happened to be property, I asked my co host, Atty. Bernice Pinol, who clarified the following:
According to Article 51 of the Water Code of the Philippines, shores of seas within a zone of three meters in urban areas, 20 meters in agricultural areas and 40 meters in forest areas are subject to public use.
My second message was to the resort with the following message:
I am writing an article about foreshore leases and I just want to clarify something. There was a recent video where a couple were shooed away from the beachfront of your resort. The staff member was saying that the beach front was private. But the couple and their child were using it as access, which is allowed under the law. In the spirit of fairness and balanced reporting, May I get your resort’s position on this?
I received a reply shortly after, which said:
“Good day, Mr. Deakin. First of all thank you for the opportunity to air our position.
We follow government regulations that persons freely pass/ walk thru the shorelines.
If there was misunderstanding between management and staff , I extend my apology.”
So kudos to the resort owner for not doubling down. That’s rare nowadays, and it should be commended. And I also hope that it clears it up. But while the apology is genuinely accepted and no hard feelings against this owner and the establishment considering the way they responded, you can see just how much we also need to educate people on property rights, especially on our shores, because, well…you know…China.