Oregon Beach Access For All

The new rules create the first clear statewide guidance for how Oregon's coastal cities and counties should protect, maintain, and expand equitability for access to the shoreline. While public beach access has long been a core Oregon value, these new rules establish clearer expectations for local governments by defining key terms, requiring public access planning, improving coordination with state agencies and Tribes, and creating more consistent tracking of public access sites to ensure no net loss over time. Surfrider Foundation celebrates the rulemaking as a major milestone victory in our Oregon Beaches Forever Campaign - learn more.

As ocean shore development, shoreline armoring and climate change continue to narrow and shrink many Oregon's beaches, planning for and ensuring access for future generations is critical for our state. Limitations in equity of access, cultural concerns and a lack of adaptive planning necessitates a modernized state policy framework to support generational beach access. Identifying this need within our Oregon Beaches Forever campaign, Surfrider Foundation made modernizing the state's beach access policy framework a key strategy.

Surfrider participated over 2 years in a Coastal Access Advisory Team led by Oregon's lead statewide land use agency, the Department of Land Conservation and Development. The highly diverse group of beach stakeholders, tribal, municipal and state governments established the policy framework and a modernized beach access inventory and planning tool. In late 2025, the state launched a Rulemaking Advisory Committee to incorporate the policy recommendations into the state's rules for beach access. Following the recommendations of the committee, the state's Land Conservation and Development Commission unanimously adopted the rules this summer in late June - read the state's updated rule summary here.

For beach lovers, the rules are designed to help ensure that public access is not quietly lost over time. If a public beach access route or right-of-way is proposed for closure or vacation, local governments must provide public notice and consider whether access can be retained or replaced with an access point that meets or exceeds the quality of the original site, while maintaining connections to the Oregon Coast Trail and other public trail networks whenever possible. Such planning principals ensure there is "no net loss" over time of both quality and quantity of access points. The rules also require communities to report changes to public access sites so Oregon can maintain a current, coastwide inventory, supporting greater public transparency. Language in the rule also distinguishes both access to, but also along, the ocean shore.