State says private water access on Anne Arundel's Beverly Beach should have been open to the public

After three decades of allowing a community association private water access on public land at Beverly Beach, Anne Arundel County must either open the 7 acres to the public or find the same amount of land elsewhere to open to the public.

Anne Arundel County has been in violation of state and federal grant requirements for three decades, and now must remedy the situation at Beverly Beach, the Department of Natural Resources wrote in a letter Aug. 1.

The county plans on making improvements to the 341-acre Beverly Triton Nature Park on the Mayo peninsula, and sent a letter to DNR June 24 listing $1.25 million in state funding for the project in its fiscal 2020 Program Open Space plan.

But when applying for Program Open Space or federal Land and Water Conservation Fund money, the county left out some information, DNR Director of Land Acquisition and Planning Heidi Dudderar said in the letter. The county didn’t say that it leases 7.1 acres of that parcel to the Beverly Beach Community Association, which operates that land as a private beach and park. That lease has been in place since 1986, a year after the county bought the land using public open space money.

Read more: https://www.capitalgazette.com/environment/ac-cn-beverly-beach-0820-20190819-b7blkvw7xngddna6hubq3c3ekq-story.html
(Annapolis Capital Gazette)