Napa River/Milton Road Public Outreach

The Commission’s jurisdiction includes roughly 120 rivers and sloughs, 40 lakes, and tide and submerged lands along more than 1,000 miles of coastline out to three nautical miles. Tidelands are sovereign lands between the ordinary high-water mark and the ordinary low water mark, as they existed prior to any fill or artificial accretion. Submerged lands are sovereign lands below the ordinary low water mark. Altogether, the Commission’s jurisdiction encompasses roughly four million acres.

In general, the state’s sovereign ownership interest in the Napa River is waterward of the ordinary high-water mark, as that line would exist absent any fill or artificial accretion and is represented by the current Mean High Tide Line. The Napa River at this location is natural, subject to artificial conditions (levees, dredging, fill), navigable, tidal, and meandered on both banks on Swamp and Overflowed (S&O) Survey plats. The upland properties at this location were originally sold as S&O 107, patented on September 3, 1877. The properties were subdivided mostly via two subdivision maps; Ingersoll’s Cabin Site BK4 P626 in 1946 and Ingersoll’s Riverfront Sites BK4 P661 in 1949. Commission staff performed a survey in 1953 of the ordinary high water mark of the Napa River.

The California Constitution and state law require the Commission to charge rent for any private recreational or commercial use of its property, whether that use, or occupancy is on the land, under the land, or over the land. Any extended occupancy or use of sovereign land requires authorization from the Commission. Public and private entities may apply to the Commission to lease lands. The Commission typically issues 10-year leases for docks, buoys, and landings that extend out into, or over state lands.

Under state law, all docks, decks, and other improvements on or over state land should already be under lease. Commission staff is identifying structures built on or over sovereign tide and submerged lands under its jurisdiction throughout the state. Commission staff verifies the state’s ownership, locates the owners of structures, and works with the owners to bring them under lease. Some of the improvements on Milton Road have been under lease with the Commission since the 1980’s.

Before January 1, 2012, the law (Public Resources Code section 6503.5) allowed rent-free use of sovereign land by certain private parties for recreational docks. A new law took effect in January 2012, requiring the Commission to charge rent for a private recreational pier on state land. The law exempts rent-free leases in effect before July 2011 for the remaining term of those leases. In those cases, no rent shall be charged until the lease expires or is terminated. There is no rent-free provision for residential uses, such as decks and other non-water dependent uses. Therefore, rent must be charged for a new lease.

Current law requires that rent be “based on local conditions and local fair annual rental values.” Rents for docks, decks, and residential structures in the Napa River area are based on benchmark rental rates. Rent for docks may include an impact area and is based on a recreational benchmark for San Francisco Bay, which is $0.227 per square foot. Rent for decks and other non-water dependent uses will be based on a different benchmark, called a category 2 benchmark, currently set at $1.80 per square foot. The benchmark set for residential structures is $7.20 per square foot.

• Current Benchmarks
• Benchmark Methodology Overview

No. The Commission cannot waive rent because that would be illegal. Waiving rent would also constitute a gift of public funds, in violation of article XVI, section 6 of the California Constitution.

The Commission understands that some homeowners may have been unaware that their structures encroach onto sovereign land owned by the state and that they are required to enter into a lease and compensate the state for their occupation of that land. The Commission has been trying to increase public awareness about state land leasing laws. If a lease is not obtained, the encroaching structure is in trespass. While the Commission has on occasion been forced to evict trespassers or lessees who are delinquent on their rent payments, it does so only after all other approaches to resolve the trespass cooperatively have failed. An alternative to coming under lease with the Commission is that owners can remove those portions of their structures extending out over the state’s sovereign land. A lease and rental payment would not be required if the structures are removed.

In 2019, Commission staff commissioned an aerial photogrammetric survey to locate existing structures and conditions as of the date of the survey. In addition, staff recovered monuments from the 1953 survey to tie the two surveys together. Using this data, staff identified the areas of encroachment on state land below the 1953 ordinary high water mark. The lease area covers the area of encroachment and the impact area if applicable.