The owner of the MLB’s Milwaukee Brewers is accused of stealing sand from a public beach in Malibu for use on his private property.
Mark Attanasio is being sued by his next-door neighbor James Kohlberg, who says he has seen a construction team working on Attanasio’s home “operating enormous excavators in tidal zones, leaking oils and exposing local marine life to potentially hazardous byproducts,” as reported by the Los Angeles Times.
That sand is particularly valuable because it is on Broad Beach, which has suffered sand depletion due to high tides and storms.
In 2015, the owners of 121 properties, including celebrities like Ray Romano, Pierce Brosnan and Dustin Hoffman, joined together for a $31-million restoration project that involved “trucking in mountains of sand from quarries in Simi Valley and Moorpark and trying to re-create sandy beach and dunes, the latter atop a massive, man-made rock barrier,” the Times reported.
While the lawsuit claims Attanasio is “using a public beach as their own personal sandbox,” his attorney, Kenneth Ehrlich, said the construction team “is in the midst of a fully-permitted emergency repair of the property to protect it from ocean forces.”
“It has secured all permits necessary for the repairs from the City of Malibu and LA County as well as thoroughly vetted all contractors and sub-contractors involved in the project,” the attorney told the Times.