[Talk-us] Monterey - Santa Cruz County line in Monterey Bay

[Greg Troxel]

Martijn van Exel <m at rtijn.org> writes:

> You are correct. The official Monterey County GIS file from [1] has
> the boundary at the shoreline, whereas OSM has it going out into the
> ocean, see https://imgur.com/a/aCMROQZ <https://imgur.com/a/aCMROQZ>
> (OSM in orange, Official GIS in dark gray).
>
> I don’t know all coastal counties have their official boundaries at the shoreline, but OSM has them all reaching into the ocean. [2]
> I also don’t know if there is some convention in OSM (US) to have
> coastal country boundaries match up with the higher level boundary. If
> there is perhaps we may need to revisit?

This is tricky business.

Generally, the jurisdiciton of the state seems to go to 3 nmi (east and
west coasts).  However, whether those state lands are in any town or
county is an interesting question.

https://coast.noaa.gov/data/Documents/OceanLawSearch/Summary%20of%20Law%20-%20Submerged%20Lands%20Act.pdf
http://maps.massgis.state.ma.us/czm/moris/metadata/moris_sla_arc.htm

In Massachusetts, towns and counties do include the state lands.

I would recommend looking up California law and asking this question in
particular.