Pub. Resources Code, § 6331.5

The commission shall make an inventory to ascertain and describe by metes and bounds the location and extent of all ungranted tidelands. The commission shall, in a local agency where the ungranted tideland boundary is described by metes and bounds, acquire and evaluate the existing boundary description to determine whether or not additional surveys should be conducted. When available, the local agency shall provide copies of the descriptions, together with all materials supporting the descriptions, including field notes and other basic data, to the commission at no cost, other than the reproduction cost, to the state.

No appropriation is made by the act adding this section, nor is an obligation created thereby, for the reimbursement of a local agency for costs, other than reproduction costs, that may be incurred by it in carrying on a program or performing a service required to be carried on or performed by it by this section. Reimbursements for reproduction expenditures shall be made by the commission from appropriations to the commission for the preparation of the inventory.

The commission shall evaluate each survey and shall adopt boundary descriptions already in common use where these metes and bounds descriptions approximate the existing line of ordinary high water where it is in a state of nature, or where the descriptions approximate the last position occupied in a state of nature by the line of ordinary high water in areas where the existing shoreline has ceased to be in a state of nature, and where sound engineering practices were used to conduct the survey. If metes and bounds descriptions of tideland boundaries are not available, or if the surveys do not describe the tideland boundary in a state of nature as hereinbefore defined, or if unsound engineering practices were used to describe a tideland boundary, the commission may conduct its own survey. Unless otherwise provided by law, prior to undertaking a survey on ungranted tidelands, the commission shall prepare an inventory of those ungranted tidelands that will require a commission survey.