Beach access maintenance and enforcement

183C, by requiring private property owners to ensure that beach transit corridors abutting their lands shall be kept passable and free from the landowner's human-induced, enhanced, or unmaintained vegetation that interferes or encroaches in the beach transit corridors. (b) In addition to the criminal penalties in section 115-9, the department is authorized to issue notice to landowners who fail to maintain access within beach transit corridors, as set out in subsection (a), abutting their property. If any landowner fails to remove the landowner's human-induced, enhanced, or unmaintained vegetation within twenty-one days of notice being issued, the department shall take any action authorized under section 183C-7 as necessary to maintain access within beach transit corridors; provided that if the landowner contests the basis upon which the notice was issued prior to the expiration of the notice period, the department's enforcement actions under section 183C-7 shall be tolled until the final resolution of the contested matter. (c) As used in this section, "landowner" means the record owner of the property or the record owner's agent, including a lessee, tenant, property manager, or trustee.