Using R44 And A PowerBook To Bust Illegal Seawalls

Sylvestre writes "Ken Adelman, founder of TGV and Network Alchemy, is using a digital camera, helicopter, and a Power Book to take a high resolution photograph every 500 feet down the California coast. The goal? Busting people putting up illegal sea walls. The catch so far? One golf course covered the beach with boulders. Also of note: the website has 44 gigs of photos so far, runs on solar power, and is Microsoft Free. Best use of technology I've seen all month!"

Comments

Why illegal?

[dsanfte]

Question... why would making a "sea wall" be illegal?

Re:Why illegal?

[ender81b]

No you would be the one stupid enough to *buy* property about to slide into the sea you deserve what you get. If you buy beachfront property and need a sea wall you shouldn't be buying it in the the first place or *shock* you should've built your house on a different location. There are other solutions to building a sea wall btw, that is just the cheapest. Also, people

Seriously, this is crap. The beach is the most dynamic enviroment the earth has to offer, and one of the most vital to organism reproducing. I could care less about your 400,000$ beachfront house that is going to be rubble the next time a hurricane/el nino/mudslide comes around anyways. Repeat after me - never build that close to a beach.

Bah, sorry for the rant it has been a long day. I took a oceanography class last semester from a really good professor who drilled into us how dumb beachfront building really is.

Re:Why illegal?

[dubl-u]

Yes, but wouldn't the added benefit of not having your entire property slide into the ocean give you a legitimate claim against the frogs?

The no-seawall stuff isn't just for the little froggies, although destroying a public resource (the ecosystem) for private gain is generally a no-no. Other reasons include

• California requires public access to the coast; some seawalls impede that, often intentionally
• seawalls on one property can increase erosion on nearby properties
• stopping erosion means that beaches aren't replenished, destroying them

So turn it around: Why would being dumb enough to build on an eroding piece of land give you a legitimate claim to build a seawall?

MicrosoftFree.com's hearts in the right place....

[mgpeter]

But what the heck are they doing using Microsoft FrontPage 4.0 as the HTML editor ???

If you talk the talk, please walk the walk

Why not just use a digital camcorder?

[Goldenhawk]

After thinking about my post above... Seems like it would be much easier to just take a decent digital camcorder and fly down the coast at a moderate rate of speed. Better continuous coverage, much much faster, and if the real purpose IS to look for breakwaters or illegal rockpiles, certainly a digital camcorder image would work for that.

I wonder if there isn't some other motive here, requiring high-res images.

(Like getting free publicity on Slashdot for using exclusively non-MS technology for a cool task, perhaps.....? Naaaaahhhh....)

Maybe you should look into some facts

[Sacarino]

Um

Perhaps you ought to look into fuel consumption for a R44 before you go spouting off.

If you were to look at the R44 Spec Sheet you'll see that the standard fuel capacity is 30.6 US gal. with a max range of 400 miles.

A little simple math shows us that 400/30.6 is equal to what kids? That's right, 13.07 mpg. Now, let's take a look at the gas economy on your SUV..... hmm... Comparible, is it?