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

I'd love to see the "panoramic" from THOSE shots

[Goldenhawk]

It would be way cool to have a panoramic photo of the entire California coastline (or at least a significant chunk of it) from stitching all those photos together. Set it up as a movie, perhaps, offering a sort of virtual fly-by of the coastline.

This hardly has anything to do with privacy.

[ApharmdB]

It's the coastline after all. The guy isn't breaking into buildings or anything. What he is doing is similar to a very successful group called the Riverkeepers. This group patrols the Hudson river and watches for people dumping illegally. They are the major reason that the Hudson is no longer the utter cesspool it used to be. The government has neither the resources nor the inclination to enforce its environmental laws and so it is up to citizens to do so.

Re:Why illegal?

[tbmaddux]

All seawalls should be illegal, because they destroy beaches. The landowner is tossing rocks or concrete into the ocean to save his property at the expense of the public's property (the beach). Seawalls erode beaches by burying them under rubble (placement loss), reflecting waves and causing the sand to move offshore (active loss) and by simply being there as the shoreline retreats towards them (passive loss). Read works by Orrin Pilkey, or visit The Surfrider Foundation for more information.

Many states have banned seawalls altogether. Washington is one example. In California, seawall construction is limited by the Coastal Act (passed in 1976) but not banned, and there are major loopholes, including language to protect "existing structures" which can be creatively interpreted to include a structure that did not exist yesterday but exists today. More and more of California's coastline is being buried under seawalls, including "temporary" "emergency" piles of rock that are never removed because the Commission doesn't have a police force to patrol the beaches. What little monitoring there is, is done entirely by volunteers, and kudos to them if they've gotten access to a helicopter to keep our beaches from vanishing!

Re:Where ?

[pheph]

http://www.microsoftfree.com:

and I quote:

<meta name="GENERATOR" content="Microsoft FrontPage 4.0"> <meta name="ProgId" content="FrontPage.Editor.Document">

Re:Brilliant use of tech

[dubl-u]

Yes, it's much better to deny people the right to build a seawall, and then spend billions on beach reclamation projects. Sheeeeerrrrr Genius (said in Wile E. Coyote voice)

This is wrong twice over:

1. The coast is a public resource. A private landowner who was dumb enough to build on eroding land doesn't have any right to build a seawall, anymore than a guy who lives next to a public park has a right to put in a vegetable garden.
2. Putting up seawalls will require you to have beach reclamation projects. Beaches are the result of erosion; if you stop erosion, the existing sand gets washed away.