From Walton Sun
Imagine a giant mostacolli tube 30 feet around and 300 feet long and instead of cheese inside, it is full of sand.
That is what some beachfront residents are installing to protect their houses from future hurricanes.
Geotubes are long synthetic bags filled with a sand and water mixture. The tubes are buried into damaged dunes and covered with sand to create a new artificial dune.
?Some of these homes are literally one storm away from being in the gulf and some have already fallen in,? Joe Edgar, president of Hydraulitall Inc., a Long Island based company who installs Geotubes. Hydraulitall is currently putting in some 750 feet of these tubes east of Ed Walline Beach. When the tubes are filled they can run between 200 to 300 feet in length and are about 5 feet tall, Edgar added.
A trench is initially dug and the first tube is laid and filled. Then another tube is put on top and slightly behind the first tube tight against the existing dune. Sand is dumped over the entire structure. Although the beach is now overrun with two backhoes and a dump truck the whole project probably won?t take more than two weeks, Edgar said.
The sand on top of the Geotubes will most likely be washed away if surge from a storm gets high enough, but the tubes will still protect whatever is behind them, Gerry Demers, deputy building official for the Walton County Planning Department, said.
The dune created by the tubes will form into a natural looking dune and will be environmental friendly allowing vegetation to grow into it. Turtles have also found the new dunes acceptable.
Geotubes were installed in Galveston, Texas, during turtle season by Hydraulitall. Turtles were found nesting behind the dunes created by Geotubes. Local officials conducted three daily turtle checks to make sure they were not intrusive to turtles, Edgar said.
Walton County residents have been armoring their beachfront homes to prevent them from falling into the Gulf.
The county can issue temporary permits to property owners to install Geotubes, seawalls and other armoring structures. Owners have to then apply for a permanent permit from the Department of Environmental Protection within 60 days after completion of their armoring structure, according to Demers. The county has issued over 150 temporary permits.
If a permanent permit is not granted by DEP homeowners will have to remove their Geotubes.
Residents in the Gulf Dunes area have opted for Geotubes at a hefty price. Sand has to be trucked in to fill and cover the tubes at a cost of about $30 per yard, Gulf Dune resident Bob Jones said.
?We are looking at hundreds of thousands of dollars,? Jones said. He added they will probably need between 10,000 to 15,000 yards of sand to complete the project.
Jones sees the tubes as the best option residents have to protect their homes from hurricanes. Residents of Gulf Dunes are working with the county and DEP to make sure that their tubes will be environmentally friendly.
?We are doing this in the proper way. It will really help the beach and it is friendly with the turtles,? Jones said. ?We?re just trying to save what we have here. I think everybody has a right to protect their property.?
.....the insane interpret the world via their own peculiarly consistent logic; how can you tell if your own logic is "peculiar' or not, given that you have only your own logic to judge itself?" Kurt Goedel 
