Professional bible thumper and dune relocator Mike Huckabee has a full page ad in the Daily News today opposing the beach renourishment plan.
TDC says you should read and understand before start suing
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prove it...post link.....
never mind, bought me a biscuit and sausage hot coffee and read the fish wrapper. Yep, Old Huck, bought the page...
You seriously doubted It? I'm not even sure how to post a link to a paid ad.
Part 2 of this lengthy article; http://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/waters-edge-the-crisis-of-rising-sea-levels/ talks about the property Mike Huckabee purchased in 2009 and how the government accommodated his personal desire to build on lots with severely eroded beaches along with a picture of Terry Anderson standing proudly on the man made dunes he created to accommodate Huckabee.
I love how the rules only apply to some. He should have to answer to this publicly.
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It's God's will that he live there.
BEACH BUMP: Structural engineer Terry Anderson stands near the dunes he created to help ensure approval of a permit for former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee's beachfront house in Santa Rosa Beach, Florida. REUTERS/Phil Sears
Part 2: Despite laws intended to curb development where rising seas pose the greatest threat, Reuters finds that government is happy to help the nation indulge in its passion for beachfront living.
SANTA ROSA BEACH, Florida – Mike Huckabee bought a beachfront lot here in 2009, a year after his failed bid for the Republican presidential nomination. A longtime friend and political ally of the former Arkansas governor bought the lot next door. They planned to build $3 million vacation villas side-by-side, each with a pool and sweeping views of Walton County’s renowned sugary sand beaches and the azure waters of the Gulf of Mexico.
The only hitch was that their lots lay on a severely eroding beach. Under state regulations, they couldn’t build on the seaward side of the sand dune nearest to the surf. And after seven hurricanes in six years, the surviving “frontal dune” sat too close to the street to allow space behind it for the friends’ 11,000-square-foot (1,020-square-meter) compounds.
The structural engineer they had hired knew what to do. He dumped truckloads of sand farther out on the beach, shaped it into a mound, and declared the man-made hump to be the new frontal dune. When staff at the Florida Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) still balked at issuing the necessary permits, the engineer asked Michael Sole, head of the agency at the time, to intercede.
“I met with Secretary Sole on Friday …” the contractor wrote to DEP staff in a March 8, 2010, email, a copy of which was reviewed by Reuters. “I believe we’ve reached a consensus decision on the location of both these projects.”
The decision: Huckabee and his friend would nudge their home sites back 5 feet (1.5 meters). The permits were approved. Construction wrapped up in 2011.
In a written response to Reuters, Huckabee complained about “the slow-walking of the permits,” but said he was pleased with the outcome. “We enjoy the home and are blessed to be able to open it to our friends and family, which we do often.”
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Accommodating the two politicians was nothing out of the ordinary. The way they got their permits is standard operating procedure along much of Florida’s besieged shoreline. “I can’t think of a single project that I’ve done here in the last 12 years that’s been denied a permit,” said Terry Anderson, Huckabee’s engineer. He acknowledged that his winning record has depended on the occasional intervention of top DEP officials.
Such interventions are needed to temper the sometimes “over-zealous” permitting staff, said Danielle Irwin, the DEP’s deputy director for water resource management.
The ease with which Huckabee and his neighbors have been able to work around some of the most restrictive beach development laws in the country is indicative of a problem that only worsens as rising seas gnaw at U.S. shores: Americans are flocking to the water’s edge, as they have for decades, even as the risks to life and property mount. And government is providing powerful inducements for them to do so.
Between 1990 – when warnings were already being sounded on rising sea levels – and 2010, the United States added about 2.2 million new housing units to Census areas, known as block groups, with boundaries near the shore, a Reuters analysis found. The analysis did not include Louisiana, Hawaii or Alaska.
That 27 percent increase is in line with growth nationwide. But it occurred in block groups near some of the country’s most imperiled shores, sometimes at much higher rates. Florida’s 1,350 miles (2,173 km) of shoreline – the longest in the contiguous 48 states – accounted for a third of new coastal housing built. Huckabee’s house was one of 22,000 housing units added to block groups near Walton County’s shoreline since 1990, a 186 percent increase.
The number of people living near the Florida seashore has jumped by about 1.1 million since 1990, to 4.8 million – an increase more than four times greater than in Washington, the state with the next highest increase. And Florida’s increase doesn’t count part-time residents who spend their winters in the state.