Eroding AL Beach Town Lands Grant, $ In Pipeline, Then Votes No Because Freedumb Socialism Benghazi
EDIT
Other projects in the grant would have fortified the town hall as a model structure against hurricane-force winds, showing homeowners how to qualify for lower insurance rates, and would have investigated better stormwater management, a major issue in the wake of unprecedented spring rains that washed out roads and bridges along the coast. That planning grant would likely have led to other grants, which could have provided millions of dollars for protection work and infrastructure, funding that proponents said was crucial for a town with a limited budget and virtually no sales tax revenue.
EDIT
They said they voted down the grant application in April because they feared losing their property rights and losing the uninterrupted view of their beloved bay. Fishbein also railed against what he called intrusion from the United Nations' "Agenda 21," a bogeyman that tea party activists have attacked because of its call for voluntary efforts at sustainable development.
"Who wants a living shoreline anyway, which would be just an ugly, ol' unmaintained island out there -- all in the name of climate change?" said Fishbein, a dentist with an office in a neighboring town. He suggested that wave damage can instead be ameliorated with sea walls, also known as bulkheads, and by regularly replenishing the eroded beaches with sand, methods that Parker and ecologists have called "Band-Aids" that would be more expensive and more damaging in the long run.
The grant application was written in part by and would have been administered by the Nature Conservancy, which has extensive experience in similar projects around the region. But after initial support, the organization became a choke point for half the Town Council members. "I am a huge fan of the Nature Conservancy, but I think they were wrong on this," said Priscilla Condon, another council member who voted against the grant. "All the other experts we've talked to said a living shoreline simply won't work here." The nonprofit group failed to make it clear early on that a living shoreline approach may have been a big part of the proposed solutions, Condon and Fishbein said.
"The Nature Conservancy was trying to use our town for financial and political gain," Fishbein said in an interview last week. "That's how they make their money."
EDIT
http://www.eenews.net/stories/1060005635
= new reply since forum marked as read
