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In the early seventies the city of Virginia Beach, Virginia was relatively undeveloped. My wife and I rented a home two blocks from the ocean. While I was studying electronics, courtesy of the Unites States Navy, my wife would be sunbath herself on the beach. A main highway ran parallel to the beach, between it and the ocean was a parking lot, a small seawall, and one hundred and fifty feet of sand. To reach this sandy strip, one needed to make a slight jump(less than a foot) from the seawall down to the sand. There had been some sand loss on the beach and the municipality was consulting with an engineering firm to restore it to some previous condition. A year an a half later when we left Virginia Beach a barge was dredging sand from a small inlet south of Virginia Beach and pumping it back up on to the beach. The engineering firms estimated the length of time the sand pumping barge would have to remain in place was approximately three months. I returned to visit Ed, a shipmate friend of mine still living in the Tidewater area We visited my old apartment and walked over to the same beach where my wife had spent the afternoons sunbathing eleven years earlier. I was shocked! The slight one foot jump down to the beach had become an eight or ten foot drop. There were three barges visibly dredging sand and wooden stairs lead down to the beach (similar to the ones we have on Vero's beaches). The current cost of beach renourishment is astronomical. Cape May, New Jersey in the late sixties used taxes from the property tax base as a source of funds to protect beaches affected their community. "...a shoreline engineer considers a jetty or seawall a success if it endures fifteen. twenty, or thirty years, its predicted design life. Also, to Villianos [U.S. Army Corps Engineer] and other engineers, a seawall that last fifteen years and protects the property behind it is a success whether or not it destroys the beach in front of it. Cape May's jetties successfully protected the harbor inlet, although the town spent itself into poverty trying futilely to hold its beaches and tourists and to defend it property tax base against the ocean.' The placement of any seawalls on Vero's beach can only accelerate the rate of erosion taking place. In my opinion it is a violation of the rights of all taxpayers to place any man made structures on public beaches that will accelerate or cause excessive erosion. To do so is a violation of the public trust. The beaches are the property of every American citizen not a restrictive few. Over the past thirty years, I have read numerous newspaper reports about how some "particular" method of beach preservation was different from all the previous one tried before. Invariably the elected public representatives kowtow to the vocal and often affluent minority who want their beaches fixed. I ask everyone to go and look at Vero Beach's $3,000,000 million PEP reef (Fran's Folly) and ask yourself the following questions: Can you see any improvement to the beach? Can you see a swimming Hazard waiting to happen? Who will pay for the removal of the concrete structures if they fail to provide the relief they were predicted to provide? What does SOS (Save Our Shores) and other have to say about the PEP reef? It is something for you the taxpayer to consider while the Indian River County Commissioners are pondering what to do. -- 3 pg. 191; The Beaches Are Moving; Kaufman/Plikey; Duke University Press; Fifth paperback printing 1993 18A THE PALM BEACH POST SATURDAY, JANUARY 16, 1999 Get hot about warmin g 'f senators can get their minds off Monica long enough to do some work, they could try to deal with a ar more serious kind of heat Scientists confirmed this week what everyone already knew: Last .year was the warmest on record. NASA said the average global tem- perature was .34 degree above the previous record yearof 1995, whilethe National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said the temperature vas 12 degrees above the average for 'he last 119 years. The Earth has been betting warmer for 500 years, but the trend has accelerated with the rise of 'industries that bum fossil fuels and release so-called "greenhouse gases," notably carbon dioxide. Such gases trap the Earth's heat At the same time, increased log. ging worldwide has reduced the number of trees, which absorb carbon dioxide. One Alaskan glacier has re `tireated 8 miles over the past 16 years, and ground that used to be frozen all year is melting. Montana's Glacier .X2itional Park, which had more than 1 0 glaciers in 1850, now has about 50. ifl of them will disappear within the next 40 years at present trends, ac cording to National Parks magazine. • Those trends, if not corrected, will -result in global temperatures 2 to 6 degrees higher by 2100. That would raise sea levels by 3 feel, putting a lot of Palm Beach County under water. JANUARY 19, 1999 With new reports shmng that temperatures continue to rise, the Senate should ratify the Kyoto treaty. There will be other effects no one can predict Some areas will become drier, others wetter. Either outcome will be traumatic for people and nature. A 1997 conference in Kyoto, Japan, Produced the first modest steps to- ward controlling greenhouse gases As part of that agreement, the United States is to reduce emissions 7 percent below 1990 levels by 2010. Since then, momentum has all but stalled. It took President Clinton 11 months to get around to signing the agreement, and the administration still wants to meet its goals by planting trees in other countries and paying other govern. ments to reduce their emissions. Nevertheless, Kyoto is a begin. ning. The next step is Senate ratifica- tion, which would make the goals binding. Opponents will argue that there isn't enough evidence — which is false — and that developing nations are not doing enough — which is true, but not a good reason for the United States to do nothing. The problem is bad enough without more emissions from gasbags who won't face reality. -77- gook It FACE