Internet Web Site Documents California Coastal Environments

A new environmental protector of the California coastline has taken his crusade to the Internet by posting high-resolution digital aerial surveillance photos he has recorded of the coastline and the activities occurring thereon. Posted at www.californiacoastline.org , a retired technology mogul and his wife, a licensed helicopter pilot, Ken and Gabrielle Adelman, have undertaken an aerial photography project to detail every inch of California's coastline. Known as the California Coastal Records Project, the Project's Web site has been active for about two weeks. The digital photos detail many coastal land use violations, and the innovative aspect of Ken Adelman's digital information is that he is taking it public. "It's more than taking pictures," according to Adelman, founder of TGV Software and Network Alchemy, which he then sold to Cisco Systems and Nokia in the boom of the 1990s. "It's making them available to the public. The development interests control the development by controlling the information. It's hard to argue with a picture. We're taking the truth to the public."

The Sierra Club's Coastal Director, Mark Massara, has been on the telephone almost every day with the California Coastal Commission since Adelman's Web site was launched regarding obvious coastal regulations violations, and California Coastal Commission members are reportedly now consulting the Web site for detailed views of building projects they are reviewing. Private property owners of beachfront property are fearful that the surveillance photos may start a new round of state regulation micromanagement of private property by the California Coastal Commission. Massara counters that if these coastal property owner nail biters "aren't in violation of the law, they have nothing to worry about."

Both environmentalists and government regulators are hailing Adelman's Website Project as a breakthrough in information technology and land use data. "In 10 years, you will be able to go to the Web as an individual and click on a region, a place, a beach, an island, a forest, a delta, a river, a trailhead, whatever, a city. Then you'll be able to hit a button where you can go to animated form and see the change over time," according to Paul Hawken, a writer of business and ecology books and also a technology entrepreneur.