= NOTABLE NOTABLE NOTABLE ==
Ovomit & Big Mike special privileges on their Hawaiian ocean front home??? Exempt by his own "Obama Granted Exemptions From Hawaii's Environmental Laws" Laws for thee, but not for me…
Oceanfront property tied to Obama granted exemption from Hawaii’s environmental laws
Officials in Honolulu have granted the developers of a luxury, oceanfront estate tied to Barack Obama a major exemption from environmental laws designed to protect Hawaii’s beaches.
The shoreline permit, issued by Honolulu’s Department of Planning and Permitting on Monday, clears the way for the controversial multimillion dollar renovation of a century-old seawall in the heavily Native Hawaiian community of Waimanalo.
Under state and county laws, such projects are typically banned. Scientists and environmental experts say seawalls are the primary cause of beach loss throughout the state, and officials expect older ones to fall into obsolescence.
But the property owners, including Marty Nesbitt, chair of the Obama Foundation, argued they needed an exemption to protect the sprawling compound they are building in eastern Oahu. State officials and community members say the former president, who was born and raised in Hawaii, is expected to be among the property’s future occupants. Representatives for Nesbitt and Obama did not return requests seeking comment for this story.
https://www.staradvertiser.com/2020/08/15/hawaii-news/obama-and-the-beach-house-loopholes/
In Hawaii, beaches are a public trust, and the state is constitutionally obligated to preserve and protect them. But across the islands, officials have routinely favored landowners over shorelines, granting exemptions from environmental laws as the state loses its beaches.
Intended to protect homeowners’ existing properties, easements have also helped fuel building along portions of Hawaii’s most treasured coastlines, such as Lanikai on Oahu and west side beaches on Maui. Scores of property owners have renovated homes and condos on the coast while investors have redeveloped waterfront lots into luxury estates. Meanwhile, the seawalls protecting these properties have diminished the shorelines. With nowhere to go, beaches effectively drown as sea levels rise against the walls and waves claw away the sand fronting them, moving it out to sea.
“THEY REQUEST IT, THEY GET IT”
The Nesbitt property has a storied history.
The lot, along with other prime land along the Waimanalo coastline, was part of a 200,000-acre land trust that Congress reserved exclusively for Native Hawaiians in 1920, according to the state’s Department of Hawaiian Home Lands, the agency that oversees the trust. However, the land was sold to private parties. The state later resolved claims to those parcels and thousands of other acres as part of a $600 million settlement.
In 1930, Julia Grossman Wall, the daughter of a prominent Chicago businessman, developed the property into an elegant European-style estate equipped with a spacious main house, servants’ quarters, boathouse and bathing pavilion.
The property played host to parties for Hawaii’s elite and in later decades television and film shoots, including the popular TV show “Magnum P.I.,” which began airing in the 1980s. A bronzed Tom Selleck can be seen strolling along the sandy beach fronting the property, often with a bikini-clad co-star, though what was left of the beach is now largely gone.
https://www.staradvertiser.com/2020/11/18/hawaii-news/oceanfront-property-tied-to-obama-granted-exemption-from-hawaiis-environmental-laws/