United CEO Caught Stealing Sand
Jennifer Billock April 03, 2018
Once again, United is at the center of a controversy – but not because of the airline itself this time; rather it’s thanks to the CEO, Oscar Munoz, who appears to be stealing sand from a public beach in hurricane-ravaged Florida.
Hurricanes Matthew and Irma almost completely destroyed dunes along the Ponte Vedra Boulevard beach in Florida. To restore the protective dunes in front of their beach homes, local residents are paying more than $25,000 each. Well, except for United CEO Oscar Munoz and a few of his wealthy neighbors, who seem to have combined forces to use heavy machinery to excavate sand right from the devastated beach and recreate their dunes themselves.
An anonymous neighbor shared a video with News4Jax of the construction equipment taking sand from the public beach and depositing it in front of Munoz’s house and that of his neighbors, who include the CEO of Web.com and the managing director of UBS Financial.
“We’re outraged about this,” another neighbor, Bill Hudson, told News4Jax. “It’s a poor reflection on the whole community that someone would be that presumptuous to virtually steal something that belongs to the public and use it for personal gain.”
According to the Department of Environmental Protection, the practice is called beach scraping, but no one was allowed or authorized to do it when the incident occurred. There is now an investigation underway.
“These people in these houses obviously have the financial wherewithal to fight the DEP,” Hudson told News4Jax. “It will be interesting to see if the DEP has the strength of character to stand up for the public.”
[Photo: Shutterstock]
Not how it works. Just like if a river changes course one isn't entitled to take other land to make up. Not sure in FL, but in a lot of state the beach is considered public land. In some cases access to the beach is required, even if it means going through private land. Basically they knew what they were doing and thought no one would call them out.
Sounds to me like he was simply taking back the sand that had been removed from his property by the hurricanes. What if the hurricane had blown his lawnmower onto the beach? Could he retrieve it, or would that now become "public" property?
Maybe Smeisk can pay Oscar's fine on this Sand-gate. As I recall Oscar paid $5M for the CFO flight to go away.
Okay, I'll be first to say he can take that sand and pound it....