house meeting #2

We met with the guy from the Army Corp this morning. The meeting went.... well, I think. We were there for about 1 1/2 hours, and the first hour or so was all negative. He's holding all the cards, we have to prove why we need to build on this lot, he doesn't have to say yes, we can't do it for reasons 1 2 3 and 4, blah blah, negative negative, he hates Florida. Didn't want to hear a thing we had to say. I was feeling very discouraged and was totally ready to just give it up. Then in the last 20-30 minutes he slowly starts to turn around. He goes through all these different types of information we would need to give to him, all these things we need to do and document, and then maybe he can give us a permit. Then he talks to our consultant about how much of an area will be impacted, we talk about some of the things we're doing to minimize how much will be impacted, and all of a sudden he says "well we could do a type x permit then." Our consultant just nodded and said "that's what we initially applied for." I guess it just took some time and a bunch of listening to himself talk for this guy to realize we weren't terrible people. Exactly what our consultant said he would do. He also said that once we do have all the things together that he needs, we can have a permit in as little as 3-4 weeks, provided everything is there and he can legally give us one. So we're tentatively optimistic. It was just very strange, we spend over an hour hearing how it can never be done, all doom and gloom, and then suddenly maybe we can do it after all.

Anyway, this would be the view as you come down the driveway, if we are in fact able to build this house:


Please note all the water. This is why there is such concern. However, this is only one little corner of the house site. Well, we're surrounded by swamp on three sides, but where the house will actually sit looks like this:


Some of it is technically wetlands, but not "nice" wetlands. We're hoping that between conserving all the surrounding swamp, and doing some things to minimize the amount of land we'd have to fill, they'll let us build this damn house. That would be nice. Cause driving 2-2.5+ hours a day sucks. And I want to have a baby. Have I mentioned that?