Posted on 11/19/2012 9:25:04 AM PST by Theoria
DAUPHIN ISLAND, Ala. — Even in the off season, the pastel beach houses lining a skinny strip of sand here are a testament to the good life.
They are also a monument to the generosity of the federal government.
The western end of this Gulf Coast island has proved to be one of the most hazardous places in the country for waterfront property. Since 1979, nearly a dozen hurricanes and large storms have rolled in and knocked down houses, chewed up sewers and water pipes and hurled sand onto the roads.
Yet time and again, checks from Washington have allowed the town to put itself back together.
Across the nation, tens of billions of tax dollars have been spent on subsidizing coastal reconstruction in the aftermath of storms, usually with little consideration of whether it actually makes sense to keep rebuilding in disaster-prone areas. If history is any guide, a large fraction of the federal money allotted to New York, New Jersey and other states recovering from Hurricane Sandy — an amount that could exceed $30 billion — will be used the same way.
Tax money will go toward putting things back as they were, essentially duplicating the vulnerability that existed before the hurricane.
“We’re Americans, damn it,” said Robert S. Young, a North Carolina geologist who has studied the way communities like Dauphin Island respond to storms. “Retreat is a dirty word.”
This island community of roughly 1,300 year-round residents has become a symbol of that reflexive policy.
Like many other beachfront towns, Dauphin Island has benefited from the Stafford Act, a federal law that taps the United States Treasury for 75 percent or more of the cost of fixing storm-damaged infrastructure, like roads and utilities.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
(1) Coasts are not just areas for recreation, but they are essential for commerce.
(2) Coastal areas generate enormous tax revenues, in the form of property taxes, seaborne commerce and tourism.
(3) Only a moron would argue that US coasts should be devoid of infrastructure and that such infrastructure should never be rebuilt - from a national security standpoint alone, this is foolish.
(4) Areas of the US that are far from the coast experience tornados, wildfires, earthquakes, avalanches, blizzards, storms and flooding - yet one rarely hears complaints about internal regions receiving federal aid to rebuild their infrastructure.
If it gets expensive to live on the coast then people who can afford to rebuild their properties and infrastructure will pay for it.
Someone living in a area not prone to natural hazards and such should not be subsidizing someone living in a flood zone or natural hazard area.
Wait till New York City has an earthquake. The NYT will be screaming to be rebuilt.
Brilliant answer. Here's a thought: we are broke because we are spending trillions on Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid. That's the vast bulk of the federal budget. In other words, most of the tax revenue is spent on programs that are wasteful and produce nothing that lasts.
Infrastructure spending actually drives revenue, by making it easier for people to conduct and grow businesses.
If it gets expensive to live on the coast then people who can afford to rebuild their properties and infrastructure will pay for it.
People will rebuild their properties. The issue here is infrastructure.
Someone living in a area not prone to natural hazards and such should not be subsidizing someone living in a flood zone or natural hazard area.
Everyone living in the US is living in a natural hazard area.
The NY/NJ coast gets a storm of this magnitude maybe once a century.
There are areas of the Midwest and South that get river flooding and tornadoes every few years.
Which community in America is immune from the elements? And how come I've never heard of it, since it must be a famous and desirable location?
So... I guess we should not rebuild NYC after Sandy?
This article is a slap in the face of Staten Island, isn’t it?
Good point. In every other earthquake, the locals usually refuse all aid and assistance and quietly move away, never daring to rebuild.
But those selfish New Yorkers will probably ignore the natural human impulse to just give up, abandon one's home, and slink away.
Why can't they accept the nobility that comes with being a coward and a quitter?
Hey, it's their own fault for being Americans and foolishly deciding to live in an area of . . . America.
Here in the Outer Banks of NC, if dunes are breached and the house is washed into the sea or can no longer be occupied, the property owner cannot rebuild. You see this from Kitty Hawk to Hatteras.
New Orleans is mostly at below sea-level altitude.
New Orleans is next to the sea.
Does that make sense?
Probably 99% of the homes on the west end of Dauphin Island where the most storm damage & erosion occurs are vacation homes. Many are for rental income. There are very few permanent residents on the west end, & for good reason - your property can easily wash away, every year!
We need to stop wasting money replacing infrastructure & rebuilding sand beaches that wash away, storm or no storm. We should buy up properties that file multiple flood damage claims, turning the land to public use and/or wetlands.
I would add one more to your list. As each storm eats away at the existing coastline, the danger zone encroaches further inland, eating up commerce & infrastructure in it’s path.
I do think that beach re-nourishment should be a priority, as well as replacing damaged infrastructure, for this reason. (It is foolhardy, imho, to passive-aggressively refuse to rebuild TX 87 from Sabine Pass to High Island & will place SE Texas in a similar situation to Louisiana, eventually.)
Individuals & businesses along the coasts should be protected by private insurance, though, & not augmented by public funds- with the possible exception of transporting people & their pets out of harm’s way, if they need it.
Living on the coast has it’s risks & people knew that when they built/ bought there. (I say this as someone who has come >< this close to buying a home at Crystal Beach & has a dear friend- who agrees, btw, & who lost literally everything in Ike. They rebuilt. We opted inland.)
Never gamble more than you can afford to lose.
If they had their way, everyone in the country would be crammed into 800 square feet apartments in big cities.
It makes sense to repair the small portions of NYC that are very infrequently devastated by natural disasters of this magnitude. Rebuilding New Orleans which is below sea level and prone to flooding every year...don’t think so.
Abandoning cities is the least inventive form of engineering.
If NYC picks up the tab, we wouldn’t need to discuss it
Agreed.
In addition:
NY receives $0.81 from DC for every $1.00 paid in taxes.
Texas fares even worse.
AL receives $1.66 from DC for every $1.00 paid in taxes.
source:http://visualeconomics.creditloan.com/united-states-federal-tax-dollars/
Correction Texas does much, much better.
How rich bastards like me rip off taxpayers for millions of dollars
http://reason.com/archives/2004/03/01/confessions-of-a-welfare-queen
If the ocean took my house, Uncle Sam would pay to replace it under the National Flood Insurance Program. Since private insurers weren’t dumb enough to sell cheap insurance to people who built on the edges of oceans or rivers, Congress decided the government should step in and do it. So if the ocean ate what I built, I could rebuild and rebuild again and again -- there was no limit to the number of claims on the same property in the same location -- up to a maximum of $250,000 per house per flood. And you taxpayers would pay for it.
I have to wonder if/how they count military bases. There is a big difference between a state receiving a dollar in welfare payment and another state receiving a dollar for the electricity utilized by a military base.
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