Posted on 12/23/2019 8:22:17 AM PST by Olog-hai
Patricia Kambach couldn’t bear to watch a crew demolish her longtime neighbor’s home this month, so she went inside her own house in Woodbridge, New Jersey, where she has lived since John F. Kennedy was president.
“I lived here 56 years, and it’s hard,” said Kambach.
Hard but not rare. The state has bought and torn down 145 homes since 2013 in Woodbridge, with eight homes demolished this month alone. Dozens more are slated to be torn down in the near future.
It’s all part of an effort to get ahead of climate change. Some neighborhoods in this town of over 100,000 residents just off the bustling New Jersey Turnpike are projected to be partly or fully underwater in coming decades as global sea levels rise. […]
The goal of the state buyout program, Blue Acres, is twofold: To remove people and property from the danger of future floods, and to use the vacant land left behind as a buffer or sponge to help absorb the water from those floods. …
(Excerpt) Read more at apnews.com ...
Trump controls the fate of the world?!?!
These are houses built in a flood zone, that has flooded dozens of times over the last century.
New construction and roads increase flooding. There has been a lot of building in my lifetime.
Flood control measures are very expensive, have unanticipated effects, and can be environmentally objectionable.
It makes a lot of sense to get rid of the worst repeatedly hit houses. Build on flood plains and sand islands, what do you expect?
There are over 3,300,000 homes in New Jersey, so this is a blip on a blip.
In places like Woodbridge, the Blue Acres program has thrown a lifeline to people who might have trouble selling their homes otherwise.
This is tax-payer funded buy-outs for people who bought cheap homes in flood zones and then complain that the state won’t help them when the flood zone floods.
“For some reason, I think the homes there probably stopped a lot of the water coming on our side.”
Some people don’t understand how water works. If flood water is coming, a house or a tree across the street will not stop it.
None of the buyouts has happened along the ocean… Maslo, the Rutgers biologist, has a broader perspective on the transformation of a neighborhood. “We’ve labeled this as a coastal retreat,” she said.
We labeled this a “coastal retreat” because we are knowingly lying to make the story fit the narrative of rising oceans. In actuality, the state is buying up houses that are not on the coast and never should have been built in known flood zones that have been flooding since rain was invented.
I am sll for buy out of land historically and consistently flooded. It should be less expensive to taxpayers than the demands for government assistance recovering from and rebuiling after the flooding in such places.
I am also not for human rebuiling of “shoreline” damaged by major stores. I am for the shoreline being held to what nature develops it to be and that includes the storms that nature brings. Shoreline areas should be visited and “the public” can make them places to visit.
But I think if someone wants to have a house sit on the shoreline, they should be told they are on their own.
I note that historically along the Atlantic coast few Native American settlements sat on the Atlantic shoreline. They were nearly always inland, behind the wet lands and land and trees that protecyed their villages from the worst of the storms that moved up the Atlantic coast. It may have taken them centuries to develop that safer mode of settlement. Why should it take us moderns any time at all.
Who’s coming to raze the Malibu Colony? I’ll just wait here drumming my fingers for the answer.
Port Reading and Sewaren are in Woodbridge Township, but neither are part of Woodbridge village.
Bump
The old people kept their houses. The smart people grabbed the cash. The thick headed raised their house level 25 to 30 ft. Had less to do with global warming and more to do with houses being build alongside a river with wide flood plains.
Disheveled little ranches go for half a million in this township. It’s one of the most densely populated counties in s highly populated state and property is at a premium.
No way this stays vacant.
Fixed for accuracy.
This is NJ after all.
Total crap
My folks live in Cape May New Jersey
and I regularly ride up and down the coast of town such as : Wildwood Ocean City , Margate Ventnor Stoneharbor Avalon - and I can tell you for a fact an absolute fact that right there on that beach they are building five to $10 million mansions every day of the week every day of the year
There is not a single home anywhere on that entire new jersey coast line that is worth less than $1 million
Doubt me ? Go see for yourself
Hereabouts some of our citizens have taken to bicycling to work from fairly long distances. One of them told me when I asked, no he didn’t lose his license, he was trying to keep as much of his paycheck as possible thus not putting gas in his truck to come to work. I appreciate that. I drive but I don’t send out for pizza at lunchtime and bring my own. Same reason.
No, they are just doing the right thing for the wrong reasons, but I'm OK with that.
They are buying and moving people out of low areas that are prone to natural disaster flooding.
This is a much better approach than gummint covered insurance, where, every 5-10 years, mother nature comes through, and decimates everything, and we the people, pay to rebuild, right where the same cycle will re-occur in another short period of time.
Go down the Florida coast, {I've been doing it for the last 50 years} and look at the gummint covered insurance plans {because regular insurance companies will not buy into a losing deal} that cover these coastal homes that WILL BE DESTROYED.
Look at Houston, it is destined to be under water, but every 20 years we will bail it out.
I applaud the idiot NJ fools, not because they are smart, but because they are so stupid, they will save us money.
Ok. I don’t remember that (we had our own issues with Sandy in our condo at the Jersey Shore).
My first thought.
The story goes that an evangelist predicted Christ would come to earth soon and that he would need a fine house to stay in. The congregation chipped in, built a beautiful home - and waited. When Christ didn't show up on the prophesied date, the evangelist said the house shouldn't go to waste and moved in, but would move out when The Day came.
I can just see in a couple of years: "Well, Climate Change now seems to be YEARS off, so let's sell the land to be improved." - and pocket some nice change from the developers.
These houses being bought out in Woodbridge Twp, New Jersey are 10 - 15 feet above sea level. They are in flood zones, no doubt, but they are not going to be flooded by rising sea levels.
They are subject to flooding along the Rahway River and various creeks flowing into the Rahway. They are miles from the the sea or the Arthur Kill.
The program is buying up properties in a flood zone. That may be good policy, but it has nothing at all to do with sea level rise.
People are tearing down shacks and building mansions all over the seashore.
Then, when the mansion floods and there is a tremendous financial loss, people will compare the value of the losses and say that it is the result of more severe flooding.
No, it’s just because people are building more valuable things at the beach.
All subsidized by you and me, who pay for their cut-rate insurance. It should be pretty much impossible to insure a million dollar home on a barrier island. The only thing that makes it economically viable to build is that discounted insurance will pay off the all-but-inevitable loss.
We had a government buyout of homes in an area that historically flooded inland (in Wayne NJ); I believe the logic was that the government should have never allowed the homes to originally be built. The worst part is they sell homes near the buyout area without full disclosure that the nearby areas suffer the same fate (some across town lines in another municipality); we almost got snookered but realized there were no storm drains on the street and the heating and water heater devices were located on the first floor (instead of the basement).
I agree the areas should be left as public recreation areas and if people want to own homes there, they are on their own. I’ve seen great new houses at the Outer Banks, but they were all built atop huge mounds (the driveways were ridiculously steep); I assume during flooding each house is on a secure island with the streets completely underwater.
Some of the worst-impacted areas with Hurricane Sandy weren’t even at the shore; places like Hoboken along the Hudson River had become so expensive that homeowners made small fortunes illegally finishing and renting out their basements - and they weren’t covered by flood insurance policies. Lots of sad, wet yuppies...
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