Posted on 01/07/2006 2:32:07 PM PST by RWR8189
The problem is government and insurance company subsidies for those who choose to built in floodplains and along coasts.
If these properties had to bear the true risk management cost of their location, very few would choose to build there.
In FL, where I presently live, what this means is that the 95% who cannot afford to live on the waterfront provide enormous subsidies to the 5% who do.
I haven't seen or heard anything in the last few years that would indicate whether this "program" actually worked..
I would guess that environmentalists would be touting this as a great success for the natural estuary ecosystem but I have never heard a word about it..
Just Dam.
Just before christmas this Montana Architect sent this solution to 22 coastal states governors : a flood road. Picture 20'x20' steel road panels as a roadway, slide-bolted at the transverse edges, buoyancy chambers below, piano-hinged atop a concrete wall on the landward side, deep set/angled dead man anchors on the sea side. Along comes your hurricane storm surge of 20' high water, or tsunami wave or river flood; and the panels float up naturally as a vertical seawall : a series of doors horizontally hinged. No sand bagging or any other human effort required, nature does all the heavy lifting for you. Then when the waters go down the panels float back down into a roadway again, which is 99.99% of its life-usefulness(w/rubber-like surfacing). I thought of this solution 4+ years ago, no interest...now it's 1/7/6 and again it looks like another 4 years of no interest...and people/property being swept away by floods that could have been stopped by FLOOD ROADS...
Enviros Kill
You gotta love modern leftist writing - it isn't necessary for their assumptions to hang together, even in the same sentence!
1) Stalinism may have been a relic of the twentieth century, but the last time I checked, gasoline powered cars were immensely more popular than the battery powered versions....even here in "green" Seattle.
2) "the delusion that humans are exempt from natures dominion". But, but....how then was Bush responsible for Katrina?
They do! Just ask the Africans who have died of malaria as of late.
Many of the flooded homes in NO were built long before the government ever became involved in flood insurance. The older levees held, but all of the canal breaks were at points reengineered by the Army Corp within the past decade. Surely we had a right to expect the levees paid for by our tax dollars to be soundly built.
Perhaps there should be a larger premium differential than there is for high risk areas, but shouldn't the same apply to other types of risk (mudslides, tornados, fires, etc.)? And shame on the people who lived without insurance inside the floodplain.
I'm not looking for a handout from FEMA or anyone else to recover my losses. But I do hold the engineers accountable and want a fair shake from my insurance co. for the storm (not flood) damage. Their view is that if you had ANY flood damage they are off the hook and they don't have to honor their coverage - even when you had (as we did) storm damage before the levees broke.
If you think the homeowners of NO haven't borne the risk of loss, you are mistaken.
For each dam that you blow, you will have millions of tons of sediment containing who knows what exposed and washing downstream, not to mention thousands of acres of formerly submerged land with nothing growing on it to check erosion. The environmental damage caused by tearing down a dam will be much greater than the damage caused when it was built.
And it is the ONLY power source that can put power on the line almost instantly on demand!!!
Too bad they left the tragic stoppage of the 2/3rds complete Auburn Dam on the American River in 1977!!!
Another monument to the stupidity and absurdity of EnvironMentalists!!!
That's ok. You lie down with those dogs, you're gonna come up with their fleas!!!
My objection is that it winds up using my tax dollars. Its always a lot cheaper to not build dams and build on high ground.
I think I once told you about the DEIS comments I was responding to for a new power plant on the Kona Coast of Hawaii.
They had rolling brown-outs in the area due to lack of power and high load growth of new tourist developments.
I was a consultant work on a new combined cycle combustion turbine project that we could get constructed within 18 months of the permits.
The Sierra Club of Hawaii, objected to solar photovoltaic, they objected to ocean thermal, they objected to ocean wave power, they objected to coal fired plant, they objected to wind turbines, the objected to biomass (bagasse), they objected to geothermal, they objected to nuclear, they objected to diesels, they objected to diesel fueled combined cycle combustion turbines, .......
They said the only viable and acceptable alternative to the 56 MW we were proposing initially, was a conservation program. They then outlined a 20 year conservation program that would shave off about 3 MW of load every year by doing things gradually to various homes and businesses in the area.
The utility would add 56 MW in 18 months, the Sierra Club would add 60 MW after 20 years and only 6 after 2 years. They needed about 20 to 30 MW to stop the brown-outs and the remainder to provide adequate reserves.
It was after seeing that in writing and having to take it seriously and respond in writing that I gave up on the environmentalists as anything but obstructionists and kooks.
Quite correct. IMHO, these attempts to avoid paying claims that are plainly valid constitute insurance fraud, every bit as much as when a policyholder files a fraudulent claim. I wish a few execs would go to jail for it, but it won't happen.
Just throw money in the hole that was New Orleans--keep throwing it in until it's filled up. (There are plenty standing in that hole to catch the money. See if you can get them to hold it for you.)
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.