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Wed 24 Oct, 2007 08:45 am
Quote:BAY ST. LOUIS, MISS. -- This coastal resort town is on the front line of a project to gauge support for a mass federal buyout of 17,000 homes near Mississippi's Katrina-ravaged shore. This could become the nation's most significant attempt to radically reconfigure coastal communities -- converting huge swaths of flood-prone residential lots to public wetlands.
Until now, the Army Corps of Engineers has reserved buyouts for areas prone to river flooding. Some people, such as Susan I. Rees, the director of the corps project, believe the current assessment is the beginning of a serious national debate on whether Americans should retreat from the coasts. The costs and risks of future flooding are simply too great, they say -- especially if, as many believe, sea levels are rising and hurricanes are starting to get stronger.
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I agree with the lady who wonders why they're hearing about this now after spending two years of hard work and tons of money on rebuilding after Katrina.
There's no need for the government to step in. Pretty soon coastal property owners will be unable to obtain any homeowner's insurance, which will make it impossible for them to obtain mortgages or home loans, which will effectively make it impossible for them to stay there.
I had thought that there had been a Reagan-era bill which provided government loan guarantees and home owner's insurance subsidies for owners of coastal properties. Was i dreaming? Has it expired? Mayhap i'll do some research. (Then again, maybe not.)
This page at Kentucky-dot-gov (?) includes a history of the National Flood Insurance Program. Apparently, if the information provided on that page is correct and complete, the Reagan administration's initiative was to make the NFIP self-supporting, without relying upon tax revenues. The article states that the National Flood Insurance Act was passed in 1968.
If my laziness remains in abeyance, i'll see if i can find some more.
Further research shows that i had that Reagan-era initiative completely wrong. The 1982 Coastal Barriers Resource Act excluded several various categories of coastal features (barrier islands, bars, spits, and adjacent estuaries and wetlands) from federal assistance programs, specifically naming the National Flood Insurance Program.
My reading indicates that there have been several acts since 1982 which have removed certain areas from the CBRS (coastal barrier resources system), making them eligible for Federal subsidy, including the NFIP.
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