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发帖数: 17225 | 1 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.
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In Alabama, a Community on Shifting Sands
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http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/19/science/earth/as-coasts-rebui
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Jeff Haller for The New York Times
Storms have repeatedly torn through Dauphin Island, four miles off the
Alabama coast, costing tens of millions of dollars. More Photos »
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.
At least $80 million, adjusted for inflation, has gone into patching up this
one island since 1979 — more than $60,000 for every permanent resident.
That does not include payments of $72 million to homeowners from the highly
subsidized federal flood insurance program.
Lately, scientists, budget-conscious lawmakers and advocacy groups across
the political spectrum have argued that these subsidies waste money, put
lives at risk and make no sense in an era of changing climate and rising
seas.
Some of them contend that reconstruction money should be tightly coupled
with requirements that coastal communities begin reducing their
vulnerability in the short run and that towns along shorelines facing the
largest risks make plans for withdrawal over the long term.
“The best thing that could possibly come out of Sandy is if the political
establishment was willing to say, ‘Let’s have a conversation about how we
do this differently the next time,’ ” said Dr. Young, a coastal geologist
who directs the Program for the Study of Developed Shorelines at Western
Carolina University. “We need to identify those areas — in advance — that
it no longer makes sense to rebuild.”
A coalition in Washington called SmarterSafer.org, made up of
environmentalists, libertarians and budget watchdogs, contends that the
subsidies have essentially become a destructive, unaffordable entitlement.
“We simply can’t go on subsidizing enormous numbers of people to live in
areas that are prone to huge natural disasters,” said Eli Lehrer, the
president of the conservative R Street Institute, part of the coalition.
This argument might be gaining some traction. Earlier this year, Congress
passed changes to the federal flood insurance program that are supposed to
raise historically low premiums and reduce homeowner incentives for
rebuilding in the most hazardous areas.
Less widely known about than flood insurance are the subsidies from the
Stafford Act, the federal law governing the response to emergencies like
hurricanes, wildfires and tornadoes. It kicks in when the president declares
a federal disaster that exceeds the response capacity of state and local
governments.
Experts say the law is at least as important as the flood program in
motivating reconstruction after storms. In the same way flood insurance
shields families from the financial consequences of rebuilding in risky
areas, the Stafford Act shields local and state governments from the full
implications of their decisions on land use.
Under the law, the federal government committed more than $80 billion to
disaster recovery from 2004 to 2011, according to a report from the
Government Accountability Office. While billions of dollars went to relieve
immediate suffering, including cash payments to families left homeless by
storms, nearly half of the money was spent helping state and local
governments clean and restore damaged areas and rebuild infrastructure.
At times, local governments have tried to use the money to reduce their
vulnerability to future disasters, but they complain that they often run
into bureaucratic roadblocks with the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
For instance, after flooding from Hurricane Irene washed out many culverts
in Vermont last year, many towns built bigger culverts to handle future
floods. But they are still fighting with the agency over reimbursement.
W. Craig Fugate, the agency’s administrator, acknowledged in an interview
that “as a nation, we have not yet figured out” how to use federal
incentives to improve resiliency and discourage excessive risks. |
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