Should the federal government encourage and even pay for development in high risk hurricane prone areas? Interesting article that links programs and attitudes that influence and subsidize people to move to such areas with the noticeable growth trend of putting more and more people into hurricane prone areas.
The [North Carolina] state government recently bought 600 acres of farmland on the outskirts of Southport with the intention of building one of the largest seaports on the East Coast. The state is predicting that the port will create thousands of jobs and be an enormous economic boon to the Carolina coast. Meanwhile, meteorologists warn that the area -- as well as the rest of the southern half of the Eastern Seaboard and the Gulf Coast -- faces a growing risk of being hit by a storm packing the wallop of Katrina. Thus, Southport stands at the dangerous intersection of two dramatic trends: One is the government-subsidized growth of the nation's hurricane-zone population. The other is the increased ferocity of the average hurricane season -- an upswing in the frequency and intensity of named storms that contrasts markedly with the comparatively quiet hurricane seasons typical of the quarter-century that ended in 1995.
As Katrina demonstrated, however, when a monster storm slams ashore, the federal government is on the hook for rescue and repair expenses. The article points out that "the more developed the spot where a powerful storm makes landfall, the more costly the cleanup."
Given the fact that the federal government increasingly assumes the financial risks of locating on the coast including: highway expansion for coastal development, highway repair after a storm, subsidized loans from the EPA to help construct water and sewer lines to spur growth in coastal zones, Homeland Security grants to shore up emergency communications systems and evacuation routes, not to mention flood insurance....
Read the entire article. The Chairman of the North Carolina Coastal Resources Commission calls federal flood insurance the "icing on the cake." Indeed.
