I’m telling you that if it makes economic sense to have structures there, then the businesses and homes in that location should be able to pay for their own insurance. If it doesn’t, then the government should not pay to rebuild everything in an area that will be destroyed again.
I’d also note that “areas now at risk due to new climate change flooding or long-term unexpected effects of corps of engineers projects” is a different problem then “areas that are known flood risks since the dawn of time that dumbasses keep building on.”
The actual policy change wouldn’t be to stiff them, it’d probably be a one-time payout to get them off the land.
Very true, and areas that make sense to rebuild will continue to change as the climate does.
So a once a century or more flood = tough shit?
Where the heck do you live that has no natural disasters?
Edit:
During the Iowa flood of 2008, the Cedar River reached a record high of 31.12 feet (9.49 m) on June 13, 2008, the previous record was 20 feet (6.1 m) surpassing the 500-year flood plain.
Nowhere. I pay for insurance. Why is this hard to understand? Insurance companies will be happy to cover an area that truly is only in danger once every hundred years.
So we shouldn’t pay anything for Sandy then. Cause they could’ve gotten insurance. New Orleans? Fuck em, insurance. If the insurance company can’t afford to pay out because of crazy damage? Fuck em, insurance insurance.
And when you’re talking about flood insurance its expensive shit. So bad that the government had to make it.
You’re not being rational about this. Why should we as a society pay to rebuild in high risk areas guaranteed to be obliterated again in another ten years or so? We shouldn’t. If that means some areas are abandonned, good, they should be. No subsidy for rebuilding makes sense in those regions–it just means continuing costs. Make a one time “get out” payment instead. Anyone who remains does so at their own risk, and cost.
There are areas, mainly coastal ones that I can think of, that should have never been built on and when the properties there are destroyed those areas should be closed to development.
What magical areas are getting destroyed every ten years that we’re paying for?
I mean if you want to propose abandoning the entire state of Florida, most of South Carolina and basically all coastal areas from Texas to New York City, then go for it. I think its in the best interest of the nation to not say “fuck em” and throw away the largest, most productive cities in the world. Theres not a lot of ports that are immune to natural disasters. You either have earthquakes or hurricanes to worry about.
And since nearly every town/city is built along a river, thats almost akin to saying fuck civilization.
Beyond Florida/Carolinas theres not many areas that get with much frequency, though Texas and the Gulf Coast take hits fairly often. If you’re willing to throw away most of the South I guess it could work.
This is true to an extent, but in those cases you need to talk to the lobbyists that get science thrown out so they can rebuild on that valuable beachfront property.
ShivaX, please read the linked article in the OP. I’ll quote a bit of it here for you:
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.”
That was my point about lobbyists. They go full on denial and allow these places to get rebuilt. The sentence: “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.”
That brings out the climate denials and the like.
I’m not opposed to stupid places not getting rebuilt by any means, but the conversation took a VERY fast turn into flood plains and the like. If you think we should scrap New Orleans and Cedar Rapids I think you’re insane. If you think people shouldn’t be allowed to build on beaches in hurricane prone areas, I’m with you.
I lived in New Orleans for a while in the late '80’s, and even then the local press was full of statements from climatologists and geologists saying that the lowest-lying areas should be abandonned before a large hurricane flooded them into oblivion–which is precisely what happened. So yeah, I think we should scrap parts of New Orleans permanently. Same for barrier island communities, some flood plain communities, vulnerable peninsulas like the Rockaways, and so on. Call me insane if you want, but I think taking the long-term view is never insane while rebuilding in areas bound to be destroyed again soon most definitely is.
Outlying areas seem reasonable, but the gist of others earlier in the thread was more along the lines of “fuck em, we don’t need em” in regards to any place thats ever been flooded or the like. I don’t think paying a little every few decades to keep alive one of the world’s busiest ports is a bad idea. Saving some community of fuckwits on Dauphin Island or whatever is a different story. Its not worth the investment to rebuild what is just pointless residential areas that never should’ve been built on.
Well, with regard to New Orleans, I’m talking about a lot more than outlying areas. If you look at a topo map of the city, some parts (like the French Quarter) are much higher than others and comparatively easy to keep dry. Others, like the now infamous Ninth Ward, are far lower. In my opinion, and that of many scientists who’ve studied the area, these regions should be abandonned completely and converted into parks, wildlife refuges, or whatever. Doing so would cut the population of pre-Katrina New Orleans by at least a third, but those areas still fall into the “residential areas that never should have been built on” category and I don’t think they should be reinhabited. Instead of paying to rebuild multiple times, pay to leave once and then condemn the whole area.
One of the problems with this discussion is that the two sides are talking about very different things.
As Dave noted above, the “subsidies” cited in the article are for the infrastructure (roads, bridges, some utilities) that are destroyed in a storm. The article also calls the National Flood Insurance Program a “subsidy”, but that’s not strictly correct. The NFIP is a federally-administered (partnered with commercial companies) insurance plan where the government agrees to cover the insured in the case of floods if the private companies do not have the funds on-hand (as in the case of a big disaster). But the NFIP is self-supporting over the long term – it occasionally borrows from the Treasury in “big” years (e.g., Katrina-type years), and it pays those funds back with interest in the “off” years.
I’d also point out that the flood insurance cited in the article is distinct from actual “hurricane insurance”, which most people in these areas are required to get if they want to take out a mortgage. The Federal government is not paying to rebuild these people’s homes: that comes from private insurance.
Doesn’t lack of NFIP support make you uninsurable in “risk” areas?
Maybe. And in that case it would sort of be a subsidy… but my light Googling doesn’t seem to indicate that. Rather, the government provides a “backstop” for massive disasters where an unsupported commercial firm would be unable to meet all the claims at once.
I could be wrong though - I’m not claiming any first-hand knowledge.
Our lack of desire to mitigate global warming comes at a price. I decided 20 years ago to never buy a property in a flood-plain, on the coast or less than 200m above sea-level, because i could see people (well, large powerful corporations) concerned with their own profits misleading people over global warming and it’s effects.
It sure sucks to be someone stuck in a house they can neither sell nor insure due to yearly flooding now though (there are parts of the uk where this happens now), and probably all these things are going to get worse, the lack of will to be truthful about what we have caused is still a huge problem.
So no i don’t think we should stop helping out folks caught out in the scam, as it is all our fault as well. Chickens come home to roost etc.
You actually can’t get flood insurance unless you are in “the flood plain” whatever that means to insurance companies. Houses in some sections of my neighborhood couldn’t get flood insurance even though they have gotten water in the basement twice in the last ten years.