Agency Cites Growing Danger of Erosion Along U.S.
Coasts
By CORNELIA DEAN
June 28, 2000
In a report to Congress, the Federal
Emergency Management Agency said yesterday that a quarter
or more of houses within 500 feet of the United States
coast may be lost to erosion in the next 60 years, putting
intolerable strain on the federal Flood Insurance Program.
The report called for a major new effort
to map coastal erosion, identify hazard areas and raise
premiums in the insurance program, perhaps even doubling
them, to take erosion risk into account. And it suggested
that the agency consider adopting setback requirements to
limit building at the edge of the sea.
Though the report covers all ocean and
Great Lakes coasts, it said the erosion problem was
particularly severe on the Atlantic, where beaches retreat
on average two to three feet a year, and the Gulf Coast,
where the overall annual erosion rate is six feet a year.
More than 1,500 coastal structures now
fall to erosion annually, James Lee Witt, director of the
emergency management agency, said in an interview
yesterday, adding that the figure could rise to as many as
10,000 in 10 years. Almost 350,000 houses are within 500
feet of the coastline, according to the report. Though
most are not covered by the federal program, "we have
a lot more structures out there at risk than we
anticipated," Mr. Witt said.
He said the situation would get worse if
sea level continued to rise and Americans continued to
migrate toward coastal regions.
"You have on average 3,600 people
relocating to these regions per day," he said.
"You're looking at an awful lot of risk."
Stephen P. Leatherman, a coastal
geologist at Florida International University, where he
heads the International Hurricane Center, led the team of
researchers who produced the report.
"A lot people have been startled by
the findings," Mr. Leatherman said. "What we see
is a lot of properties that have been insured by FEMA that
were built when there was a wide beach and a big sand
dune. Those have either been diminished or in some places
are completely gone."
Mr. Witt said erosion hazard maps and
better building codes would reduce property damage, but he
also praised setback requirements as "a first step
and a good step."
Advocates for coastal property owners
called the report a thinly disguised effort to use federal
insurance regulations to force people off the beach.
"There is a small group of
self-proclaimed experts who are convinced that no one
should live anywhere near the coast," the American
Coastal Coalition, an advocacy group for coastal
communities, said in a statement. "Unfortunately the
report cloaks bad policy recommendations in the garments
of scientific respectability."
Howard Marlowe, the coalition's
president, said in an interview that it was important for
coastal residents, or prospective coastal residents, to
understand the hazards. But Mr. Marlowe said the federal
government should not use its insurance program to
discourage people who want to build at the coast.
As for setback requirements, he said it
was crucial for decisions to be made locally. "We
don't want to put the federal government into the business
of making zoning ordinances," he said.
Michael Buckley, who heads FEMA's
mapping effort, said the agency would seek Congressional
approval of money to cover erosion mapping and whatever
authorization was needed for changes in insurance rates. A
similar effort, including setback requirements, foundered
a decade ago amid opposition from representatives of
coastal areas.
The agency administers the Flood
Insurance Program, which since its establishment in 1968
has offered coverage to homeowners in coastal areas who
might otherwise have been unable to obtain it. Towns
seeking to make the insurance available to residents must
enact FEMA-approved building codes that, among other
things, call for structures to be elevated in zones where
flood waters would spread in major storms. Structures
built in compliance with FEMA codes have consistently
survived with less damage in coastal storms.
Critics assert that the program, by
offering coverage that private insurance companies are
increasingly unwilling to provide, inadvertently
encourages unwise development of the coast.
In any event, in establishing its zones
and insurance rates, the program did not take erosion into
account. The report issued yesterday says that was a
mistake.
"Within the first few hundred feet
bordering the nation's coast, property owners face as
large a risk of damage from erosion as they do from
flooding," it says. Unless rates are altered to
reflect that risk, it says, "erosion losses will be
subsidized by policyholders in noneroding areas or general
taxpayers."
To fully reflect this risk, the report
says, insurance rates in high-risk areas would be, on
average, twice as high as they are now -- typically $700
to $2,000 per $100,000 worth of coverage. Coverage is
capped at $250,000 for a house and $100,000 for its
contents.
The report, produced by the H. John
Heinz III Center for Science Economics and Environment
under contract with FEMA, is available at
www.heinzcenter.org.
It estimates that it would cost
approximately $5 million per year to identify erosion
hazard areas, map them, maintain the maps and make the
information available to potential buyers or local
officials. But the investment would save money in the long
run, it says, because "if all currently empty lots in
areas most susceptible to erosion are built on, damage
from erosion would rise by roughly $100 million per year
for the value of the structures alone."
The report notes that several methods,
notably beach nourishment and so-called hard structures
like groins, revetments or sea walls can protect
structures on the beach. But hard structures can, as the
report put it, "have negative impacts on the physical
and aesthetic characteristics of beaches." And
replacing sand lost from eroding beaches costs an average
of $300,000 per year per mile of coast, the report said.
"Shoreline protection measures can
augment, but are not substitutes for, other options,"
it says.
Related Links:
BEACHES
OR BEDROOMS? - Lawsuits, possible loss of
renourishment funds put pressure on N.C.'s seawall
ban. WILMINGTON, N.C. -- It's called
Newjerseyization, and it's spreading. The label was
coined by coastal geologists to describe what happened
to the beaches in the Garden State. They washed away in
front of walls built years ago to protect beachfront
property. In Virginia, Sandbridge no longer has a beach
even at low tide. Bulkheads built by residents for more
than $38,000 each have fallen into the water at least
twice since 1988...
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