Changes To Fed Flood Insurance Would Help Taxpayers Cover Multimillion $ CT Mansions

OLD SAYBROOK, Conn. — On an exclusive Connecticut peninsula, where signs warn outsiders to stay off private roads, eight multimillion-dollar homes with sprawling yards along the Long Island Sound are poised to become eligible for taxpayer-funded disaster aid. That’s despite the fact that the Fenwick neighborhood of Old Saybrook is in a potentially perilous position, hovering where the Connecticut River meets the sound. A 1938 hurricane washed many Fenwick homes out to sea, including that of Katharine Hepburn’s family.

The eight homes, a short distance from the rebuilt Hepburn house where the actress died in 2003, currently lie in a coastal protection zone that bans homeowners from receiving federal funds to fix storm damage. The goal is to create a disincentive for new development in areas vulnerable to storms. Half the homes were built after the zone was created nearly four decades ago.

But a proposed massive overhaul of the protection system to correct mapping mistakes and other errors would lift the prohibition on aid for the Fenwick homes and more than 900 other structures along the East Coast from New Hampshire to Virginia. That would allow the owners to buy lower-cost flood insurance backed by the federal government and potentially benefit from millions of dollars in other federal aid to fix infrastructure including roads and bridges.

The proposed changes, expected to go before Congress for approval next year, are drawing criticism from watchdog groups that say making so many more properties eligible for federal aid would stress already strained disaster relief programs and is a step in the wrong direction at a time when scientists expect stronger and more frequent storms because of climate change. “I’m concerned about federal subsidies going to people who, quite frankly, don’t need it,” said Steve Ellis, vice president of Taxpayers for Common Sense, a Washington, D.C.-based group that describes itself as a nonpartisan government spending watchdog. “The idea was you can develop in these areas but don’t expect any support from the federal government. You want to build, it’s on your dime.”

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https://www.waltonsun.com/news/20190721/plan-would-make-coastal-mansions-eligible-for-disaster-aid