Hole After Hole Punched In Law Discouraging Development In Hurricane Areas

UPPER CAPTIVA, Fla. - "Twenty-two years ago, Congress passed a law to discourage building in places like this: a barely populated, palm-covered coastal paradise that had no electricity or phones and was accessible only by sea or air. Upper Captiva is still accessible only by sea or air, but little else remains the same. Houses, many of them palatial structures with private docks, line the white-sand beaches and the narrow paths that cut through the lush terrain. Phone service and power have arrived, along with a sprawling resort and cafes catering to the island's well-heeled visitors.

And the 1982 law no longer applies here, due to lobbying by state politicians who said it was unfair, making the exclusive hideaway eligible for the aid it was intended to withhold from storm-prone areas - aid like federally backed flood insurance and money to rebuild beaches and infrastructure damaged by floods and hurricanes. This might have gone largely unnoticed were it not for the 2004 hurricane season, which sent four major storms slamming into the United States and left swaths of coastline looking a lot like Upper Captiva did after Hurricane Charley hit it Aug. 13 - like the setting for a disaster movie.

Now, some areas still covered by the 1982 Coastal Barrier Resources Act, which encompasses 1.3 million acres from Maine to Texas, including stretches of Long Island from Jamaica Bay to Montauk Point and parts of Puerto Rico and Michigan, are seeing the costly clean-ups that may lie ahead if they don't follow Upper Captiva and other communities where politicians, often backed by developers, have orchestrated their removal from the law."

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In getting land removed from Cobra, politicians have generally argued that Fish and Wildlife erred by including parcels already developed or under development - conditions that should have excluded them from Cobra. In one case, paved golf-cart paths were deemed sufficient infrastructure to qualify an island owned by a wealthy developer as developed, and it was removed from Cobra. In several cases, developers insisted they had already laid sewage lines or had other infrastructure in place. Cobra proponents admit that the crude mapping techniques used in the 1980s - flying planes over the coast, taking pictures and drawing lines on topographic maps - left them open to debate. Lines drawn on photos taken from 10,000 feet are subject to wide interpretations, said Martin Kodis of the Fish and Wildlife Service, which has fought most but not all Cobra challenges. "We've come across situations where private land bordering conservation areas was mistakenly included due to mapping errors," Kodis said, citing a parcel in Cape Fear, N.C., removed recently from Cobra. Fish and Wildlife also did not fight the Upper Captiva changes, which Goss argued were to fix a mapping mistake. More often, though, environmentalists say challenges come from politicians seeking to please constituents, often wealthy homeowners or developers who see profits in building up waterfront property. In Congressional testimony in May 1999 on Goss' proposed change to Upper Captiva's status, for example, the Washington D.C.-based lobby group Coast Alliance dismissed it as a "taxpayer rip-off" that would fund developers' "risky ventures."

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http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/nation/ny-ushurr214050657nov21,0,4055343.story?coll=ny-nationalnews-headlines

Federal flood insurance should be abolished.

With private insurance, premiums are based on risk. High risk = high premiums. Problem solved.

And that, you see, is simply out of the question! :eyes: