Public problem?

sand replenishment is a waste of time and money. barrier island rollover is just a plain and simple geologic fact of rising water. i wish they'ed spend that money on something worthwhile, like buying back properties and returning it to it's natural state so that the dynamic equilibrium could be returned.

 

public (planning) policy + greed/corruption + politics = "caveat emptor".....when considering purchase
of low-ground homes......or put another way; if the insurance is through the roof look elsewhere.

 

Talk about oceanfront living! ^^^ "hey I'm gonna go for a surf brb!" And then you could jump off your porch and get barreled under ur own living room!

 

Agreed. HUGE waste of taxpayer dollars for the sake of generating tourist dollars(at least here in NJ). A couple good storms in a year and all that money is sucked right back out to sea.

 

If those property owners are like the ones in VB and OBX, they probably had no parking available to non residence. Sandbridge was like that until the gov said that to get sand, you gots to have public parking.

 

What people forget with these replenishment projects to save oceanfront properties is that those homes have the highest property values. High property values mean high property taxes. High property taxes pay all those lovely local government employees. If those homes go bye-bye, Uncle Sam won't get his paper.

Until the cost of replenishment outweighs the profit gains of property taxes, your tax dollars will continue to go towards saving these fart-sniffers homes.

 

I will agree that the houses and other structures do anchor the sand, you need to see the science. Barrier Island rollover was discovered in the 60's by three guys doing a research project. It's a natural response to rising sea levels. And yes tourism does bring in large amounts of dollars as do really huge homes, that by the way have absolutely no business on a barrier island that on average gets hit by a hurricane every three years. You are looking at the micro not the macro. A single 3 mile stretch of beach may cost 50 mil, but the Outer Banks is what almost a 100 miles. Not only that but currently those high priced homes have federally subsidized flood insurance to the tune of billions. Now look at the fact with the exception of few places, VB and Myrtle Beach, almost the rest of the south east coast is fronted by barrier islands

 

I read the article, and it reads like the homeowners had a bulkhead put in around their property a few years back? I think it's pretty widely known that bulkheads/seawalls/whatever accelerate sand loss, so I'm not really sure what they expected.

And people who say things should be allowed to return to some imaginary "natural state" should look around their homes and think about all of the human interventions that allow them to live where they do, wherever that is.

 

public beach should get public (federal) money

i love the class warfare rhetoric that my of the posters have bought into

 

why do you hate rich people?

(cep you already told us. no need to reply here)

 

one time during pathetic oceanfront destruction i was riding a righthander down the line headed for
and watching oprah on somebodys living room television.

 

I hear the 'replenishment is driven by tax-revenue' argument often, but I don't have faith in it.

I was thinking that we could look at actual tax revenue vs. costs of replenishment, and see what the returns are, considering many other things. But that would take time.

So hear me out. Aren't property taxes State taxes, and replenishment funds Federal funds?

In this case, the truth is that the average U.S. citizen, who lives nowhere near the water, is subsidizing waterfront property protection by giving tax dollars to other State's governments via the Federal government. This is true for any replenishment undertaken by Sandy funds or other 'State of Emergency' funds.

If the replenishment funds are provided by the State, then we can talk. Even then, a very limited portion of the tax base lives on the waterfront. We could also look at other tax generators- such as high-rise dwellers- the very construction of those buildings is subsidized by local city and state governments.

From my limited knowledge on the subject, I do not believe that sand replenishment is effective, but as I said, my knowledge far from encyclopedic. What's the scientific consensus on this?

 

And let it be so.....

 

The scientific consensus is... "It's pissing up a rain pipe".

 

Good question. Even trickier when the money generated is on a federal wildlife property.

 

Hahaha. Thanks for the info, and the laugh.

One thing is for sure, it DESTROYS spots. I've been back for a few weeks after replenishment now and I initally thought it might create some other spots... but if it did I haven't seen em yet. Outside of some areas that work at dead high tide for 20 minutes.

Having your main spots wrecked by replenishment is frustrating. Experiencing the same thing and not having a personal vehicle to escape it- even more frustrating.

 

Barrier island migration on the east coast is a direct result of the North American Plate moving westward. It's also what gives us those great earthquakes in california.

As far as federally subsidized flood insurance, I guess we should just stop all federal aid/expenditures to anyone whenever there is a natural disaster, be it hurricane, flood, tornado, mud slide, what ever. Those people who own those high priced homes also pay a boat-load of high priced taxes on those homes, so in my view it all somewhat evens out.