Blog 2 - - - Section 11

Will hurricane Katrina impact shoreline management?
Its going to happen again and again, why are they still building, and rebuilding? Determining when American patriotism should be replaced with realization is a hard task. People love the coastline, but it’s much more dangerous than it looks. Year after year houses are built, and then destroyed by nature, and it still remains a question why people don’t take the insurance and more somewhere safer. It might not be there fault. The government provides funding to rebuild, basically a waste of tax payers money.
Dauphin Island has adopted a new way of life. Constantly cleaning up destruction, and rebuilding houses. A total of five hurricanes have hit the island, with enough power to reshape and divide it in sections. Residents will naturally get the hint to move on, people can’t keep rebuilding forever. The government has different ideas, and still provides insurance and bailout money, keep residents firmly planted in the danger zone.
Beach replenishment is now being used to attract more people, or victims, to the coastline. Hurricanes can heavily impact coastlines, but the same effect is felt with coastline development, both are destructive forces. Coastal developments effect the beaches natural cycle, not allowing sand to return to form new beaches after hurricanes. It’s the houses causing the problems, not nature.
Beaches give the shoreline a safe feeling, promoting population growth and development. Beaches provide some protection against storms, but not much against any storm that has duration on an area. Human mitigation of the shoreline allows great use for people, but utterly destroys a recovering environment, which can take up to two years.
Beach replacement is like bait, it attracts people to the coast, they build, hurricane, everything is destroyed, federal money is injected to promote growth, they rebuild. Once people are situated on the coast from the bait, an endless cycle occurs until people begin to retreat from the coast.
Hopefully the federal government will soon realize, too much money is being wasted to rebuild in unstable areas, over and over again. To compound the problem, rising sea levels and warming oceans, are only promising to bring larger and more powerful storms to the already affected areas.
The federal government has some downfalls on not carrying out coastal retreat. Government is to compassionate to think of not helping the victims of a storm rebuild, medical and rescues will be provided. Residents and government are proud to back down. Leading to the point of being resilient and rebuilding, or is it really just risk taking with a hint of insanity. Coastal communities have to be able to see the risk, to be able to take preventive measures, many are too proud to admit they should have moved last time.
Government itself is to blame, for subsidizing coastal welfare checks for flood insurance and rebuilding. The private insurance sector has already realized to only offer extremely expensive insure to the area, because they know the house “will” be gone in a matter of years. Residents have also developed a dependence on the bailout money when a disaster strikes. In a sane world, the home owner chose to live there, and they should have to pay for living in a dangerous area. If that last statement were true, coastal retreat would be a much faster process.
A fair way of creating a federal retreat program would be to form a committee, to determine which areas are off limits for development, and to aid towns and residents with relocation.
Wetlands and barrier islands around Louisiana are experiencing problems as well. People in the area are also trying to absorb federal money to recreate the “storm protection” of these features. Problem is the destruction of the wetlands is being caused by the use of the levies in the area, none allowing sedimentation to occur. The barrier islands are nothing more than sandbars, providing minimal protection against storm surges. People need to be informed of the problems source before public money is handed out to fix a unfixable problem.
Overall public voice on anti-development is shadowed by large developers for beach front property. Power in number usually wins; the science community needs more support, to help show people the truth and dangers of living on the coast.

Interesting on how people are a creature of habit, even though there is evidence in the past of unfavorable consequences, people believe it won’t happen to them, and to no one’s surprise it always does. I think the government need to step up and move residents after a disaster, instead of rebuilding, no option at all. This would defiantly be a financial gain for the country in the long run, and would end throwing money into the ocean.


Reference

Easton T. (2009) Environmental Studies, Sections 11. New York: McGraw-Hill