"It's As If No One Cares": RE Investment Continues On The Sand Bar That Is The NC Outer Banks
EDIT
Viewed from an airplane, the nearly 200-mile-long ribbon of islands resembles a child’s Etch-A-Sketch drawing, skewing north to south for miles, then suddenly veering east to west near Hatteras Village, before turning once more in a southeasterly direction. Some of the islands are low and narrow, only a few feet above sea level, and especially vulnerable to winter Nor’easters and hurricanes in summers. The warm waters of the Gulf Stream and colder Labrador Current collide just miles offshore, creating dangerous shoals and some of the largest waves along the East Coast. Over many centuries, scores of inlets have opened and closed on the Outer Banks, while the barrier islands have slowly migrated landward as sand has washed across shorelines and flats on the oceanside and marshes have expanded along the backside, according to one federal study.
Despite these risks, developers continue to add billions of dollars of real estate, from Corolla in the north to Ocracoke Village in the south, making the Outer Banks the fastest-growing section of the North Carolina coast. Property values have also soared to at an all-time high. Dare County, which includes thousands of beach homes, recently valued all of its property at nearly $18 billion. While the value of ocean property in smaller Currituck County has ballooned to almost $5 billion. “It’s as if no one cares,” says Danny Couch, a Dare County Commissioner, real estate agent and sometimes tour guide. “A lot of people have so much money they don’t care about the risk.”
In the last decade alone, DOT has spent nearly $80 million dollars to keep hazard-prone NC 12 open for the year-round residents of the lower Outer Banks. That includes rebuilding the S-Curves three different times, but doesn’t include the cost of three new bridges needed to traverse inlets opened by storms or to bypass the rapidly eroding shoreline. Together, the bridges push the cost of maintaining NC 12 to about a half-billion dollars.
Asked if there were another highway as vulnerable as NC 12, Colin Mellor, a DOT environmental specialist, shuffled around a bit before answering: “No, emphatically, is the answer. NC 12 is a poster child nationwide, if not worldwide,” he said. “It’s a North Carolina route on a ribbon of sand that jumps out into the ocean.”
EDIT
https://e360.yale.edu/features/outer-banks-climate-change-flooding
= new reply since forum marked as read
Fri Sep 24, 2021: The Cost of Insuring Expensive Waterfront Homes Is About to Skyrocket
hatrack talked about this three weeks ago. This is a revival of that thread.
I don't see how the houses in the picture could not flood.
Sun Sep 5, 2021: Shocked Shocked 2: For 1.7 Million Floridians, Flood Insurance Premiums Set To Rise
Kevin M. Kruse Retweeted
Florida's coastal development is built to a large extent on heavily subsidized federal flood insurance.
The shift could reshape coastal real estate markets — unless Congress manages to kill it. https://nytimes.com/2021/09/24/climate/federal-flood-insurance-cost.html?referringSource=articleShare
Link to tweet
New federal flood insurance rates that better reflect the real risks of climate change are coming. For some, premiums will rise sharply.
Beachfront homes in Anna Maria, Fla. One ZIP code in the area leads the country in the number of single-family homes facing an increase of more than $1,200. Eve Edelheit for The New York Times
By Christopher Flavelle
Sept. 24, 2021
Updated 9:38 a.m. ET
Florida’s version of the American dream, which holds that even people of relatively modest means can aspire to live near the water, depends on a few crucial components: sugar white beaches, soft ocean breezes and federal flood insurance that is heavily subsidized.
But starting Oct. 1, communities in Florida and elsewhere around the country will see those subsidies begin to disappear in a nationwide experiment in trying to adapt to climate change: Forcing Americans to pay something closer to the real cost of their flood risk, which is rising as the planet warms. ... While the program also covers homes around the country, the pain will be most acutely felt in coastal communities. For the first time, the new rates will also take into account the size of a home, so that large houses by the ocean could see an especially big jump in rates.
Federal officials say the goal is fairness — and also getting homeowners to understand the extent of the risk they face, and perhaps move to safer ground, reducing the human and financial toll of disasters. ... “Subsidized insurance has been critical for supporting coastal real estate markets,” said Benjamin Keys, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School. Removing that subsidy, he said, is likely to affect where Americans build houses and how much people will pay for them. “It’s going to require a major rethink about coastal living.”
The Biden administration’s new approach threatens home values, perhaps nowhere as intensely as Florida, a state particularly exposed to rising seas and worsening hurricanes. In some parts of the state, the cost of flood insurance will eventually increase tenfold, according to data obtained by The New York Times. ... For example, Jennifer Zales, a real estate agent who lives in Tampa, pays $480 a year for flood insurance. Under the new system, her rates will eventually reach $7,147, according to Jake Holehouse, her insurance agent.
And that is prompting lawmakers from both parties to line up to block the new rates, which will be phased in over several years.
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Fri Sep 24, 2021: Orrin Pilkey's Call to Retreat From the Beach
Note: do not confuse Orrin Pilkey with his brother, Walter Pilkey, who taught mechanical engineering at UVa.
Orrin Pilkey's Call to Retreat From the Beach
Orrin Pilkey's call for humans to retreat from the beach and allow any structure that can’t be moved back to fall into the sea has been called radical and reproachable in more letters to the editor than he can count. But love him or loathe him, there’s no denying the impact Pilkey has had.
November 25, 2019
Over the course of his 56-year career in coastal geology, Orrin Pilkey has butted heads with real-estate developers and property owners in just about every beach town east of the Mississippi.
His call for humans to retreat from the beach and allow any structure that can’t be moved back to fall into the sea has been called radical and reproachable in more letters to the editor than he can count.
But love him or loathe him, there’s no denying the impact Pilkey, James B. Duke Emeritus Professor of Geology, has had.
The North Carolina Coastal Federation calls him “the man who saved our beaches.” The New York Times calls him “the dean of American coastal geology.” His peers have awarded him nearly every honor for public service in his field, and his former students, many of whom are now influential voices in coastal science themselves, speak of him with reverence.
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