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hatrack

(59,439 posts)
Fri Nov 22, 2019, 08:30 AM Nov 2019

Most Residents Of Money Island, NJ Accept Government Money To Leave Their Slowly Drowning Town

https://vimeo.com/374221171

EDIT

From her deck, Wren points north up the Delaware Bay shore to remnant homes in Bay Point, and beyond that, Sea Breeze — both virtual ghost towns after most residents took buyouts from the state of New Jersey. Soon, Money Island will join them. As coastal communities everywhere face planning for an accelerating rise in sea level, driven by a warming climate, New Jersey is showing how it can be done — and also showing there’s still much to learn.

Our film about Money Island explores one community’s experience with New Jersey’s Blue Acres Program, designed to end the cycle of using tax dollars to restore flood- and storm-damaged homes, only to leave them at repeated and increasing risk from sea levels projected to rise a couple of feet by mid-century, and several feet by century’s end. Blue Acres ramped up substantially with federal and state money that followed the state’s disastrous hit seven years ago from Superstorm Sandy. It offers pre-Sandy buyout prices to willing sellers. It is moving closer to its current goal of 1,300 buyouts, with offers made so far to 975 homeowners, statewide. Seven hundred have accepted, and 640 homes have been demolished and removed.

Blue Acres is generally well-regarded, despite having to operate until recently under an administration (of Governor Chris Christie) that did not acknowledge climate change. But it is not without adverse impacts on both residents and struggling rural economies like Cumberland County, which includes Money Island and is the poorest of New Jersey’s 21 counties. Money Island’s name derives from buried treasure legends, not actual wealth.

Wren and her family are reluctantly leaning toward leaving. She concedes the buyout from Blue Acres they are contemplating “makes sense on the intellectual side and the financial side because we have everything we own wrapped up in this place and it’s not going to build equity…” But leaving is wrenching, and there’s little chance they will get enough to afford anything comparable in the area that would not be at risk from rising sea levels and flooding.

EDIT

https://e360.yale.edu/features/waterfront-retreat-a-bay-community-faces-rising-seas-and-buyouts
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Most Residents Of Money Island, NJ Accept Government Money To Leave Their Slowly Drowning Town (Original Post) hatrack Nov 2019 OP
Thanx for posting Botany Nov 2019 #1
i've been saying for a while that we need to start building "fall back" communities. mopinko Nov 2019 #2
Kick and recommend. bronxiteforever Nov 2019 #3

mopinko

(69,804 posts)
2. i've been saying for a while that we need to start building "fall back" communities.
Fri Nov 22, 2019, 10:05 AM
Nov 2019

green tech new homes on nearby but higher ground.
green cities.
we know what that looks like. give people a few extra bucks to move to these places instead of scattering.

time to start over on a whooooole lot of things.

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