NC Beachfront Property Owners Get $50 Million In State Money To Dump More Sand, "Save" Their Stupid Fucking Homes [View all]

[hatrack]

https://static.politico.com/dims4/default/55a1666/2147483647/resize/600/quality/100/?url=

EDIT

This spring some houses on the Buxton beach are on the move, relocated by their owners farther inland to avoid the fate of the Lattimore family home. At the same time, the village’s predicament is rippling outward, potentially upending a state law designed to prevent local communities from building seawalls or other structures that would protect houses but harm the beach itself. Local politicians are also pushing for changes to the National Flood Insurance Program — run by the Federal Emergency Management Administration — seeking relief that could allow them to tap insurance before houses actually fall.

The destruction of houses on Cape Hatteras has raised questions about whether taxpayer dollars should be responsible for protecting private property that many people say shouldn’t stand so close to the shore anyway. Buxton beach is an erosion hot spot on a barrier island that erodes and moves — the beach loses approximately 10 to 15 feet of sand to the ocean every year, a natural process exacerbated by climate change and sea-level rise.

The solutions on the table this year look much like the solutions of the past: A $50 million beach rebuilding project underway to build up the sand standing between the houses and the ocean. The county is also planning to repair a groin — a jetty-like structure built by the U.S. Navy decades ago — to help slow erosion by trapping sand. But scientists caution those fixes aren’t permanent, while many homes still stand dangerously close to the ocean. “You are just buying time,” said Reide Corbett, a coastal oceanographer and geochemist at East Carolina University and one of the scientists tasked by the state to study the science of erosion to address the Buxton crisis.

EDIT

Dare County will spend $50 million this spring to build up the beach, using its own money while also seeking some reimbursement of federal funds from FEMA. Similar efforts were carried out as recently as 2022, but significant erosion occurred within just 2 years, according to areport to Congress from the National Park Service. Some residents, like Dawson, say the beach nourishments aren’t lasting as long because without the groins the sand has simply washed away. Robert Outten, who serves as Dare County’s manager and attorney, said the renourishment is the country’s only tangible option in lieu of a law change, even though the combined impact of the new sand and the groin repair probably won’t prevent more houses from falling.

EDIT

https://www.eenews.net/articles/outer-banks-village-makes-bid-to-save-houses-from-the-sea/