Ike's Destruction Rekindles Debate over Coastal Development. By Patrick Jonsson, CSMonitor, September 17, 2008. "On either side of [Galveston's] seawall… a 12-foot storm surge [from Hurricane Ike] claimed perhaps hundreds of recently built homes with beach access and million-dollar views… [revealing] the folly of an exuberant coastal policy that has allowed taxpayer-subsidized market forces to place some of the nation's most valuable real estate on the coast's most unpredictable perches… Even before the storm, Texas Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson proposed that new coastal construction be set back… 60 feet for every foot of erosion, for example… [But] local officials blasted Patterson's proposal, claiming that communities couldn't survive without new construction… So far, the federal government has largely sided with building boosters… 'It's a very positive sign for sensible management if the State of Texas [takes] a new look at how we rebuild extremely vulnerable shorelines,' says Rob Young, director of the Program for the Study of Developed Shorelines at Western Carolina University in Cullowhee, N.C. 'But I'm also skeptical, because the people who are being shut out of rebuilding tend to be wealthy and politically influential.'"
2008-09-17
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