Dear Citizens and Elected Officials:
The New York Times Magazine online ran a long and interesting article today, Sunday, August 15, 2021, an “update” on the implications of Global Warming for living along the New Jersey Coast. It was written by Andrew S. Lewis and was called “The Long, Slow Drowning of the New Jersey Shore: Billions have been spent to protect the beachfront. But inch by inch, water is winning the war.”
Although the title was getting a bit stretchy, it would not have been an exaggeration to add that the coastal property owners and the real estate industry” are also winning the war of who pays for the “right” to live at the dangerous coast.
How could I not weigh in since I was thrust right into the front lines of the battle in the NJ Legislature, just at the dawn of the global warming issue, 1988-1989. I felt given the long track record of terrible storm damage, hurricanes and Northeaster’s in NJ — that historical record should have been enough to win a sound policy of coastal regulation of building — and rebuilding — along with a buyout program for those who wished — and where the facts of repeated damage demonstrated – the wisdom of relocation.
Regulation of building at the coast is a state issue in NJ’s Coastal Zone, where a Department of Environmental Protection permit is needed — the state having revoked the home rule powers of the coastal municipalities/counties when they set up their “CAFRA” program in 1973. Ironically, the law was only tangentially addressed to residential coastal development; it was intended to head off oil and gas exploration off the coast.
As you can see from my comments below, we did not win the legislative argument; the NJ legislature said you didn’t need a new permit to rebuild after a storm knocked you down, maybe even after plowing into a neighbor’s home.
Here is what I wrote in two published comments on the article:
“I was the lead enviro negotiator in 1988-1989 for the American Littoral Society, which was working with Governor Tom Kean to legislatively win a Coastal Commission to deal with the problems outlined in this article. We did not have the full force of scientific evidence on our side just then, since James Hansen’s alarming testimony had only just been given, then suppressed by George H.W. Bush, but we had the historical record of what coastal storms could do, especially the Great Northeaster of March, 1962 which caused more damage than Sandy on Long Beach Island. We greens argued that if a coastal zone property was damaged more than 50%, the owner would need a permit from the NJ DEP to rebuild; our hope was that if they were in an “danger” mapped area, the permit would be denied. The legislature would have none of that, and indeed, the coastal zone mayors, builders, real estate industry wanted no further state regulation of such matters. I argued, when I moved to NJ Audubon, that taxpayers should not be subsidizing dangerous building at the coast in the form of beach replenishment; emergency help, yes as in the case of Sandy, and when another storm damaged the Sea Bright Sea Wall 1991…but given no national health insurance or significant affordable housing programs, such $$$ coastal subsidies to the well off were a moral problem, not just bad science. We’re tampering with the American Dream; I’ve got mine and you’ll help me to keep it at any cost. Divine right?
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Maryland55m ago
I should add that I support the buyout program, Blue Acres, but it needs to be coupled with a policy to deny rebuild permits in dangerous areas of the coast, especially the barrier islands, and the trend to allow new or more expansive structures is just an outrage from any perspective, but what one would expect under Neoliberal assumptions. I doubt coastal mayors and realtors read Thomas Piketty, who has a “secular” view of property rights. I’m no radical, neither is Piketty: read South Carolina Coastal Commission vs Lucas, the early 1990’s Supreme Court decision that basically said “you’ll pay” for wherever the wealthy want to build…my God, even South Carolina tried to do the “right” thing until the Right made coastal regulations a “sin.”
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As I suggested in my response, we are not just dealing with the growing threat of global warming at the coast — and we could include the Maryland coast as well (Ocean City, MD was also heavily damaged by that 1962 Northeaster), rising seas and more powerful storms, we are dealing with a near religious sense of entitlement for those virtuous or lucky enough to have built at the risky coast. It’s tampering with the American Dream. No one begrudges emergency aid after the wreckage of storms, but it is irrational to not use the danger zone maps — paid for by federal and state programs — to limit reconstruction and to buy out the damaged properties.
The federal flood insurance program usually loses to the same forces which defeated the public interest in the NJ legislature, the real estate industry and construction industry being two of the most powerful anti-regulatory forces in the nation.
And the dominant pro-real estate/property rights drift under Neoliberalism since at least 1980 means that under the “Act of God” rationale, those lucky property owners at the coast deserve our aid right into final submergence – or the Second Coming to give a nod to the Religious Right. Then they’ll build on stilts and say everything’s fine…let the hurricanes rip.
I support a much tougher policy, tough but fair. We are going to have to retreat at the coast, and protecting the type of building now under way, as outlined in the article, is outrageous; federal and state dollars must instead be spent on protecting vital infrastructure in defendable places with implications for community wide applicability, not the barrier island elites. No easy matter itself to map out who is “worth” defending or has to abandon ship and retreat.
The whole argument at the coast, “defend or retreat” makes me nervous on obvious grounds: our public money needs to go into stopping/slowing the heating of the atmosphere and oceans on a rational scientific basis, and there is not enough to do that and salvage the view for the few who have ridden the cresting wave of the American Dream.
Just to give you a sense of the turning point against community and for a narrow view of property right epitomized by the Lucas Supreme Court decision, the court said it was an infringement on property rights for a state coastal commission in South Carolina to map dangerous areas based on previous storm data and deny a permit for those who built over the danger line.
It was a neat summary of the trends of Neoliberalism — anti-regulatory, anti-government, anti-spending austerity (with a bias towards those already well situated) which Thomas Piketty has so well and fairly captured in his two great books, especially “Capital and Ideology.”
The old standard for the “taking issue” under the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution was a three part test: a solid reason for public interest regulation, science based very often, in this case a matter of life or death and cost to the public, not just the property owner; not a complete wipeout of property values (especially at the shore, uses remained to enjoy an unbuildable property), and a well thought out structure with some flexibility in the design of the regulation (grandfathering, advance notice and so forth)…Now the American Right has turned this public interest viewpoint into a near absolute endorsement to the right to property use no matter the cost to the public…an absolute growing more absurd decade by decade under the implications of the Climate Crisis.
And not a bad clue to the stubborn if not absolutist Right’s insistence on fighting Covid public health measures. Indeed, it gives the libertarian/conservative battle cry “Give me Liberty or give me Death” a whole new twist, even if gurgled and garbled a bit under the rising waters.
Best to you all, and especially to the Maryland legislators ready to defend the Maryland coast — coastal property owners — at all cost.
gracchibros
Frostburg, MD
gracchibros 