Developing in High Risk Areas

These days, it seems like news of natural disasters have become more frequent lately. Most of this recently is due to the ongoing 20 year uptick in tropical/hurricane activity. Place on top of that wildfires, tornados, earthquakes, avalanches, blizzards, ice storms, record heat, record cold, floods, droughts, and the list goes on and on, its amazing any of us are even sane enough to live at all. Recently, I read this article on CNN, talking about how the people in the "Last House Standing" in Gilcrist, Texas are celebrating Christmas. Gazing towards the bottom at the comments, it looks like the typical range of responses there. "I can't believe they rebuild on the coast." "I can't believe we allow the government to insure these home." Then of course its done with absolute sarcasm and bitterness towards fellow man. On the other hand you've got those who applaud the rebuilding and stand up/justify their reasonings why they think people should stay, citing every thing from the amount of years they've lived there, to the fact that their jobs require them to work nearby. Then, out of those two primary arguments, a war of words ensues.

First of all, the arguments here are mostly a waste of breath, (or rather typing if you prefer.) But, I guess its the Internet, so we get seemingly unlimited spaces to post our thoughts and we live in a "free country,"  so why not? It's completely absurd to think anyone will actually win an argument. You will rarely see anyone actually concede to another person's point of view. (The one time I actually tried to concede to the other person's point of view, he or she just kept on, so I gave up on that.) And of course, the more the controversy there is, the more impassioned people are to say nasty things thanks to the anonymity of the poster. Plus, I think some people post arguments back and forth against themselves just for the sake of creating buzz about an article. We can't help it, its all human nature, even it is rather silly sometimes and very predictable. I bet I could write a program to simulate post-article commenting to demonstrate. But, I digress, the point of this post isn't to discuss post-article commenting tactics of the public but to address our development in areas that are known to have higher risks of disasters.

No matter where we live on the planet Earth, we are all subjected to some risk of disasters. But, we can all also recognize that some people live in higher risks areas than others. (Or so, our perception and intuition tell us so.) I don't need to do a 10 year study to say that its probably better (from a disaster-survival point of view) to live in an established small town in the heartland of the US vs. living at the base of an active volcano. We always get these routine arguments, but no one is standing around talking about how we should actually go about having people live with this known probability in a way that will have the least economic impact to the rest of us. Most arguments stem around the belief that its either the wealthiest who live on the extreme edges of the Earth (i.e. wealthy celebrities in California getting their houses burned by wildfires), or the most ignorant and impoverished people, who are clueless to the disaster that awaits them (i.e. New Orleans refugees after Katrina), that are always in the middle of these events. Few people place the middle class in these situations, and when it is done, its usually done so with a more justifiable, stance and its usually a disaster that hits everyone of all socioeconomic backgrounds (i.e. earthquake rattles SoCal, or ice storm blankets thousands in New England.) Real quick, it makes sense that the wealthy tend to place themselves in harm's way at "earth's extremes" with mountainside properties in the thick woods or perhaps stilted mansions on the coast, while flood plains are typically really cheap and affordable for the poor. I say to those that are wealthy who loose their homes, tough, I don't want to hear the complaints, because you knew the risks when you built or bought your home. You could even apply this to some middle class folks who are asking for trouble placing their life's savings to live in places where they ought not live. Things are perhaps different for those that are less fortunate. Perhaps its possible that some of these people really are clueless to the possibilities of disaster and as a result are ill prepared when it does happen. You could take this a step further and say that they are aware of the danger, but either lack the means (money) or motivation to evacuate or adequately prepare. Those all seem to make sense (through my white middle-class perspective), but let's move beyond typical places to find where to place the blame.

To dig further in thought, I'd like to focus on those who are living near the coast who are dependent on jobs that are made available because of it's close proximity to the coast, particularly the US Gulf Coast. These jobs could be anything from shipping, to working at coastal refineries to shrimp boating, not to mention all of those people who work in jobs that service those communities (teachers, grocery store clerks, doctors etc.) All of these are jobs are not only important to the local community, but as soon as you think about that last tank of gas that you bought, or the product that used any chemical from plastics to detergents, or the good shrimp you've eaten recently, you realize that those people living on the coast are important to all of us. Now let's assume that most of these people don't live directly within a stone's throw of the oceanside property, but they do still live within harms way. On the Gulf Coast, its quite common for properties 10 to 20 miles from the coast lie no higher than 20 to 30 ft. above sea level. That means that the first 3 or 4 miles inland, those properties are subjected to storm surge from run-of-the mill hurricanes. To overcome this, houses within these areas are built on stilts. That's good, as long as those houses are built to withstand the accompanying winds. For those who live above the storm surge line, you'll still need to have a house built to withstand sustained winds of at least 120 miles an hour. Keep in mind, the saying, "its not that the wind is blowing, but its what the wind is blowing." So even if your house can withstand the high winds, you're still going to need to have a way to protect your house from the debris that's blowing around because your neighbor forgot to tie down his gas grill in the backyard. That sounds great until you find out that building a house large enough for a standard family of 4 or 5 people is too expensive for the refinery worker and the shrimp boat assistant to afford. Throw in the school teacher who lost her husband to war with 2 kids to take care of and you can quickly see where the economic problem lies. Where do these people live, 30 or 60 miles inland? An affordable, but crowded, government subsidized housing complex? Perhaps, if those workers united and asked for higher pay from their employers they could afford those houses closer to work. That sounds good, but now you've got a company that's either going to give in to those demands and simply pass on the costs to its customers, or it'll be forced to relocate over seas or across the border where its more affordable to operate. The bottom line is, we're tied in to those communities' economies, and we're all indirectly responsible for those who live on the coast. And whether its the government or big business that pays the initial up-front cost, we all end up paying for those the costs in the long term either through higher prices or higher taxes (or lost jobs to overseas markets). This is just another example of the hidden costs of products that are priced too low. (You can bet I'll have a blog entry on the hidden costs of cheap goods, imported or otherwise.)

Don't get me wrong, there are some other remedies to the situation. For example, living below sea level, near the coast doesn't make sense and should be prohibited. Why even bother with coastal levies, they're expensive to build and maintain, and when they fail, its disastrous. (If you want to make Death Valley your home, have at it, but I'm not covering the cost of that either.) It also makes sense to do things like allow for natural, undeveloped buffers to exist between the coast and the towns that are economically tied to the sea. This is particularly true for areas near the mouth of the Mississippi and other rivers along the Gulf Coast. These buffers also act to take the blow of a storm surge and can also give some room to allow a hurricane's winds to slow down some before having the chance impact human development. Other things like better levy management upstream to allow silts, which are important to sustaining coastal wetlands, (the needed buffer described above) to build up as they naturally would have done so. Think of the Gulf Coast as being like a cell wall (think Biology 101, not prison). The cell wall needs to be able to allow important materials to pass through, but it also needs to keep the dangerous substances out and help regulate the balance of materials. (Urban development and economics based off of biology will be a future blogging topic as well.) (In fact, someday, I'll be discussing many other systems that are similar to biological structure (such as corporate structures and the movement of goods, people and information in a urban environment.)

Unfortunately, there's bound to be some resort hotel and luxury home owners that will claim that its their right to develop within a stone's throw of the coast. I suppose that limited developments could be allowed, but only if they followed strict development guidelines. Such development must be done at their own expense, never subsidized, nor publicly insured, and must place the value of preserving the natural resources above their own benefit. It would be much like the labels you see on electronics that state that the device that you are using must not interfere with other electronics from a higher class and must receive any interference from electronics from a higher class. The integrity of the coastal buffer must take precedent over the any development directly on the coast, without exception. Certainly there's a lot at stake here, with millions of people and billions, if not trillions of dollars on the line. Its a sensitive subject that pits public policy against private land owners and industry. There is no quick, blanket solution that can be given, while at the same time all cost, hidden or not, should be considered when taking a true measure of the economic impacts of the decisions to be made.

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