When storms batter islands, taxpayers pay

updated 6:32 p.m. ET Sept. 5, 2008

TYBEE ISLAND, Ga. - Scraped away by two storms since last year, the beach vanishes behind Carlyle Buelvas' home at high tide, when waves lick the dune a few feet from her back porch and lap at the unprotected rental condos next door.

Buelvas has watched Georgia's largest public beach slowly weather away since 2000. Subtropical Storm Andrea in May 2007 and Tropical Storm Fay two weeks greatly accelerated the damage, even though the centers of both storms missed the island by at least 100 miles.

Fragile barrier islands from Texas to New England take a beating, especially during hurricane season, that cause their beachfronts to wash away and gradually return with the tides. The shape of their sandy shores shifts over time but the islands survive, if left alone.

Yet authorities spend large sums to "fix" them by replenishing sand and other measures, mindful of their appeal to tourists and of the multimillion-dollar beachfront homes along their shores.

It's a pricey fight against Mother Nature that rarely causes the kind of uproar that has accompanied the rebuilding of New Orleans — another spot that's hardly ideal for habitation.

"I hear a lot of people say you'd have to be crazy or stupid to build on the oceanfront, and it's not crazy because people are making a lot of money doing it," said Rob Young, a coastal development expert at Western Carolina University in Cullowhee, N.C.

‘Crazy people’
"The crazy people are the federal taxpayers who are willing to subsidize that economy."

Though Hurricane Gustav spared New Orleans the Katrina repeat that some had feared this week, some experts have renewed the debate over whether it was worth pumping billions of dollars into a city that could be ravaged again.

Young, director of WCU's Program for Study of Developed Shorelines, says a better case could be made that barrier islands aren't worth rebuilding. New Orleans, he argues, has more than 300,000 residents who live and work there year-round. The coastal islands are home mostly to retirees and investment properties.

Young points to Dauphin Island, Ala., where Hurricane Gustav washed away a new sand berm, 10-feet high and 14,000-feet long, that completed last year to replace the old buffer destroyed by Hurricane Katrina in 2005. The sand barrier, build to protect resort homes on the island's west end, cost $3.6 million that came mostly from FEMA disaster funds.

It's the third time since Hurricane Georges in 1998 that Dauphin Island's manmade protective dunes have been wiped out by hurricanes.

Dauphin Island Mayor Jeff Collier says repairing the island is important to more than just his 1,300 residents who own private property and the $1 million boost tourists give the town's budget each year. He says the mile-wide path Katrina cut through the island has flushed unwanted saltwater into the Mississippi Sound north of Dauphin Island, threatening fish and crabs and devastating the livelihoods of oyster fisherman whose catches are drying up.

‘Much more to it’
"If you start saying, `Why should we spend all this tax money to protect $1 million homes on the beach,' you're not going to get a whole lot of sympathy," Collier said. "But there's much more to it."

As Tropical Storm Hanna approached the Carolinas on Friday, with Hurricane Ike closing in on the coast fast behind, officials worried that wind and surf could erode the beaches at the heart of South Carolina's $16 billion tourism industry.

Fay got close enough to Hunting Island near Beaufort, S.C., to erode a road and damage three buildings at the state park there. The state spent more than $8 million last year to pour sand on sections of the beach and install walls perpendicular to the beach intended to catch sand.

Palm Beach County, Fla., with barrier islands along its entire 46 miles of coast, spends $10 million each year to fix beaches packed with multimillion-dollar homes, high-rise condos and hotels.

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