After The Deluge
Tropical Storm Ida has left her mark on Delaware. The question we have is will we learn from Ida’s destruction or will we keep on doing the same old, same old. WHYY reports that it will cost some $15-20 million to replenish the beaches. The News Journal reports that over $100 million has been spent on beach replenishment in Delaware since 2001. So, should we continue to throw good money after bad and rebuild Delaware’s coastline or should we call it a day and say that was a fun 100 years at the beach?
Tags: Delaware Beaches
It’s an interesting question. But we need to think about what it would actually cost us to retreat from the beach and call it a day? Do we have to reimburse property owners? Even if only via insurance, that will have to cost us in some way. And what will the loss of income from tourism mean? What will it cost to relocate roads and other infrastructure?
You want a list of members of Congress, staff and lobbyists with homes at the Delaware beaches, starting with the Chairman of the Senate Budget Committee?
Beach replenishment is welfare for the rich. Dave, naturally, is all for it.
To MM whom I respect.
There is always an economic case for the status quo.
“Beach replenishment is welfare for the rich.”
Yeah, because only rich people have jobs and businesses in Eastern Sussex County.
Typical obfuscation. Mike Castle’s butler will have to find another master someday, with or without replenishment. Anyway, while Dave is speaking out of his ass, I am speaking from personal life experience. As close relative of a rich person, I can say without reservation that beach replenishment is welfare for the rich.
I am all for beach replenishment. It brings us a significant return on investment and protects the environment by offsetting some of the changes we make. Many Delawareans enjoy the beaches and just as importantly, they are the most significant force in tourism industry. It brings far more investment and jobs than the artifical planning mentality.
Funny how Repubs are for tax dollars (repeated tax dollars) going to beach replenishment.
David,
Would you support a tax increase for beach replenishment? Of course. Because here is the Republican mindset in a nutshell. If tax money can be used to directly benefit rich people then taxes are good.
Speaking as someone who knows the politics of beach replenishment from personal experience – I can assure you that all “return on investment” is collected by the wealthy. As someone who (through a family trust) owned beach front property, we prayed that the taxpayers would be big enough suckers to fund renourishment.
Nemski,
Dave B honestly thinks that it is a legitimate function of government to create arbitrage opportunities for rich people where they can enjoy profits without being exposed to any risk.
The fact is that private property ownership up to the high tide line is not sustainable without government (e.g.. Taxpayer) subsidy either through government backed insurance or direct aid in the form of beach nourishment.
I believe we should replenish the beaches at places such as the Boardwalk in Rehoboth Beach – because for Sussesx County that is a huge revenue stream. However, we should make people/condominiums/HOAs pay that have PRIVATE beaches (meaning they won’t let you get to the beach) and we should definitly have those with houses along the beaches pay one way or another. I remember my old boss having a house along some river and HE had to pay to bring in sand, rocks, and plants to prevent erosion – I am all for that. Either the beach – ALL OF IT not only to the “regular” high water mark – is for EVERYBODY and you have to sign an easement to that effect, or you should pay the full bill for the replenishment of your property – and if you refuse to pay for it and your house goes bye-bye — too bad. You don’t deserve a dime from the insurance. Of course, you could always agree to give up your part of the beach to have a waterwall built…
I support beach replenishment, it’s stimulus and it helped protect the town from the worst of the storm. Of course, I believe in paying for things that are important. How do Republicans propose we pay for this?
As someone who spends every summer in Fenwick at their beach house… I appreciate Dave and David looking out for my interests. Hopefully, I can subsidize them some day. Thanks guys! BTW, what’s in it for you? – not that I care, but since your position benefits me (immensely), I’m just wondering what you get out of helping me? My undying gratitude?
/snark
It is worth pointing out that the beach replenishment, and importantly, the dune creation, is focused on Bethany Beach, the tourist destination, and Rehoboth Beach, the tourist destination. The rich folks in North Bethany, if they were protected by a created dune, paid for *that* dune themselves.
I’m not sure any of us liberals really want to stop beach replenishment. We just want Republicans with government sand between their toes to shut up about socialism and earmarks.
I don’t mind stopping beach replenishment. The beach was never meant to be a permanent feature and plenty of beach towns are built so that they are right in the zone where the water wants to be sometimes. They will replenish these beaches and next year or the year after or the year after that, they will need to do it again — because of another storm or the usual erosion. And then you’ve spent a very great deal of money preserving the property values of folks whose houses and businesses are where the water wants to be. At some point there is little sense in not asking those who wealth is being protested to pay a much bigger tab for this exercise in futility.
Hello–if we have federally chosen to rebuild New Orleans, then I think we can have at a little of that for the beach. I’m all for helping people thru tragedy, and getting them resettled etc., but settling them for the same tragedy NEXT time is ludicrous, but the US does it–so we may as well do it in Delaware too. Heaven forbid anyone should not be restored to their previous perch and position, because all of life is just so fair–and if it isn’t we’ll just use all our tax dollars aggragated to insure your view remains the same. Oh and BTW, never saw any state or federal dollars come our way the winter snowstorm of 2003–collapsed the roof of our small business, leaving 7 people jobless w/ no income for 9 weeks. After our “top of the line” insurer was done with those calculations of lost production, wages, construction, and clean-up–the BIG check for 9k arrived. Not a whole lot to go around to a bunch of people, who just woke up one morning to snow beginning to fall. But save that dune dweller, small businesses don’t mind rebuilding.
Not exactly a good comparison, Joanne — New Orleans drowned because the levies failed — not because of a storm. And you can’t engineer a long-term solution to beach replenishment, unlike the levies which can be built to a 1000 year flood event strength. But apparently there is more political will to keep pumping sand up on a beach to preserve hyper-inflated property values than there is to adequately rebuild levies in a key port city.
Well, we’re really overbuilt, statewide, and we need the infrastructure to support that, or we need to retrench.
As far as beach replenishment goes, we’re like the preacher who inherited a house from an uncle, and went to it to discover it operating as a brothel. He came home and reported it to his wife, who said, “Well, of COURSE you’re closing it down!” and the preacher said, “I wanted to, but the bishop tells me it turns a profit.”
If we started by refusing building permits we’d be on the right track, and ita with Suzanne about private beaches.
The deal was made decades ago, private beaches were taken in return for beach replenishment.
These are Public Beaches that are being replenished.
(and listening to the 330lb trust fund boy whine about the rich beach people is just too funny)
Property deeds from around the turn of the 19th/20th Century list the beach areas as “waste”. Additional descriptions indicate that the beaches were so insect infested that no one really had a use for the property.
He’s not whining, lizard, you are, as usual. That’s what your ilk does best.
JC, New Orleans has NOT been restored to what it was before Katrina. Hundreds of thousands of people have not been returned to their homes — way more than would be displaced by failure to replenish Delaware’s beaches.
If we have $100 million dollars to spend on the beaches because it is important to the Delaware economy, then we should have at least that to spend on public education, building better schools and attracting more qualified teachers by paying them more instead of CUTTING their salaries to pay for oceanfront property. Perhaps a slightly higher,but much more more progressive income tax in Delaware would make sense; let the rich pay for their own lifestyle.
One could also make the argument that NOLA’s inundation was due to federal exploitation of the wetlands that normally would have protected the city. What was the federal governments role in the storm-related damage on the DE/MD shoreline?
The most progressive tax we could raise in Delaware is the property tax. IIRC, we are in the bottom quartile in property taxes, down there with the deep South. Lots of rich people in Delaware are not on payrolls, so no matter how progressive you make an income tax, it won’t be as progressive as a higher property tax.
In fact, we should institute a statewide property tax (we are, I believe, one of only 13 states without one; again, most are in the deep South) and make clear that the money raised goes to education. This makes sense, since we pay a higher proportion of education funding at the state level than almost every other state. AS it stands, more than one-third of state spending goes to education; a property tax is the best way to fund it.
Those who benefit from the beach tourism income should be the ones who pay for the replenishment.
The state coffers see some benefit, the state should pay for some of it. Maybe a special beach replenishment fund funded by a small percentage of GRT already paid by businesses in the beach areas. Over the 5 or 8 years it takes to need replenishment that fund should have built up to enough to handle it.
I am against Federal money paying for it at all. No reason why someone in Kansas should pay for our beach.
What about someone in kansas paying for our health care?
I like the beach. I’ll pay a little bit more to fix it up. unless global warming really goes crazy, storms like that dont hit us often. If this becomes a yearly thing, then I’ll just go to Fla when i want fun in the sun. But Delaware needs the tourism, we have nothing else…. besides you have to hire people to fix the beaches and that = jobs
One could also make the argument that NOLA’s inundation was due to federal exploitation of the wetlands that normally would have protected the city.
You can make this argument if you insist that NOLA’s inundation was caused by the storm. It was caused by the levees failing. Wetlands disappearing leave NOLA and the rest of southern LA vulnerable to storm damage from powerful hurricanes still. In which case, the argument can be made that both the feds and the oil and gas companies who crisscrossed the wetlands with pipes and canals are equally responsible.
Geezer, some day you and I will get together to chat about Georgist economics… and why Delaware doesn’t have any. 😉
Funny how republicans whining about earmarks and government spending are for spending money on SAND. LOL. How self-serving and laughable. The sand will keep washing away, not just in Bethany, but along the entire east coast. At some point as sea levels rise, this country is going to have to decide what to save and what to let wash out to sea. People who made poor decisions in building homes or businesses too close to the ocean have only themselves to blame. It is not the job of taxpayers to once again bail out the wealthy and ignorant. Government spending on sand. Too funny.
Lets see, we spend 10 million a year on the beaches and 90 million on public transportation every year.
I say replenish the beaches and cut 45 million from DART.
Geezer and Brooke, I’d love to talk Georgist economics with you some time … Sussex County would need some updated land valuations: 1974’s are likely to be a bit out of date and growth since then has likely not been very consistent. The beach-area folks are likely to be getting a lovely bargain.
If we’re going to replenish beaches, it ought to be paid for via a tax in proportion to land values, and it ought not to fall on inland folks 10 or 20 miles from the ocean or bays.