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| Mayor Leo 'Chipper' McDermott of Pass Christian, Miss., says homes rebuilt in his town are now required to be elevated at
least 20 feet above sea level. Rob Carr/AP/file |
Ire in Gulf over buyout plan
US proposal may mean parts of the Gulf Coast won't get rebuilt.
By Patrik Jonsson | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitorfrom the October 10, 2007 edition
Page 1 of 2
ATLANTA - In Mississippi, the US Army Corps of Engineers is proposing the nation's first regional buyout of coastal homes – a move, some experts say, that suggests that some stretches of the Gulf Coast devastated by hurricane Katrina will not get rebuilt.
The corps, which floated the plan in workshops with local residents last month, is expected to expand the idea to Louisiana. While it faces resistance from locals worried about the future viability of their communities, the proposal addresses a problem that has frustrated Congress for two decades: how to persuade homeowners not to rebuild in flood-prone areas.
The cost of Katrina's destruction – and of hurricane Rita's, which hit a month later in 2005 – could push policymakers to take a stronger stand against such rebuilding , especially as concerns about global warming and rising sea levels increase.
"The value of Katrina to federal policy was it showed that climate change ... is going to have an impact on the national economy," says Martin Doyle, a land-use expert at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. "The question now is whether these storms crossed some socioeconomic and physical threshold to where the system, be it political, economic, or social, doesn't go back to the way it was."
The corps' plan would use the lowest flood map delineations to mark up to 17,000 homes, 10,000 of them in Hancock County, for "flood mitigation" – or buyout. That represents roughly two-thirds of the county's single-family homes.
While the plan also affects nearby Waveland and Pass Christian, opposition has been fiercest in Bay St. Louis, where 218 new homes are being built. Indeed, as news of the buyout trickled out, planning for several new projects ground to a halt, says Bobby Campretta, a member of Bay St. Louis's city council.
"They say it's voluntary, but then on the other hand if you don't sell out, you might not be able to get flood insurance, with the end result being that it's almost like saying it's mandatory," says Mr. Campretta. "It's really going to hurt the city of Bay St. Louis."
Also perplexing to many residents, the same agency that's proposing the buyout, the Army Corps' Mississippi Coastal Improvements Program (MCIP), is also rebuilding a massive seawall that will protect downtown Bay St. Louis.
Congress would have to approve the plan. The US has bought out or relocated some 28,000 properties since October 1983, the largest buyout involving more than 8,000 homes following the 1993 Mississippi River floods. Yet even those moves proved temporary: Many of those 8,000 properties are now being redeveloped.
Some leaders doubt that the new buyout plan would find favor with Congress.
"Five words: 'It ain't going to happen,' " says Rep. Gene Taylor (D) of Mississippi, who's in the midst of rebuilding his Bay St. Louis home. "There's no money for it, there's no will for it, and there's no public support for it. That's 0 for 3."
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