this post was submitted on 04 Jan 2025
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Yes. We already do that.
Hell, we purposely flooded a ton of abandoned/semi-adandonned towns building the dams out East. They made the movie Deliverance entirely about visiting the area before it got flooded. Of course we'd let nature do it too.
A rare case where betteridge's law is falsified.
whats better I shes law?
That was never actually a law. It just sounds interesting.
I've been curious about this myself, but haven't heard any news to this effect. Can you provide any examples of this happening in the past (preferably within the last 50 years)?
I remember a story from 2024 where some tiny town (forget the name, East coast somewhere) had built a bunch of residential houses in a landslide area and the residents were frustrated that the government wasn't bailing them out. Had some wacky pictures. Maybe it was this one in California? I think it was a different one.
It was 100 years ago, but Bayocean, Oregon a town with 2,000 residents slowly fell into the Pacific Ocean after they tried to mess with the coastline. The last remaining building fell into the ocean in 1971. No attempt to bail out the homeowners at any point.
Disaster strikes, and the homeowners are extremely lucky if we bail them out. Usually we don't.
Those are some interesting reads, and really appreciate the response + resources.
I do feel the attempt to buyout the residents in the CA example is a good move, but it does basically amount to abandoning the town (as the OP seems to think will be the norm. Glad the state is attempting to do something to help, even if it feels like a half measure.
It feels like FEMA (as imperfect as they are) would have been a program that would've helped if a landslide wiped out a town though? Either that or the builders of the township would've had to sign away a bunch of their rights to that as part of building into the area (kinda feels like the case for Bayocean?) if it was known to be disaster prone.
Idk, how does the community feel about building in disaster prone areas? Like, if you want to build a house in a flood zone, I think you should be allowed to do it, but also, you're on your own when a flood comes, ya know?
It’s mostly going to be more than 50 years ago, but we did it a lot.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_dams_and_reservoirs_in_the_United_States
I don't want to discount the people who lost land and homes due to the creation of dams and reservoirs (My great grandpa purportedly lost his home due to some of this), but that feels really different than losing a coastal town due to rising sea levels.
Obviously from an American perspective, FEMA is very imperfect, but that we have structures and systems like FEMA makes it feel like people in coastal towns that get "washed away" will have some form of safety net to fall back on.
Am I missing something in that assessment?
FEMA doesn’t compensate lost land, and shouldn’t. Towns and cities who want to remain in environmentally unstable places are gonna have to figure that out.
States, towns, and cities could probably use eminent domain to take land that is going to flood too often. That way the owners would get some value and have to move. The problem is that then the rest of us are paying for land that’s going to vanish, and it’s a harder sell than paying for a reservoir.
FEMA doesn't do that? I def agree they shouldn't, but I thought that was one of the things they did.
The eminent domain bit feels like its probably too big for anything smaller than a large city to handle, so seems like states handling that is a good move. Don't suppose you know of any states with any active lines of effort in that direction?
FEMA is only for managing the emergency (usually natural disasters, but it’s also for man made ones like damn breaks or things like the train derailment in Ohio a few years back).
The damage is supposed to be covered by insurance, which is largely private except in places like Florida where most private insurers have left because it’s not ~~wildly profitable~~ viable, and only a public insurer exists.
I don’t know of any states working on this, but MA, Virginia, and North Carolina all have capes and peninsulas full or residents and homes that are at great danger in the future (if not already. Florida is obvious too, but they are actively doing the opposite by incentivizing (and legislating) people to ignore climate change.