The town’s only protection from the Gulf of Mexico’s increasingly erratic storms is a pristine beach that draws millions of tourists every year — but that beach is disappearing fast. A series of storms, culminating in last fall’s Hurricane Idalia, have eroded most of the sand that protects Redington Shores and the towns around it, leaving residents just one big wave away from water overtaking their homes.
This perilous situation is the result of a standoff between local residents and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the federal agency that handles flood prevention and protects many of the nation’s beaches. The Corps often rebuilds eroded beaches by hauling in thousands of tons of sand, but the agency is refusing to deliver $42 million of new sand to Pinellas County unless the area’s coastal property owners grant public access to the slivers of beach behind their homes. Hundreds of these property owners, however, are in turn refusing to sign documents that grant these points of access, which are known as easements. The face-off has brought the area’s storm recovery to a near standstill.
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Agencies like the Corps have had to weigh these costs against the interests of property owners in places like the Tampa Bay region. When those interests come into conflict, populated coastal areas can be left exposed or uninsured, making them sitting ducks for the next climate-fueled storm.
edit: the beaches are public land anyway https://cohost.org/lupi/post/6327770-wow-this-gets-even-d
and they wonder why the insurance industry is fleeing florida like rats a sinking ship
nobody wants to insure homes in florida because even if they weren't all gonna be underwater by 2100, the homeowners want theirs to be underwater sooner by refusing to allow erosion repair.
i'd wonder if there are grounds for eminent domain/strategic use of condemning by the government in the public interest/for public safety
(oh, from the article, talking about new jersey after Sandy)
Local governments spent years trying to obtain them, and the state government had to use eminent domain to seize portions of the beach in order to satisfy the agency.
The strange thing about the easement controversy is that these waterfront residents don’t fully own the beaches behind their homes — in fact, most of the county’s beaches are already public. State law provides that all Florida beaches with artificial sand are public up to the “erosion control line,” which is about the same as that which marks high tide. In other words, everything from the water to the high tide line is open for anyone to walk, tan, or spread a blanket. The land in dispute between the Corps and the homeowners is only the section of sand between the backside of a beach house and the high tide line, which in many cases is just a few dozen feet.
when Pinellas County tried to obtain separate temporary easements to build new emergency dunes at the top of its beaches, many residents still refused, in part out of a concern that new dunes would block their ocean views. This further stalemate with homeowners has forced the county to build a piecemeal dune behind coastal properties, leaving holes in front of the homes and hotels where the owners didn’t want to grant an easement.
This broken dune won’t do much come storm season, according to René Flowers, a Pinellas County commissioner who has been pushing the Corps to deliver the sand.
