Newsday.com - Nation/World News

Newsday.com - Nation/World News

A fault line in the sand

BY TINA SUSMAN
STAFF CORRESPONDENT

UPPER CAPTIVA, Fla. -- Twenty-two years ago, Congress passed a law to discourage building in places like this: a barely populated, palm-covered coastal paradise that had no electricity or phones and was accessible only by sea or air.

Upper Captiva is still accessible only by sea or air, but little else remains the same.

Houses, many of them palatial structures with private docks, line the white-sand beaches and the narrow paths that cut through the lush terrain. Phone service and power have arrived, along with a sprawling resort and cafes catering to the island's well-heeled visitors.

And the 1982 law no longer applies here, due to lobbying by state politicians who said it was unfair, making the exclusive hideaway eligible for the aid it was intended to withhold from storm-prone areas -- aid like federally backed flood insurance and money to rebuild beaches and infrastructure damaged by floods and hurricanes.

This might have gone largely unnoticed were it not for the 2004 hurricane season, which sent four major storms slamming into the United States and left swaths of coastline looking a lot like Upper Captiva did after Hurricane Charley hit it Aug. 13 -- like the setting for a disaster movie.

Now, some areas still covered by the 1982 Coastal Barrier Resources Act, which encompasses 1.3 million acres from Maine to Texas, including stretches of Long Island from Jamaica Bay to Montauk Point and parts of Puerto Rico and Michigan, are seeing the costly clean-ups that may lie ahead if they don't follow Upper Captiva and other communities where politicians, often backed by developers, have orchestrated their removal from the law.

Dire warnings

Their worries have been exacerbated by meteorologists' warnings that the Earth is entering a new cycle of high hurricane activity and that more seasons like the last one are likely.

"This island is in the real danger zone," said Jeff Hauserman as he cast his line into the sea from the sand on North Topsail Beach, N.C., one town fighting for removal from Cobra, as the Coastal Barrier Resources Act is commonly known.

The thin bit of sand on which Hauserman stood on a cool October day proved his point. No more than a few feet wide, the beach was virtually gone at high tide an hour later, and the sea lapped at the steps of wooden walkways leading to homes that hovered over the eroding dunes.

"A month ago that sand extended about 100 yards," Hauserman said, indicating a nearby pile of new sand. Trucked in to shore up the beach, it was fast vanishing under water due to erosion eating away the shore.

If anything illustrates the flood risk on North Topsail, it's the two-story outhouse in a parking lot across the street from the beach. Perched on stilts about 20 feet high, the toilet is a testament to the storm surges common to the island, which is still rebuilding after being ravaged by Hurricane Fran in 1996, and which was damaged last year in Hurricane Isabel.

Like Upper Captiva, much of this sandy spit 150 miles southeast of Raleigh was included in Cobra when it became law. Based on maps drawn by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and with the backing of environmentalist groups, Cobra was an unusual law because it did not ban anybody from building on Cobra-designated land.

Rather, it sought to prevent building by making such land -- as-yet undeveloped and in flood- and hurricane-prone locations -- off-limits for federal subsidies. The cost of private flood insurance, of restocking sand on one's own beaches, and of rebuilding roads and bridges after washouts was expected to quash any ideas of development.

Not only would this save taxpayers billions, it would protect the mainland from nature's fury by leaving barrier islands intact, the law's supporters said.

"What it really does is shift the responsibility from the government to the private individual, if everything is followed the way it should be," said Andy Coburn, an expert on coastal erosion and associate director at Duke University's Program for the Study of Developed Shorelines.

An unexpected boom

What Cobra's supporters hadn't counted on was the boom in real estate prices, particularly for waterfront property, and the mass migration of people to coastal areas. With coastal property values doubling and tripling every few years, having to fork over a few thousand dollars a year for private flood insurance was no reason for a buyer to shun Cobra areas.

Houses and condominium complexes began sprouting in places like North Topsail, and residents were soon doing battle with the changing sand.

"Erosion is not the problem. Development is," said Coburn, who describes such barrier beaches as constantly shifting land masses that shrink and expand with nature's whims. Building on them slashes away at their dunes and foliage and hinders their ability to survive nature's fury. The result is erosion that eventually wipes out the barrier beaches and leaves the mainland open to the sea and wind, Coburn said.

The U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy estimates that 1,500 homes and the land they are built on are lost to erosion each year. Nevertheless, in the past 30 years, more than 37 million people and 19 million homes have been added to U.S. coastal areas, and 3,600 people move to coastal communities each day, according to a recent report from the commission.

The development trend is reflected in the rising cost of storm damages. Before 1989, no coastal storm had led to insured losses of more than $1 billion. Since then, at least 10 have -- not including the four this year. Hauserman bought a condominium three years ago in a non-Cobra section of North Topsail, so he has federal flood insurance. That costs a few hundred dollars a year compared to a few thousand or even tens of thousands for private insurance.

But Hauserman would have bought even in a Cobra area because of the payoff, regardless of the environmental issues. "If I were wealthy enough to afford one of the homes here, sure," he said, looking at the homes lining the sand. "Prices on this island have skyrocketed."

Fear of developers

Those attitudes dismay Cobra's supporters, who fear the law and the land it was supposed to protect are doomed as developers and politicians work to wrest their property from its grip.

"It's so distressing to see, but with this amount of money, there's no hope," said Orrin Pilkey, director of the Program for the Study of Developed Shorelines at Duke. "That's a terrible thing to say about America but it's true: Greed runs the show, and greed certainly runs the show at the beach."

Since the law's passage, it has been altered 42 times, mostly to remove land from it.

One of the most controversial changes came in 1998 after a hard-fought battle headed by state Sen. Tillie Fowler, a Jacksonville, Fla., Republican. Despite opposition from Fish and Wildlife, Fowler successfully lobbied Congress to remove 75 acres of Florida land -- including expensive property on Sanibel Island a few miles south of Upper Captiva -- from Cobra.

A year later, then-Congressman Porter Goss, a Republican from Sanibel who now heads the CIA, pushed the legislation that removed chunks of Upper Captiva from Cobra.

This despite the area's obviously precarious location. In fact, Upper Captiva exists because of a 1921 hurricane that severed the large island of Captiva and created a wide waterway. Land north of the break became known as Upper Captiva. Upper Captiva was split again by Charley, which chopped off a large section of island and created yet another lagoon. Locals jokingly refer to the bigger piece as Upper Upper Captiva.

Political strategies

In getting land removed from Cobra, politicians have generally argued that Fish and Wildlife erred by including parcels already developed or under development -- conditions that should have excluded them from Cobra.

In one case, paved golf-cart paths were deemed sufficient infrastructure to qualify an island owned by a wealthy developer as developed, and it was removed from Cobra. In several cases, developers insisted they had already laid sewage lines or had other infrastructure in place.

Cobra proponents admit that the crude mapping techniques used in the 1980s -- flying planes over the coast, taking pictures and drawing lines on topographic maps -- left them open to debate. Lines drawn on photos taken from 10,000 feet are subject to wide interpretations, said Martin Kodis of the Fish and Wildlife Service, which has fought most but not all Cobra challenges.

"We've come across situations where private land bordering conservation areas was mistakenly included due to mapping errors," Kodis said, citing a parcel in Cape Fear, N.C., removed recently from Cobra. Fish and Wildlife also did not fight the Upper Captiva changes, which Goss argued were to fix a mapping mistake.

More often, though, environmentalists say challenges come from politicians seeking to please constituents, often wealthy homeowners or developers who see profits in building up waterfront property. In Congressional testimony in May 1999 on Goss' proposed change to Upper Captiva's status, for example, the Washington D.C.-based lobby group Coast Alliance dismissed it as a "taxpayer rip-off" that would fund developers' "risky ventures."

"I think it boils down to the basics: politics and money," said Coburn. "What does a local politician have to lose by getting their beaches renourished and making them wider? Nothing, and they have everything to gain."

Finding inconsistencies

To property owners caught in the middle, it's a matter of fairness.

They point to inconsistencies that have led to some Cobra communities being adjacent to non-Cobra communities, who benefit from federal funds denied their neighbors.

"It's very hard on them economically," North Topsail mayor Rodney Knowles said of homeowners in his town's Cobra areas, who pay about $10,000 a year for private flood insurance. Town Hall itself is covered by Cobra, and the city pays $26,750 annually to insure it.

On Upper Captiva, Fire Chief Richard Pepper bristles at the idea that just because many of his island's property owners are wealthy, they should not get federal assistance.

"Everyone is under the impression that everyone out here is rich, so why should they get any assistance? But a lot of people here are working class," he said while driving a golf cart -- the only form of transport on the island -- around broken trees and mountains of debris from damaged homes. "It irritates me."

Seeking federal aid

He and other island residents make no apologies for their efforts to get federal help for Upper Captiva's hurricane recovery, whose cost has yet to be determined. However, Lee County, which includes Upper Captiva, has received more than 3,500 claims for federal flood insurance from Charley damage, according to the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and some federal funds have already gone toward clean-up on Upper Captiva.

"A lot of people would say why should taxpayers have to pay because these people want to live in these areas. But look at the flip side: what kinds of taxes do these people pay?" said John Albion, a Lee County commissioner who visited Upper Captiva recently to assess needs. "How do you take their tax dollars and not give them anything back for it? There are better ways to discourage development."

As he spoke, hammering and electric saws could be heard from homes undergoing repairs in hopes they would be ready for vacation rentals when the high season begins in December. Many fetch $5,000 weekly, money that goes to property owners who don't live on the island themselves and rarely visit.

Cobra proponents say taxpayers shouldn't be subsidizing flood insurance and repairs for such owners.

"That to me is extremely important when we look at what people's needs are after a storm," said Coburn. "We have significant levels of lower- and middle-income people who really need assistance. Then you have people whose million-dollar properties are destroyed, and they're cashing in. Where should our priorities be?"

There are about 320 homes on Upper Captiva, for example, but according to Pepper, the island has about 45 full-time residents. North Topsail's population is 843, but it has more than 2,000 housing units, according to census figures, indicating a large number of dwellings are vacation properties.

In Cape San Blas, Fla., another beachfront Cobra community where hundreds of houses are perched along the sand, there are 25 to 30 year-round residents, said Victor Ramos, a real estate agent.

All it takes is a walk near the waterfront homes to see how few people live there. Like most of North Topsail, on a warm, sunny Sunday in October the garages were empty, windows were boarded up, and hundreds of "For Rent" signs stuck out of the ground.

On the beach, signs of the community's hazardous location were clear: two houses and their belongings lay in sad, crumpled piles on the sand, where they fell when the winds and water of Hurricane Ivan swept through in September.

Stumps of trees uprooted in the storm and dumped on the beach gave the image of an eerie forest growing out of the sea. A bulldozer was hauling in sand to shore up a home teetering on the edge of a dune.

For obvious reasons, Cape San Blas and much of south Gulf County -- 1,200 acres in all -- are included in Cobra. Like North Topsail, many residents are hoping to change that. Their argument has a new sense of urgency: providers of private flood insurance in this area are getting out of the business due to the risk, leaving homeowners unable to insure their property. That makes it impossible for them to sell, because without flood insurance, lenders won't issue mortgages in flood-prone areas.

"It's a huge hot potato," said Ramos. "To allow the government to take taxes from these people and not give anything back, it's not right."

The risks are known

Environmentalists, though, say anyone building on coastal barriers is aware of the risk and that taxpayers should not foot the bill for their dream homes.

"If I was out there driving a Maserati or some high-risk car, I wouldn't ask you to pay the insurance on it, but that's exactly what's happening with flood insurance," said Dawn Hamilton of Coast Alliance.

Kodis, of the Fish and Wildlife department, said officials are hoping to reinforce Cobra by using digital photography to update and perfect the original maps, making them harder to dispute. Since map modernization began in 1999, there have been only eight changes to Cobra, compared to 34 between 1992 and 1998, he said.

But with efforts like those in Cape San Blas and North Topsail forging ahead -- both communities are lobbying Congress to change their status in time for the next storm season -- environmentalists aren't hopeful. The ferocious rate of building in such hurricane-ravaged areas shows that even without federal assistance, people are willing to risk building on the coast, said Hamilton.

"It defeats common sense, especially now when you look at nature at its most destructive," she said. "But the draw is still there. People love the coast. My fear is that we're loving it to death."