Time for managed retreat?
If Bob Dylan sang it once, he sang it 1000
times and those times are certainly a-changin. Emmanuel
Macron has just been elected president of France, professional
surfer Kelly Slater is 4th in the world and the environment is
threatening to eat people alive.
But what to do when the ocean’s waters rise and rise and rise
and disappear whole properties? Well, Kauai County, part of the
island state of Hawaii, is considering offering inland turf swaps
for those who currently dwell in beachside homes.
According to Honolulu Civil
Beat:
“Every beachfront house will eventually fall into the
ocean,” said Chip Fletcher, associate dean for academic affairs at
the School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology at UH Manoa.
“People just don’t realize that they’re doomed.”
Homeowners in this newly designated danger zone did not ask
the county to bail them out, and several of those interviewed for
this story said they’re against it. But property swapping is a
concept that county planners are exploring as they consider the
costs of doing nothing — namely, the loss of beaches that are a
public trust asset and the displacement of local families.
“The plan would be to clear these properties and structures
out of the way so that the natural erosion process can happen and
we can have a beach there in perpetuity,” said Kauai County
Planning Director Kaaina Hull. “If the houses are collapsing in the
water, then it’s another big question of who’s going to clean this
up?”
As the surf eats away at the island’s contours, one way of
adapting involves demolishing oceanfront homes, businesses, hotels
and roads and rebuilding them inland.
But managed retreat, as it’s called, is logistically
complicated. It would require tremendous amounts of political will,
community buy-in and money. And there’s no blueprint in Hawaii for
implementing it on a large scale.
If you happened to live beachfront in Kauai would you trade out
for a nice valley home?
Maybe a Honolulu penthouse?
Or would you do what the world’s 4th best surfer does and lay
illegal tacos
out front in order to stop nature in its ugly tracks?
