THE FUTURE OF THE BEACH
CLIP FROM THE MOVIE BARBIE:
KEN: you know surfing is not even my job. It’s not even lifeguard. My job is just beach.
That is Ken talking from Gerta Gerwig’s movie Barbie. But “my job is beach” could also be the description of the work of coastal geologist Rob Young.
However, unlike Beach Ken, whose purpose is basically hanging out at the beach, Rob has one of the most complicated jobs around. He studies how coastlines are changing, especially as sea levels rise. And then the trickiest part: figuring out what we need to do about it to protect coastal communities and the ecosystems that make the coast so special - for the long haul.
I’m Carlyle Calhoun and you’re listening to Sea Change. Today, the future of our beaches.
Many of us have seen the footage of houses crumbling into the ocean on North Carolina’s Outer Banks. Or you’ve seen bulldozers out on your favorite beach, spreading new sand that’s been pumped in to try to save it.
And of course, it’s not just about losing the sand that we like to lay out our towels or play bocce ball on, people often live right behind the beach.
Scientists warn that nearly half of the world's sandy beaches could disappear by the end of this century. I think I speak for a lot of us when I say I have a deep love of everything about the beach, so I wanted to understand what that really means and what we can do about it.
So to understand our coastlines today, and the challenges we face ahead, we’ve gotta first go back. I started by asking Rob to take us back a hundred years ago, a time before the rise of the modern beach town.
But Rob is a geologist, so there was no way we were starting that recently.
Well, if, if, if you'll humor me a little bit, I'd like to start 15,000 years ago, um, wh- which to a geologist is like last Tuesday and, and then we'll talk about 100 years ago.
Ok, so 15000 years ago…
which was the max of the last ice age and the ice age then ends abruptly.
Sea level was about 300 feet plus lower than it is today. Which meant our shorelines were miles further out to sea. And over the many years, our beaches, marshes, estuaries our whole coastlines migrated from way out on the continental shelf to where they are today. They moved.
And I think it's important to start with that because, you know, everyone needs to understand that the way we picture the shore or the beach or the coast today is just a blink in time, right? It's, it's coming from somewhere, and it's on its way somewhere. These are dynamic places. They were meant to be dynamic. They've always moved.
They’ve always moved. And Rob’s key point: as long as our beaches and marshes have room to move, that’s what they do. They don’t disappear, they just change position.
And back to your original question, you know, 100 years ago or so is really when we first began to have some vacation spots at the coast, uh, largely up north Um, but there were, the, the U.S. Atlantic and Gulf Coasts were not ringed by coastal resort communities the way we think of them today. They were largely undeveloped.
But that quickly changed. As the middle class grew, as did the cultural and collective love of hanging out at the beach, a largely undeveloped coastline, dotted with some small fishing and whaling communities, became something different entirely.
I found this study from 1971 that showed nearly 70% of our coastlines, outside of Hawaii and Alaska, were still undeveloped. How much is undeveloped today?
Um, I mean, I can't give you a number, but anything that is not protected has been developed largely.
And that geologic fact, that beaches move, well, as we developed, we pretty much ignored that.
After the break…Rob and I dig into some big questions: how we can adapt to a changing coastline—and with rising sea levels and coastal erosion, how will we decide what beaches, communities, and investments to protect as nature keeps moving.
That’s coming up.
Rob Young is a coastal geologist, and the Director of the Program for the Study of Developed Shorelines, which is a joint Duke University andWestern Carolina University program. He is also co-author of the book The Rising Sea.
So Rob, you made the point that beaches move naturally. But that has been inconvenient for all the development of our coastlines. So how have we been trying to stop the beach from moving? And what have been the impacts of that?
Rob Young: so, you know, our initial response was to engineer with hard structures in the '50s, '60s, into the early '70s. Then we noticed that those hard structures don't really stop the coastal erosion. They don't stop sea level rise. So if you build a seawall in front of a house, eventually the beach is gonna disappear because the shoreline is still trying to move, right? So, um, communities that were interested in protecting property, they didn't like the fact that they were losing their beaches, and most environmental groups didn't like the fact that that beach is habitat, so we were losing habitat for turtles and shorebirds and, um, the little infaunal organisms that, that live, uh, in the intertidal zone in those beaches. So starting in 1970s, we really started to switch to what folks would call sort of a soft solution, which is beach nourishment.
And beach nourishment is pumping up sand from the ocean bottom, uh, onto the beach to, uh, rebuild a beach that is eroding in front of homes. Um, if there are no, uh, investment properties there, no hotels, no roads, well, most of those beaches don't get beach nourishment because nobody cares Uh, the shoreline moves, and there's still a beach.
Um, but largely at the moment, we are almost literally trying to hold every beach in place in the United States, on the East Coast and the Gulf Coast, by pumping sand. And th- you know, this is in response to this long-term shoreline retreat that's being driven by rising sea level, which is now accelerating. And rather than build seawalls, we're pumping sand to try and hold those beaches in, in place in front of the development
Carlyle: Right, and we are doing that because we are losing beaches because of sea level rise, which is accelerating. And you’re saving now instead of building seawalls which was maybe saving buildings but not beaches, we switched to pumping sand to try to save both. And your program actually keeps a national database on beach nourishment – You keep track of how much and where it’s happening, how much money is being spent. So why track this? Why does this information matter?
Rob Young: Yeah. That's one of the sort of wonky things we started doing in the 1980s that nobody else was doing because the Corps of Engineers who permits and sometimes carries out these projects really wasn't tracking everything that they were doing.
So we have for 40 years now, we've been tracking every beach nourishment project in the country. And, you know, it was not something that someone paid a, a lot of attention to back in the '80s and early '90s, but there's quite a bit of interest in, in that database today.
Carlyle: Okay, let's talk about why though. How much money has been spent, do you know, on beach nourishment so far?
Rob Young: Well, nationally, you know, we're in the, in the, in the billions, in double digits. You know, we are over $10 billion, um, and the expenditure is accelerating rapidly because right now everybody wants a beach. And it's also important to understand that beach nourishment is temporary, right?
It doesn't change the fact that that beach is trying to retreat. So the sand only lasts a few years, and how long it lasts depends on where you are and the storm history. Uh, when-- Down in South Florida, beaches tend to last a little bit longer.
By the time you get up to Delaware and New Jersey, beaches are lasting only, like, two years these days.
Um, so beach nourishment is a long-term commitment for... It's a-- It will never end. It's a long-term commitment for the communities that do it, and it's a long-term commitment for the taxpayers of the United States of America because we fund the lion's share of these projects.
Carlyle: So it's mostly public money that's getting spent to nourish all these beaches that the taxpayers may or may not be enjoying
Rob Young: It is almost entirely public money. And, uh, typically the federal government is cost-sharing about 60, 65% of that cost, and then the rest is borne by the state and the locality. There are very, very few examples of places where private funds are being used to fund beach nourishment. That tends to happen in a handful of gated communities or in places like Sagaponack, Bridgehampton on Long Island.
Carlyle: so how are these decisions made? let's say a beach town,they call up the federal government and they say, "Hey, our beach is eroding. We need more beach." does the federal government automatically say yes? does everybody's beach get nourished, um, equally? Like, how is that decision made?
Rob Young: Well, we could probably do a series of podcasts on, on this topic alone, but I'll try to I'll try to distill it. And, and there's a lot of, uh, who knows in there as well. But to get federal funding, your, your project has to be included in the Water Resources Development Act, Then, uh, in a spending bill, Congress needs to authorize the spending for the project, or the Corps of Engineers might have a pot of emergency funding post-storm, um, or the Federal Emergency Management Agency might have some funding for c- your community post-storm Um, but not everyone has a federal project. Not everyone has been granted a federal project. And, you know, it's always been a little bit mysterious and probably a little bit political as to who gets the money, where, when, and why. And the competition is just becoming more and more keen as, you know, we try to do beach nourishment everywhere, um, and as the federal government's tolerance for spending that kind of money at the state level declines. And, you know, I think that in particular, this administration is a little bit less interested in, uh, continuing the federal pipeline in the same way.
They're trying to pass more responsibility to the states, both for post-storm rebuilding and for coastal protection projects.
Carlyle: Yeah. I mean, it's interesting. Like you said, this never ends, the need to nourish beaches. Um, is there enough sand and is there enough money to keep doing what we've been doing?
Rob Young: Uh, no. It's not sustainable, but, uh, you know, nobody wants to talk about that. And, you know, understanding exactly where the breaking point will come is a little bit difficult. But yeah, I mean, we- we're already running out of sand in some places.
You know, in South Florida, we're running out of sand. I mean, they're having to truck haul a lot of sand in, which is not ideal. It's really expensive. It messes up your roads. and the cost is accelerating and, you know, ultimately, local communities are going to have to take more responsibility for, for, for paying for beach nourishment, I think, which would be a good thing in my opinion. Um, but there's absolutely no way that we're gonna be able to continue holding the shoreline in place, again, from Maine to Texas simply by pumping sand. Um, but you know, that's not a conversation that most folks are too interested in having right now. And you know, really, we need a national vision or a national plan for how we allocate both the sand and the funding.
You know, where is the real federal interest and where is there no federal interest? Um, you know, there's probably some obvious places like, uh, doing beach nourishment and coastal protection for Wallops Island, Virginia, where we, uh, test missiles and rockets and launch things. Yeah, okay. There's pretty clear federal interest there.
Um, you know, m- maybe protecting beaches in areas surrounding, uh, developed urban areas, um, maybe there's a real federal interest there. But in small coastal resort communities where 99% of it is investment properties, is there a federal interest in spending federal money there? You know, that's certainly open to discussion.
Carlyle: so what, what about the environmental impacts? I mean, we're-- It's now, it's, it's late summer, you know, this is when sea turtles are hatching. Um, I would think that slurring a bunch of sand onto the beach would create a different habitat. Like, what, what changes environmentally to the beach when we, pump a bunch of new sand on there?
Rob Young: With a bunch of new sand on there So I think there's pretty good evidence that by and large beach nourishment is good for turtles. Um, y- you don't want to change the color of the sand too much because the sex of turtle eggs is determined by incubation temperature. So if we make all our beaches darker and warm them all, we could be messing with that turtle biology a little bit.
For other organisms, we don't really know what the impacts are of doing beach nourishment on this scale.
But I can, you know, just anecdotally, as somebody who goes to the beach all the time all over the country, I can tell you that there's a big difference in going to a beach that's had 50 years of beach nourishment, like Carolina Beach or Wrightsville Beach, North Carolina, or Virginia Beach, Virginia, near where I grew up, um, you know, Miami Beach, and going to a beach that's never had a beach nourishment project.
And, and those beaches are alive. Um, whereas there are many beaches that have had long-term beach nourishment where, you know, the only foraging shorebird has a french fry in its mouth.
I mean, we, you know, we need to understand what we're doing because this isn't just an environmental issue either. Um, y- y- you know, if you're impacting fisheries, for example, that's, that's an economic issue.some of the people who are most concerned about beach nourishment in New Jersey and off Long Island are, are clammers. Um, so, so it's... You know, we need to be able to understand what the economic impacts are of our desire to hold beaches in front of coastal resort communities.
Carlyle: Right, but I mean talking about economic impacts, that is often the justification used for beach nourishment right? Like a lot of these beach communities rely on the tourism dollars that they bring in. So there's, there's an economic argument for continuing the beach nourishment
economic impacts to the environment, but also economic impacts are the, justification used for a lot of this, right? Like a lot of these beach communities rely on the tourism dollars that they bring in. So there's, there's an economic argument for continuing the beach nourishment
Rob Young: There is, and certainly, yeah. I mean, the, the argument for spending federal funds on a beach nourishment project is that these are vital parts of any state's economy, right? The coastal economy generates a lot of money, and so it makes sense to, uh, spend federal dollars to protect that economy. Of course, I would turn that argument on its head and say, you know, these are some of the most economically productive, economies in, i- in any coastal state, so they ought to be able to siphon off a small portion of that, economic GDP and pay for their own damn beach nourishment. Um,
Carlyle: that probably doesn't make you super popular everywhere
Rob Young: Yeah, well, I'm not super popular everywhere. Um,
Carlyle: Yeah so I wanna ask you about another controversial idea.
Yeah. So I, I wanna get to another one of your ideas that was maybe also not so popular. Not that beach nourishment is your idea, but another kind of controversial one. Um, so you've come down to the-- You've done a lot of work on the Gulf Coast over the years. You spent, um, after Hurricane Katrina, you proposed something called SRAC, which stands for Shoreline Retreat Advisory Commission.
Um, it was a bit of a hot potato of an idea, um, probably why 20 years later nothing like it's been created. But the idea was to... Is she hugging? The idea was to keep vulnerable coastlines from being rebuilt, right? Can you tell us about this idea? And I think this is something you've talked about other places as well, of just, like, rebuilding in vulnerable places.
Rob Young: Well, I think the, the idea was to pull federal funding out of areas that have had multiple disaster declarations, and it cost federal taxpayers significant amounts of money over time and will continue to do so long into the future. So yes, that was congressional testimony on the reauthorization of something called the Coastal Barrier Resources Act And the Coastal Barrier Resources Act in the late 1970s was a bipartisan act that said, "Hey, any of these barrier islands that are not currently developed, w- we're gonna map them into something called the Coastal Barrier Resource System, and they can't get federal funding anymore for roads or protection or something like that."
Much of Louisiana is mapped into the Coastal Barrier Resource System, as are shorelines throughout the US Gulf and East Coast. Um, and, uh, you know, it's really worked. It, it has discouraged development in those places that were undeveloped at the time.
There are a few places that developed anyway, but those folks are having to pay for their own risk.
um, so my idea was to take the Coastal Barrier Resources System, which we already have, and dev- develop criteria to add highly vulnerable resort communities into the Coastal Barrier Resource System. So y- you know, why not create a system where some of the most vulnerable, uh, shorelines in the US, like, you know, uh, sorry to call them out, but, you know, like the west end of Dauphin Island, Alabama, for example, which is barely there. add those places into the Coastal Barrier Resource System. It doesn't tell them they have to leave. Um, you know, we're not o- sending the storm troopers in and telling everybody off the barrier island. It just simply says, you know, "You're on your own. Figure out how to pay for your own risk if you want to stay there." And, um, you know, I think it's... And maybe we give them one more shot, you know, to, "One, you, you got one more, and then after that, you're on your own." That was, that was the general idea. Yeah, there, there weren't too many people that ran with that idea, though.
Carlyle: Well, it's, I mean, it's interesting 'cause a lot of your studies and a lot of what you say gets to the point that at the moment our systems are kind of incentivizing that we continue to build and rebuild in places that we know are risky, right?
Rob Young: Right? It absolutely incentivizes that. I mean, you know, to some degree that federal spending creates a moral hazard for the, the people who buy there and for the rest of us. and you know,I'm not saying that we shouldn't do beach nourishment anywhere. Don't get me wrong. That is not what I'm saying at all. Uh, you know, I, I love to go to the beach.
Um, I'm just saying that w- we need a better plan, and right now we seem to pre- be pretending that we're gonna do it everywhere forever.
Carlyle: Yeah, and even on a larger scale, decisions beyond beach nourishment, like, what we're choosing to protect and what we're not going forward, we're gonna have to be making those decisions a lot more often. So maybe let's talk about places where we have rebuilt when perhaps we shouldn't have. you wrote an op-ed after Hurricane Ian, um, which we all probably remember was a devastating hurricane that did a ton of damage to, to Florida and also the, uh, the Carolinas, North and South Carolina.
you know, thousands of homes were destroyed, and, and they were largely rebuilt. can you explain the system that kind of, again, incentivizes that we rebuild in the same way rather than s- taking a beat and saying, "Hey, how..."
Like, how can we get, uh, Rob, how can we do this better?
Rob Young: Phew. Um, I mean, there... So many things to talk about related to how we rebuild, and particularly Ian and, and, uh, Ida, um, uh, which caused similar damage t- uh, to the parishes south of New Orleans in Louisiana. Um, you know, there, there are several big problems.
The, the resort communities out by the oceanfront, they tend to rebuild. Um, a- and they, some of that is happening with federal funds and s- you know, var- from a variety of different sources. Some of that is happening just because they tend to be wealthy, and people are either self-insured or have a lot of money.
What we're really losing is just inland of those coastal resort communities. So you mentioned Ian in Florida. Well, everybody focused on Sanibel and Fort Myers Beach, but inland of there is Fort Myers proper and little islands like San Carlos Island, which is where the sort of the shrimping fleet is based. Um, and a lot of people in those areas did not rebuild because they are middle class or lower middle class. They're working class. A lot of folks were turned from homeowners into renters. Um, you know, a- again, a lot of real estate speculation came in. This is their opportunity to buy up some place that might've been full of single wides and tear them all down and put something fancy
there. um, you know, every time we have a big storm like that, there are clear winners and losers, and I assure you, the losers are not the wealthy people with the investment property on the oceanfront.
the losers are the working class communities that serve those resort communities. And, you know, insurance is going through the roof. Uh, you have to rebuild to new codes, so if your house was built in the 1950s, it might be extremely expensive to rebuild it even in, in kind today. And, you know, that's the part of the, the post-storm equation that we really are still not doing very well with. I
Carlyle: Yeah, you know, unfortunately there's gonna be more devastating storms in the future. What should happen after that,
Rob Young: that storm?
Carlyle: Like federal money comes in, should there be more strings attached? Like how can we rebuild smarter?
Rob Young: So what should we do, Rob,
after all that
Carlyle: Yes.
Rob Young: Um. so number one, first do no more harm. I mean, it's, it's ridiculous to me that we still have municipalities and counties permitting development in areas that are flood-prone or exposed to coastal erosion and storms, but we do. So, y- you know, if you look at Charleston, South Carolina, for
example, beautiful place, but they are, you know, in the process of putting thousands of new units in the flood zone in an area called Cainhoy,
which is currently largely undeveloped and it's all marsh, right?
At the same time, Charleston is gonna be asking the federal government for more than a billion dollars to build a new seawall
around the Charleston peninsula, seven, eight miles long, right? So in my opinion, if you are still putting new stuff in harm's way, you should not get any federal money for resilience or disaster rebuilding or... We, we spend so much money post-storm on rebuilding. We need to get something back for that, and right now we get almost nothing back for that. The only stick we have is federal flood insurance, um, so we get some communities to elevate homes, but not to step out of the flood zone. Um, we cannot be putting new stuff in harm's way where we will immediately have to be spending money to protect it
or to rebuild it. That just seems absurd to me.
Yeah, yeah. What about all the stuff though that already is built but is in the riskiest places? The, the term I'm gonna bring up is managed retreat,
is another... Yeah. So the, so, so that was number one. Nu- number two is the only long-term solution to reducing exposure and vulnerability to coastal hazards, whether we're talking about sea level rise or the next storm, is retreat.
And retreat does not mean an end to the coastal economy. It doesn't mean that everybody leaves the beach, you know? Um, managed retreat, if implemented correctly, would mean that we're taking baby steps back from the most vulnerable portions of a coastal community. So, uh, you know, a good example that's been in the news a lot lately on the Outer Banks of North Carolina are the communities of Rodanthe and Buxton,
uh, where there are houses dropping into the sea and septic tanks are rolling around in the ocean, you
Carlyle: Ja. Ja
Rob Young: Uh, right now we're pumping up a new beach in front of those homes in Buxton as we speak.
Uh, two million cubic yards of sand, tens of millions of dollars. Um, could we spend that money in a better way? Yes. Um, you know, we could buy those properties for that money. Um, we could take a step back there. Uh, so the idea of retreat is that you take a step back, not from an entire barrier island, not from an entire municipality, not from an entire county, but from those places that are in the biggest trouble right now.
And every planner and every emergency manager and every municipality and county in the country knows exactly where those places are in their town.
Carlyle: Mhm.
Rob Young: To me, this is how you preserve the coastal economy for the long run, is you don't float bonds and risk bankruptcy by trying to sustain what is ultimately unsustainable. You don't try and spend all of your personnel time, planning time, emergency management time on this one place that is so crazy vulnerable that you are never gonna fix it, and we do that in a lot of places around the country.
and I also think it's important f- for everybody to understand that we are retreating. Like we- Yeah
we are retreating in many places on the East Coast and the Gulf Coast. It's just that we're doing it in a completely unmanaged way rather than a managed way.
Carlyle: Yeah. Right. So we could be more thoughtful about this. So you brought up buyouts, um, which, I mean, they, they make a lot of sense, right? You did the actually a cost benefit analysis. You brought up the Outer Banks, um, for the town of Rodanthe, and you found a certain amount of buyouts would save millions and millions and millions of dollars.
So why are buyouts, uh, not popular? Why are they so controversial?
why are buyouts not something that's happening more regularly?
Rob Young: I think there's a misimpression for how important those oceanfront homes are to the tax base. And if you actually crunch the numbers, they're a minuscule part of the tax base. Um, and the amount of money that we spend to protect them is not worth it. Um, And I, I, you know, and I get this. Um, there is an aversion in these coastal communities to giving up,
I
Carlyle: Ja
Rob Young: y- uh, you know, y- any part of the map of their community. I mean, I think a lot of people view it as, "If we don't hold the line here, it's gonna go everywhere," you know?
I mean, um, I think there's a real misimpression for how this could work and how it could really serve the community. And, you know, there just aren't very many messengers spreading that message. But, uh, you know, it's sort of understandable. Realtors and developers don't like this idea very much. Um, and, uh, you know, if you look at who serves local government, county commissioners, town commissioners, it's made up largely of realtors and developers, um, because those are thankless jobs that don't pay very much, so who else is gonna wanna do it? Um, so, I mean, I think there's a combination of things, some fact-based and some emotional, um, that prevent this from being openly discussed and openly considered.
Carlyle: Yeah, and just on an individual basis too. I mean, nobody wants to leave their home, even if it makes sense on paper from afar, you know?
Rob Young: Nope, these are not-
Carlyle: leave
Rob Young: People don't wanna leave.
Yeah, but these aren't, these aren't homes, okay? These
Carlyle: A lot
Rob Young: properties. So y- yes, we can call them houses if we want to, but please do understand that the vast majority of them, over 95%, these are second, third, fourth homes. So these are investment properties, by and large. They're businesses, you know? And, um, sometimes you make a good decision with your investment and sometimes you don't, and whose job is it to bail you out if you make a bad decision on that investment? Now, you know, a l- a lot of people are gonna think what I just said is-- sounds very insensitive because their family may have owned a beach house for decades or a couple of generations.
I mean, I get it. um... But nevertheless, you know, if we're looking at the big picture, we just can't afford to protect it all forever. And, um, you know, in the U.S., we're supposed to believe in free markets. And so right now, all of this is subsidizing the market for coastal property and the coastal economy, and we really need to be incorporating the risk of being there into the cost of being there and into that coastal economy and finding a way for local communities to be covering the cost of their own risk. And why do I care so much about that? Well, like, as a scientist, I think if, if they had more skin in the game or all the skin in the game, they're gonna care a lot more about the science of sea level rise and storm risk
Carlyle: Yeah. So let's do think about big picture and going forward. So as you mentioned, sea level rise is accelerating, especially along the southeastern coast and Gulf Coast. Um, so if you could design from scratch a genuinely resilient coastal community, um, architecturally, financially, what would it look like, and where, if anywhere, is someone actually building it that way today?
Rob Young: Well, you know, the, the communities of, uh, Seaside, Florida, and Watercolor, Florida, um, did not do a bad job in setting up those communities.
The vast majority of the development is back off the coast. There's a sort of a line of oceanfront homes. It's a little bit more gratuitous than it was when they first laid out those communities, um, unfortunately. Uh, nevertheless, um, y- you know, there, there was a minimal development on the oceanfront, and it was set reasonably back on fairly high bluffs and dunes. Um, and the vast majority of the property was, was inland. Now, you know, the downside is those houses cost you know, from between $2 and $15 million,
so that's not the solution for everybody.
But, you know, it's important to give people credit for things that are done well, even if it is, you know, horribly exclusive. Um, but they're not gated. Um, anyway, um, you know, so there are a few examples, but the pro- you know, the biggest problem is that we've built out most of the coast already.
I mean,
you know, we have what we have. Um, and so we have communities full of high-rises like Myrtle Beach and Miami Beach and Virginia Beach and, you know. What are you gonna do in those places? I mean, we're probably never gonna move those buildings back. That's my guess. Um, so th- then the question becomes, you know, how long can you keep a beach in front of them, and who pays?
Carlyle: Yeah. I mean, are there other options for adaptation? I guess if we were gonna flip the script, we're gonna, there's a lot we're gonna lose. But if we were to look at opportunities, possibilities to adapt, what can we be doing better?
Rob Young: Ugh. You know, other than, you know, I still, my first dream is just to start with the low-hanging fruit, which is no community should be putting any more stuff in harm's way.
I mean, that's, that's the easiest place to start. Everything else after that is really, really hard. Um, but there are many, many communities that still are largely made up of, you know, single-family dwellings where we could institute a policy of voluntary buyouts, m- make it easier for people to move homes, get the insurance industry and FEMA involved in, um, figuring out how we can, how, how, how communities could develop a plan that lowers everybody's insurance rates.
I mean, there is something called the Community Rating System within the Federal Flood Insurance Program that sort of does this right now, but, but there's no retreat in there, you know? Um, uh, so, you know, I think that, I, I think insurers are very interested right now in ex- in exposure, vulnerability, and risk. And, uh, there, you know, there might be opportunities to develop some sort of forward-looking plan. But finding a community that's really interested in talking about how that would work is, is, is very difficult because most elected officials seem primarily interested in just protecting the tax base and the map as it is.
Um, and we really need a national plan and a national vision, uh, where we all come together and decide where we're gonna use the sand, where we're gonna spend the money, and who's going to pay.
And, you know, then the last little bit is, you know, every coastal community should be having a conversation right now amongst their elected officials, planners, emergency managers, and citizens, what do we do when the money stops? Because it's going to stop.
Carlyle: Well, Rob, thank you so much. Um, and enjoy your vacation at the beach.
Rob Young: Well off the beach. Uh, um, but I'll, I can see it. We'll be able to see it from the house.
Carlyle: That sounds lovely. And I am just back from the beach, so I know, uh, I know these are places that so many of us, care about and love. So thanks for, spending time talking about all of this with me.
Rob Young: I- This was great. Thanks. Sure. I appreciate it.
I appreciate the opportunity.
