While it’s been debated for decades, a bill filed this week by Sen. Marc Pacheco is raising the provocative question about whether it’s finally time for the state to buy out owners of repeatedly ravaged oceanfront homes.
Many of the properties pay subsidized insurance rates, drawing criticism from fiscal conservatives and environmentalists that taxpayers are helping pay for others’ decisions to live in vulnerable coastal regions. As climate change takes hold and sea levels rise, those debates are getting fiercer.
“There is a lot to be said for not rebuilding areas,’’ Pacheco, a Taunton Democrat, told the New England Center for Investigative Reporting. While the idea is short on details and cost estimates, Pacheco, chairman of the Senate Committee on Global Warming and Climate Change acknowledged “it doesn’t mean we have the resources to get people full market value.”
Pacheco is hoping some people will come to the conclusion that certain vulnerable oceanfront property is not a good longterm investment risk and, instead, homeowners will move to sell. He stressed the idea is still just a concept and it’s unclear how it would be funded or money distributed.
The idea is part of a larger bill filed Tuesday that attempts to ensure future Massachusetts governmental leaders continue to address climate change. The law would require a new advisory committee to develop a report examining the preparedness and vulnerability in the state for energy, transportation and other sectors – and figure out ways to address the issues.
Pacheco’s bill comes as the US Senate is poised this week to approve a delay in rate increases for homeowners with federal flood insurance. The increases, passed by Congress in 2012, were designed to have coastal homeowners pay for the full risk of living along the coast. But since its passage it has been met with widespread anger by homeowners and politicians because they say it raises rates too quickly and by too much.
There is increasing attention being trained on Massachusetts’ sandy coast by scientists, politicians and residents as a series of storms in recent years has caused dramatic damage from Salisbury to Sandwich. Debates are cropping up over the best way to protect property, with the state prohibiting or frowning on building permanent structures like seawalls. But other options – such as mining sand offshore to place on beaches as a buffer to the ocean’s fury is also discouraged because it can hurt fish and other wildlife.
