Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, April 10, 1990 TAG: 9004100513
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A1 EDITION: STATE
SOURCE: The Washington Post
DATELINE: TOPSAIL BEACH, N.C. LENGTH: Medium
A hundred yards to the south, two landscapers stooped atop the new dune, planting four parallel rows of grasses, apparently trying to establish what North Carolina law mandates as the "first line of stable vegetation." The closer that line is to the ocean, the more development can be squeezed on this pencil-thin, 20-mile barrier island that hugs the coast.
The bulldozing, which state officials described as "suspicious" and probably illegal, is dramatic evidence to many environmentalists that the lessons of Hurricane Hugo have been forgotten almost as quickly as the huge storm's flood surge receded six months ago.
Both here and in South Carolina, the two states that bore the brunt of the worst hurricane to hit the East Coast in 36 years, there are numerous examples of how officials are liberally interpreting beach-development laws and allowing widespread construction of oceanfront properties. In South Carolina, most of the oceanside homes and buildings damaged in Hugo's $7 billion sweep across the mainland are being rebuilt on the same lots.
"By most standards, that type of behavior would be classified as insanity," said Orrin H. Pilkey Jr., a geology professor at Duke University and an authority on beach erosion.
H. Wayne Beam, executive director of the South Carolina Coastal Council, recalling the last great hurricane that roared across both states in 1954, said, "It's just like after Hazel. The day after the hurricane, people were back out on the beach, like ants."
South Carolina officials say more than 90 percent of beach homes damaged by Hugo will be rebuilt on their present lots despite a beach-development law hailed as the nation's most restrictive when it took effect two years ago. By the state's count, only 131 of the thousands of such homes have been declared "damaged beyond repair," and even those often can be rebuilt on the same lots by moving the structures landward, officials said.
Officials and researchers are unanimous in blaming the federal government for the rebuilding, saying a federal flood-insurance program initially designed to discourage building in flood-prone areas has had the opposite effect on the nation's coasts, underwriting the costs of often precarious construction. Asked why South Carolina was experiencing a building frenzy, Beam replied: "The simple reason is those people have federal flood insurance."
Congress is considering revising the program to discourage oceanfront development, a step that environmentalists argue is logical and prudent. "Would the federal government underwrite development on the rim of a volcano?" asks Elise Jones, a coastal specialist at the National Wildlife Federation.
But even a change in the insurance program would not deal with another reason behind the rebuilding boom here: the lax attitude of state officials toward beach construction.
Faced with 54 court challenges to their power and proposals in the state legislature that would limit their authority, officials at the South Carolina Coastal Council say they have opted for the same liberal interpretation of rules that they used two years ago when the pioneering restrictions took effect. "We have to forgive, because we forgave it before," said Gered Lennon, a geologist with the state agency.
Pilkey and others argue that now should be the time to strictly interpret the rules, while the memory of the storm's Sept. 21 landfall is fresh.
South Carolina officials contend they are not retrenching and say their program will be an overall success if judged on a long-term basis. "We're going to retreat from the ocean, over time," Beam told reporters on heavily damaged Folly Island outside Charleston.
The South Carolina beach program does win kudos from environmentalists for its ban on seawalls and its prohibition of construction in a zone where normal erosion might be expected to move the sea landward in the next 40 years. Those erosion lines were not revised after Hugo, although in many places the storm surged inland further than predicted.
That makes rebuilding on much of the damaged oceanfront legal. Asked if continued use of the old construction lines might give a false sense of security to some homeowners, Beam replied: "You could look at it that way."
Beth A. Millemann, executive director of the Washington-based Coast Alliance, a federation of environmental groups, said despite her concern that South Carolina officials are taking "a much less hardball attitude" over reconstruction of beach homes, "these guys are on the cutting edge" and face considerable opposition from developers.
by CNB