King Canute economics comes to Massachusetts
According to legend, King Canute tried to order the tide not to come in. Needless to say, he failed, divine rights of kings nonwithstanding.
Back when we lived in North Carolina, we visited the Outer Banks a few times. There were many expensive homes on the shoreline. These were often casualties of hurricanes that would push ocean water up over the islands. Then, as the hurricanes moved up the coast, water that had been pushed into Pamlico Sound would rush back over the island. The Outer Banks were subject to constant erosion. I never understood why anyone would invest in a house there and why any insurance company would sell insurance on it.
Now, it seems that property owners along Salisbury Beach MA squandered $600,000 after throwing 15,000 tons of sand on the beach to prevent erosion, only to see 7500 tons wash away in a single day, leaving homes weak and vulnerable. Now, they’re requesting money from the state to restore the dunes. I hope the state will resist this futile effort by local King Canutes to hold back the ocean.
Atlantic tells MA homeowners to pound sand
I posted a link to this yesterday and (lol) then because it was a nice day and I’ve been meaning to for a long time got out the laser-level and scope and with a little bit of fiddle-fart-around sighted the foot of my driveway to the top of the seawall. By eye I say they’re even and … close enough: I gain an inch on it over eighty-five feet. Top of the seawall is roughly eight feet above a very calm high tide, and two to three feet above the sidewalk, greensward and street; from what I’ve seen rolling up on seven years here is the storm-drains work well (though that might be because we are next to a sewage treatment facility hundreds of feet below the sea)
None-the-less, it is a once and with alarming frequency occasional island …
not many people remember old king canute these days.
but of course the problem is not the tide, but that people request aid from the state (and other purchasers of insurance?) to susidize their desire to build expensive homes where nature will destroy them. of course the human response to this sort of thing is “let us destroy nature.”
good luck with that. but are you, me, doing the same thing by building freeways so we can drive powerful cars to work and back because we want to live in the country….you know, close to nature.
understandable, perhaps, back in the day when we were ignorant of the consequences.
i wonder how many of those people who request money from the state are Republicans?
Coastal flooding washes away half of $600,000 effort, paid for by property owners, to save sand dunes on Salisbury Beach
Boston Globe – about 3 hours ago
King Cnut (aka Canute) not mentioned.
Cnut – Wikipedia
(Somewhat later, William the Conqueror arrived on the scene.)
Very vaguely related?
Braintree invested nearly half a million dollars in pickleball courts. Now it’s paying the cost of angry neighbors.
Boston Globe – about 12 hours ago
@Fred,
Pickeball is certainly expanding, but it’s not a force of nature.
Nor was King Canute, alas.
@Fred,
Nope. But beach erosion is.
joel
not entirely. the army built a jetty (?) near where i used to live to protect some property. all it did was create erosion a few hundred yards south.
if i remember it also created a sand bar that made it dangerous for small boats entering or leaing the harbor.
Lends to my experience, coberly, people don’t seem to connect raising the seawall here doesn’t do much good without raising the seawall three and five miles either direction along the shore …
The Unstoppable Force of Pickleball
Ten Bears,
Of course. Your first thought is always the obvious solution.
It was Juan Trippe who got the government into paying for beach protection and restoration. He founded the airline PanAm and lobbied the government to support aviation. He got PanAm designated the official US carrier and lots of cushy airmail contracts. When the beach at his house in the Hamptons started losing sand, he got the government into the beach business.
@Kaleberg,
So personal responsibility for thee, but not for me? The government exists to subsidize bad decisions by rich people?
Joel,
Yes.