Reducing the Risk

It is national policy to reduce the risks we face through subsidies. Our federal flood insurance is one means of doing this. In an ideal word the cost of the insurance would match the magnitude of the hazard. In the case of the coast the hazard is an eroding coast with fixed buildings. If the change were steady and in one direction such subsidy rates could be fashioned with ease.

However, we have learned that the erosion and accretion patterns on our coasts (66% of the east coast) tend to be cyclic with reversals from time to time. Coasts that once eroded now build seaward and little subsidy is needed. Safe and secure coasts may now face a greater hazard and larger risk of living on the coast.

At the Virginia Coast Reserve we do not fight the sea to save the island. They renew themselves as the sands come and go. They stay the same because the change. This is a fragile landscape only if you want to insist that everything stay in its place. With a rising sea level and changes in coastal storm frequencies we must give up the coast to nature for freeze her in concrete seawalls and jail the sand with groins and jetties. By these means you kill the coast to save it.