Category Archives: Recommended Reading

D.C. Is First to Plan to Remove, Retrofit Flood-Prone Buildings

April 30, 2019 Corky Bucek Leave a comment

According to Bloomberg, Washington D.C. is announcing a goal of retrofitting or removing all of its flood-prone buildings by 2050, the first major U.S. city to set such a policy.

“In some cases, we’re going to have to figure out how to do managed retreat and relocation,” said Kevin Bush, Washington’s chief resilience officer and the lead author of the strategy.

The Congressional Budget Office recently projected that hurricanes and storms will consume 0.3 percent of the nation’s GDP, while bond rating companies warn that ignoring extreme weather will hurt cities’ credit ratings.

The same may be true for towns, like Southampton.

To read the full article, please visit this link: “D.C. Is First to Plan to Remove, Retrofit Flood-Prone Buildings”.

Montauk Faces Its Long-Term Future

December 17, 2018 Corky Bucek Leave a comment

Below excerpts are from a December 17th editorial in Newsday. The full article is available here.

“Every year, it seems, the ocean washes away the sand covering the bags [installed as part of an artificial dune by the Army Corps of Engineers] and narrows the [Montauk] beach that brings the tourists who fuel the area’s economy…

“…The town is pursuing a plan to move downtown oceanfront businesses inland and let the abandoned grounds serve as the kind of natural dune that has always been the best barrier…

“Montauk is a lesson for all of Long Island. We can keep paying for short-term solutions doomed to failure, or make tough decisions that offer the best chance for long-term survival.”

The full article is available here.

The Problem with Beach Nourishment

December 13, 2018 Corky Bucek Leave a comment

Below excerpts are borrowed courtesy of a December 10th article and video published by Vox. The full article is available here.

About 80 to 90 percent of sandy beaches along America’s coastlines are eroding. This is a problem because the developments humans build near them are static. So as beaches shrink, coastal hazards can threaten to damage or destroy homes and businesses while negatively impacting tourism that depends on the beach.

The most popular strategy to counter these risks is a process called beach nourishment. Coastal engineers will add new sand to an eroding beach in order to rebuild or expand the shoreline.

But researchers discovered that coastal defense schemes like beach nourishment may ultimately do more harm than good by providing a false sense of security in critically eroding areas. There is evidence that beach nourishment can “mask or reduce the apparent impact of coastal hazards without changing the natural processes driving them.”

Visit the original article here.