Erosion Will Fell 5,000 Homes on California Coast, Study Says

Erosion will destroy 5,000 homes along California’s coastline in the next 60 years and, unless new legislation is passed, few property owners will be able to collect federal insurance money to cover the damage, according to a government study released Tuesday.

The report by the Federal Emergency Management Agency predicts that losses to owners of oceanfront homes in California will reach $110 million a year by the middle of the century.

On the basis of the five-year, $4-million study, which covers the entire U.S. coastline, FEMA Director James Lee Witt said the agency will recommend that areas prone to erosion be mapped for the first time. Mapping, he said, is the first step to revamping federal flood insurance to take into account the risk of erosion in coastal zones.

“We need to do erosion mapping to help local communities identify hazard zones,” Witt said. “Congress in a pretty bipartisan way wants to provide coverage to people who live in high-risk areas.”

The study, which was prepared for FEMA by the Washington-based Heinz Center for Science, Economics and the Environment in response to a request by Congress, found that erosion will damage 25% of all structures within 500 feet of the U.S. coastline or the shoreline of the Great Lakes by 2060.

Congress asked FEMA to examine the problem of erosion after the passage of the Flood Insurance Reform Act of 1994. Historically, federal flood insurance has not covered property damaged by erosion unless flooding accompanied the erosion.

The Heinz study suggests that the risk of erosion be weighed when setting flood insurance premiums for new coastline structures and that federal insurance be expanded to cover erosion damage.

Stephen Dunn, deputy manager for the study, said erosion along the Pacific Coast poses unique challenges. “The situation is very high property value combined with structures built up on bluffs that erode.”

As erosion proceeds, a house on a bluff moves closer and closer to the edge “until it’s either undermined or destroyed by falling off,” he said.

During the 1997-98 El Nino season, Dunn recalled, FEMA had to buy out property along a residential strip in Pacifica, in Northern California, because the homes were about to fall off a bluff.

Peter Douglas, executive director of the California Coastal Commission, acknowledged that California continues to see “a lot of development right next to the shoreline, which then requires protection.”

Property owners seek to protect their homes from the effects of erosion by erecting bluff supports, Douglas explained, resulting in “an armoring of the coast that is alarming because it changes the natural process of sand replenishment and interferes with public access to the beach.”

Douglas said he would favor a law to discourage new building on bluffs susceptible to erosion. According to several members of Congress, such legislation may be forthcoming.

“Our real objective should be risk-avoidance,” said Rep. Brian P. Bilbray (R-San Diego). “We need to avoid building in these areas that are geologically unsound.”

Bilbray also said that bluff erosion along the coast is exacerbated by runoff from urban areas.

“Irrigation projects saturate the ground with water, which destabilizes the cliffs,” he said, adding that his office is working with the Scripps Institute of Oceanography at UC San Diego to find solutions to the problem of “cliff failure.”

Reps. Doug Bereuter (R-Neb.) and Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.) already have co-sponsored legislation to reform the National Flood Insurance Program. The measure is being debated.

“I think the report could not be more timely,” Blumenauer said. “We don’t do people a favor by encouraging them to live in areas . . . where God doesn’t want them.

“We should be the insurer of last resort.”

Blumenauer said that legislation to discourage construction in high-risk areas has support on both sides of the aisle.

“This is one issue where the fiscal conservatives can join with the environmental protection folks,” he said.

“We can have people who are cheap and green and doing the right thing at the same time.”