Jasonhouse
August 12th, 2007, 04:29 PM
Coastal Development: Building Our Burden
By BAIRD HELGESON
The Tampa Tribune
Published: Aug 12, 2007
GRAYTON BEACH - When property owners decided to build homes on some of Florida's most vulnerable coastal barriers, they did so knowing their land was too threatened to qualify for federal flood insurance and other government subsidies.
As the cost of private flood insurance made their homes too expensive to keep and harder to sell, some owners sought relief from their congressional representatives.
The constituents almost always found Congress willing to extend taxpayer subsidies for the nation's most perilous homes, perched atop wetlands or on shifting sandy beaches.
Over the years, Congress has chipped away at the little-known Coastal Barrier Resources Act, designed to limit development by forbidding federal subsidies on coastal wetlands and beaches from Texas to Maine.
The changes have unlocked taxpayer-subsidized insurance coverage, home loans, roads and disaster assistance to the most perilous and environmentally sensitive land in Florida and other coastal states.
Property owners have won the changes even as hurricanes such as Katrina sank the national flood insurance program more than $20 billion in debt.
Several Florida homeowners who benefit from the changes said they aren't trying to circumvent the law. They say their properties were erroneously included in the act because of archaic maps that either didn't identify their homes or incorrectly located their properties in a state park. Others disagreed with the program's boundaries, which prevented them from getting flood insurance but made their neighbors' land eligible.
U.S. Rep. Wayne Gilchrest, R-Md., said the recent changes demonstrate how wealthy property owners can leverage their political clout at taxpayers' expense.
"Why should the people of Iowa, Colorado or Maryland have to subsidize some poor ignorant sap who is going to build a home on shifting sand that's going to be destroyed every five years?" asked Gilchrest, who chaired a subcommittee that usually got a first look at proposed exemptions.
The changes have come acre by acre, foreshadowing a potentially larger problem as land exempted from the program becomes instantly more attractive to developers. The property value can jump 600 percent the moment an exemption is granted, real estate agents said.
Suddenly a few seemingly minor exemptions can become a big burden for taxpayers as the land is developed.
In the meantime, more Florida property owners have lined up to petition Congress for exemptions.
Some of the act's biggest supporters point to other coastal states such as Texas that take steps to discourage development in protected areas, such as refusing state-backed windstorm insurance.
Not so in Florida.
Florida has 285,937 acres included in the program, from Key Largo to Cockroach Bay to Destin. That's more protected area than any other state.
At the same time, no state has sought more changes. Since 1994, Congress has passed 26 changes to Florida's protected property.
"People are trying to whittle away at it," said former U.S. Rep. Tom Evans, an author of the coastal protection act. "Each time they do it, it doesn't seem like a lot of land. But it's death by a thousand cuts."
The Act
Congress created the Coastal Barrier Resources Act - known as COBRA - in 1982 as a free-market approach to conservation.
Government leaders wanted to protect sensitive coastal areas and get out of the business of building and rebuilding bridges, roads and properties after hurricanes and other major storms.
Rather than stoking rancorous debate by restricting where private landowners could build, the law withholds government money from property included in the act. Landowners who choose to build must do so without taxpayer-backed flood insurance, roads and about 50 other federal subsidies.
"We can't stop you from developing wetlands, but if you do it, you do it on your own nickel and not on the American taxpayers'," said Evans, who now is chairman of the Florida Coalition for Preservation in Delray Beach.
The idea was that the areas protected by the act would remain relatively pristine while less vulnerable areas would flourish.
The initial act included about 570,000 acres of coastal barriers and wetlands. In 1990, Congress added areas around the Great Lakes and in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, bringing the total to about 1.3 million acres.
Supporters hailed one of the act's toughest abuse-proof assets: It takes an act of Congress to change boundaries.
In October, Congress approved a change to exempt 10 heavily forested lots next to Grayton Beach State Park in the Panhandle.
Homeowners at Old Miller Place argued that their 6.4-acre enclave was incorrectly included in the act, saying that federal mappers likely confused their property with the state park. They also pointed out that their homes were built before the law took effect.
Residents described themselves as middle-class homeowners facing financial ruin if they were forced to buy private flood insurance.
Homeowners and insurance agents in the area told the Tribune that private flood insurance on a home insured for $250,000 could run more than $12,000 a year, compared with a $470 annual premium for the taxpayer-backed federal program.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which oversees the program, opposed the change, saying the Old Miller Place properties were clearly identified on the maps that Congress adopted in 1990 and that lawmakers knew existing houses would be included. Wildlife officials also noted that six of the 10 lots were vacant, some owned by out-of-state investors.
A family from Memphis, Tenn., owns three vacant lots that were exempted, along with nearby property worth millions of dollars.
Last year, Old Miller Place resident Cynthia Turner told a congressional committee reviewing the request that she couldn't afford private insurance for the home she and her husband bought in 1987.
Aside from the home in question, she and her husband own a vacant lot nearby worth $675,000.
Turner's husband, Edmond Alexander, declined to comment.
U.S. Rep. Jeff Miller, R-Fla., sponsored the legislation to exempt the land at Old Miller Place. He was touring Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan last week and could not be reached for comment.
Miller spokesman Dan McFaul said the congressman viewed the exemption as a map correction. "It was certainly not a major change," he said.
Miller would not support any effort to approve broad exemptions to the act, McFaul said.
A Stark Difference
Changes like the one at Old Miller Place have turned some of the last undeveloped coastal areas of the Panhandle into a patchwork of homes and businesses.
To travel Walton County Road 30 in Grayton Beach is to view the contrast firsthand. On the right, land exempted from the coastal protection act has turned from thick forest into a quaint village of boutique shops, Another Broken Egg Cafe and a Starbucks. To the left, there are miles of thick pine forest, all protected.
Linda Young, director of the environmental group Clean Water Network, is concerned that increasing development pressure will result in more exemptions.
A fifth-generation Panhandle native, Young crisscrosses the region in her dusty Toyota 4Runner, on what she described as a crusade to save the Panhandle.
"I am trying to get people to stop this insanity," Young said as she pulled over to point out an alligator surfacing in Alligator Lake, a protected area.
Young said the preservation act is an effective way to protect environmentally sensitive land.
As an example, she points to places such as Little Redfish Lake near where she spotted the alligator. On the east side, which is protected, towering pine trees and sugar-white dunes seem to stretch forever. On the west side, which is not covered by the act, the trees are largely gone and luxury homes poke up from the dunes. A string of homes lines the western shore, abruptly stopping at what seems like an imaginary line that begins the protected land. Several of the homes are for sale, with prices well more than $1 million. New homes are going up every day.
Looking out over the windswept landscape, Young envisions an unprotected wilderness ruined by greed, not hurricanes: "This area will be completely blown away; completely different."
Mapping Errors
Administrative problems popped up almost immediately after President Reagan signed the act.
The initial plan was to map out largely undeveloped barrier islands and coastal wetlands that seemed too risky and unsafe to inhabit. Basically, if a coastal area had less than one structure per 5 acres, it qualified to be included in the program.
Trouble began when the Fish and Wildlife Service used what have since been deemed mostly contradictory and inaccurate maps.
An audit last year by the Government Accountability Office found four federal agencies wrongly provided assistance to homeowners on protected land.
In May 2006, the agency reviewed about 4,500 addresses in protected areas and found 73 federal flood insurance policies, 37 federal disaster assistance payments, and 19 federal home loan guarantees and small-business disaster loans.
Agency officials cited several reasons for providing assistance, mostly the lack of accurate maps.
Even the act's biggest supporters admit the maps were fraught with errors. A couple of well-established neighborhoods were not on the maps, and homeowners were stunned when they learned they no longer qualified for federal flood insurance.
In at least one case, map boundaries sliced through a home.
Irate property owners began contacting their congressional representatives, resulting in a wave of "technical amendments" that sailed though Congress.
Others followed as the cost of private flood insurance soared and landowners began to see that the act diminished the value of their property.
Wildlife officials fought the changes in committee meetings, but their concerns went largely ignored when the bills came for final votes.
When roadblocks emerged, lawmakers found other ways.
In 1998, 10 Florida exemptions were tucked into a complex appropriations bill sponsored by U.S. Rep. Frank Wolf, R-Va.
Wolf's staff members said the bill was amended so many times they couldn't recall how the Florida exemptions became part of the law.
Cedar Keys
Mapping errors continue to plague residents of the Cedar Keys, on the Gulf of Mexico about 135 miles north of Tampa.
The act protects hundreds of acres of saw grass and scrub on the 3-mile chain of barrier islands. When drafting the boundaries of the original exempted area, federal mappers drew a winding line that hugs State Road 24 into Cedar Key and branches out, winding around inhabited parts of several connected islands.
In 2004, U.S. Rep. Ginny Brown-Waite, R-Fla., won passage of legislation to exempt 32 acres of developable land on the islands.
The Fish and Wildlife Service supported the changes after officials discovered they had incorrectly told owners of three lots that their properties were eligible for federal flood insurance. A field inspection revealed the maps were wrong and that the lots were on protected lands and not entitled to federal subsidies.
Over the years, Cedar Key, the main island of the chain, has turned from a railroad port town into a laid-back refuge for locals and tourists. These days, golf carts are the preferred mode of transportation. On these marshy islands, it's possible to find a comfortable home for $300,000.
Still, some residents are concerned that the increased development in the area is setting the stage for a financial calamity for taxpayers. Hurricanes ravaged the original main island, Atsena Otie Key, so completely that the community relocated to Cedar Key. Those who visit the old island can still find remnants of the old Faber Mill pencil factory.
Residents such as Tammy Collins said they know they have chosen a precarious place to call home but that they live modest lives and are attune to the risks. They worry about all the new residents and the plush homes that sit atop the scrub.
Each time Congress tweaks the boundaries, exempting a lot here and an acre there, their view of the future darkens.
"We know we're changing," said Collins, who has lived on the island much of her life and tends bar at the Captain's Table, which juts over the water on pilings. "I wish it was like it was when I was a kid. It'll probably be like that again once we have another hurricane."
The Cape's Lure
Coastal landowners across the nation are watching a proposal to exempt the Cape San Blas area from the protection act, which critics argue is the most direct effort to undercut the conservation program in Florida.
Cape San Blas is a 20-mile-long ribbon of sand and brush that creates a peninsula on the Gulf of Mexico, southeast of Panama City.
Congress included the land in the coastal protection act, in part because of its history of washouts during hurricanes. Eglin Air Force Base and St. Joseph Peninsula State Park occupy more than half of the land, which was hit hard when Hurricane Ivan socked the Panhandle in 2004.
Despite the lack of federal subsidies, more than 900 homes have been built since the land was included in the protection act.
Trouble emerged in 2002 when the Federal Emergency Management Agency designated parts of Cape San Blas a severe flood area, which is generally a trigger for mortgage lenders to require flood insurance.
Unable to turn to the federal flood program, homeowners found private flood insurance rates had skyrocketed. The owner of a $400,000 home in the worst flood zone could expect to pay more than $1,400 a month for flood coverage.
The real estate market tanked, and property owners came up with a solution: get exempted from the coastal protection act.
Sherri Dodsworth has lived on Cape San Blas since 1994. The real estate agent said the thriving development on the land is proof the coastal barrier act failed. "It now amounts to nothing more than obsolete, congressionally mandated eminent domain."
Dodsworth and other residents said it's not fair that they can't get federal flood insurance while New Orleans homeowners qualify even though they are below sea level.
"Personally, I don't think the federal government should be in the insurance business," Dodsworth said. "However, as long as the feds are in the business, it ought to be a level playing field."
Last year, U.S. Rep. Allen Boyd, D-Fla., tried to exempt the area from the program. The bill died in committee.
Residents said they will try to persuade Congress to at least allow them to buy federal flood insurance.
As Boyd's legislation moved along, Dewey Blaylock, president of the Coastal Community Association of Gulf County, wrote a letter to members saying they hope to prove there were mapping errors when the land was included in the program.
Gilchrest won't be on their side.
"I am not going to let taxpayers pay for that mistake," he said. "Eventually, those barrier islands won't be there. And then what?"
Reporter Baird Helgeson can be reached at bhelgeson@tampatrib.com or (813) 259-7668.
By BAIRD HELGESON
The Tampa Tribune
Published: Aug 12, 2007
GRAYTON BEACH - When property owners decided to build homes on some of Florida's most vulnerable coastal barriers, they did so knowing their land was too threatened to qualify for federal flood insurance and other government subsidies.
As the cost of private flood insurance made their homes too expensive to keep and harder to sell, some owners sought relief from their congressional representatives.
The constituents almost always found Congress willing to extend taxpayer subsidies for the nation's most perilous homes, perched atop wetlands or on shifting sandy beaches.
Over the years, Congress has chipped away at the little-known Coastal Barrier Resources Act, designed to limit development by forbidding federal subsidies on coastal wetlands and beaches from Texas to Maine.
The changes have unlocked taxpayer-subsidized insurance coverage, home loans, roads and disaster assistance to the most perilous and environmentally sensitive land in Florida and other coastal states.
Property owners have won the changes even as hurricanes such as Katrina sank the national flood insurance program more than $20 billion in debt.
Several Florida homeowners who benefit from the changes said they aren't trying to circumvent the law. They say their properties were erroneously included in the act because of archaic maps that either didn't identify their homes or incorrectly located their properties in a state park. Others disagreed with the program's boundaries, which prevented them from getting flood insurance but made their neighbors' land eligible.
U.S. Rep. Wayne Gilchrest, R-Md., said the recent changes demonstrate how wealthy property owners can leverage their political clout at taxpayers' expense.
"Why should the people of Iowa, Colorado or Maryland have to subsidize some poor ignorant sap who is going to build a home on shifting sand that's going to be destroyed every five years?" asked Gilchrest, who chaired a subcommittee that usually got a first look at proposed exemptions.
The changes have come acre by acre, foreshadowing a potentially larger problem as land exempted from the program becomes instantly more attractive to developers. The property value can jump 600 percent the moment an exemption is granted, real estate agents said.
Suddenly a few seemingly minor exemptions can become a big burden for taxpayers as the land is developed.
In the meantime, more Florida property owners have lined up to petition Congress for exemptions.
Some of the act's biggest supporters point to other coastal states such as Texas that take steps to discourage development in protected areas, such as refusing state-backed windstorm insurance.
Not so in Florida.
Florida has 285,937 acres included in the program, from Key Largo to Cockroach Bay to Destin. That's more protected area than any other state.
At the same time, no state has sought more changes. Since 1994, Congress has passed 26 changes to Florida's protected property.
"People are trying to whittle away at it," said former U.S. Rep. Tom Evans, an author of the coastal protection act. "Each time they do it, it doesn't seem like a lot of land. But it's death by a thousand cuts."
The Act
Congress created the Coastal Barrier Resources Act - known as COBRA - in 1982 as a free-market approach to conservation.
Government leaders wanted to protect sensitive coastal areas and get out of the business of building and rebuilding bridges, roads and properties after hurricanes and other major storms.
Rather than stoking rancorous debate by restricting where private landowners could build, the law withholds government money from property included in the act. Landowners who choose to build must do so without taxpayer-backed flood insurance, roads and about 50 other federal subsidies.
"We can't stop you from developing wetlands, but if you do it, you do it on your own nickel and not on the American taxpayers'," said Evans, who now is chairman of the Florida Coalition for Preservation in Delray Beach.
The idea was that the areas protected by the act would remain relatively pristine while less vulnerable areas would flourish.
The initial act included about 570,000 acres of coastal barriers and wetlands. In 1990, Congress added areas around the Great Lakes and in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, bringing the total to about 1.3 million acres.
Supporters hailed one of the act's toughest abuse-proof assets: It takes an act of Congress to change boundaries.
In October, Congress approved a change to exempt 10 heavily forested lots next to Grayton Beach State Park in the Panhandle.
Homeowners at Old Miller Place argued that their 6.4-acre enclave was incorrectly included in the act, saying that federal mappers likely confused their property with the state park. They also pointed out that their homes were built before the law took effect.
Residents described themselves as middle-class homeowners facing financial ruin if they were forced to buy private flood insurance.
Homeowners and insurance agents in the area told the Tribune that private flood insurance on a home insured for $250,000 could run more than $12,000 a year, compared with a $470 annual premium for the taxpayer-backed federal program.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which oversees the program, opposed the change, saying the Old Miller Place properties were clearly identified on the maps that Congress adopted in 1990 and that lawmakers knew existing houses would be included. Wildlife officials also noted that six of the 10 lots were vacant, some owned by out-of-state investors.
A family from Memphis, Tenn., owns three vacant lots that were exempted, along with nearby property worth millions of dollars.
Last year, Old Miller Place resident Cynthia Turner told a congressional committee reviewing the request that she couldn't afford private insurance for the home she and her husband bought in 1987.
Aside from the home in question, she and her husband own a vacant lot nearby worth $675,000.
Turner's husband, Edmond Alexander, declined to comment.
U.S. Rep. Jeff Miller, R-Fla., sponsored the legislation to exempt the land at Old Miller Place. He was touring Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan last week and could not be reached for comment.
Miller spokesman Dan McFaul said the congressman viewed the exemption as a map correction. "It was certainly not a major change," he said.
Miller would not support any effort to approve broad exemptions to the act, McFaul said.
A Stark Difference
Changes like the one at Old Miller Place have turned some of the last undeveloped coastal areas of the Panhandle into a patchwork of homes and businesses.
To travel Walton County Road 30 in Grayton Beach is to view the contrast firsthand. On the right, land exempted from the coastal protection act has turned from thick forest into a quaint village of boutique shops, Another Broken Egg Cafe and a Starbucks. To the left, there are miles of thick pine forest, all protected.
Linda Young, director of the environmental group Clean Water Network, is concerned that increasing development pressure will result in more exemptions.
A fifth-generation Panhandle native, Young crisscrosses the region in her dusty Toyota 4Runner, on what she described as a crusade to save the Panhandle.
"I am trying to get people to stop this insanity," Young said as she pulled over to point out an alligator surfacing in Alligator Lake, a protected area.
Young said the preservation act is an effective way to protect environmentally sensitive land.
As an example, she points to places such as Little Redfish Lake near where she spotted the alligator. On the east side, which is protected, towering pine trees and sugar-white dunes seem to stretch forever. On the west side, which is not covered by the act, the trees are largely gone and luxury homes poke up from the dunes. A string of homes lines the western shore, abruptly stopping at what seems like an imaginary line that begins the protected land. Several of the homes are for sale, with prices well more than $1 million. New homes are going up every day.
Looking out over the windswept landscape, Young envisions an unprotected wilderness ruined by greed, not hurricanes: "This area will be completely blown away; completely different."
Mapping Errors
Administrative problems popped up almost immediately after President Reagan signed the act.
The initial plan was to map out largely undeveloped barrier islands and coastal wetlands that seemed too risky and unsafe to inhabit. Basically, if a coastal area had less than one structure per 5 acres, it qualified to be included in the program.
Trouble began when the Fish and Wildlife Service used what have since been deemed mostly contradictory and inaccurate maps.
An audit last year by the Government Accountability Office found four federal agencies wrongly provided assistance to homeowners on protected land.
In May 2006, the agency reviewed about 4,500 addresses in protected areas and found 73 federal flood insurance policies, 37 federal disaster assistance payments, and 19 federal home loan guarantees and small-business disaster loans.
Agency officials cited several reasons for providing assistance, mostly the lack of accurate maps.
Even the act's biggest supporters admit the maps were fraught with errors. A couple of well-established neighborhoods were not on the maps, and homeowners were stunned when they learned they no longer qualified for federal flood insurance.
In at least one case, map boundaries sliced through a home.
Irate property owners began contacting their congressional representatives, resulting in a wave of "technical amendments" that sailed though Congress.
Others followed as the cost of private flood insurance soared and landowners began to see that the act diminished the value of their property.
Wildlife officials fought the changes in committee meetings, but their concerns went largely ignored when the bills came for final votes.
When roadblocks emerged, lawmakers found other ways.
In 1998, 10 Florida exemptions were tucked into a complex appropriations bill sponsored by U.S. Rep. Frank Wolf, R-Va.
Wolf's staff members said the bill was amended so many times they couldn't recall how the Florida exemptions became part of the law.
Cedar Keys
Mapping errors continue to plague residents of the Cedar Keys, on the Gulf of Mexico about 135 miles north of Tampa.
The act protects hundreds of acres of saw grass and scrub on the 3-mile chain of barrier islands. When drafting the boundaries of the original exempted area, federal mappers drew a winding line that hugs State Road 24 into Cedar Key and branches out, winding around inhabited parts of several connected islands.
In 2004, U.S. Rep. Ginny Brown-Waite, R-Fla., won passage of legislation to exempt 32 acres of developable land on the islands.
The Fish and Wildlife Service supported the changes after officials discovered they had incorrectly told owners of three lots that their properties were eligible for federal flood insurance. A field inspection revealed the maps were wrong and that the lots were on protected lands and not entitled to federal subsidies.
Over the years, Cedar Key, the main island of the chain, has turned from a railroad port town into a laid-back refuge for locals and tourists. These days, golf carts are the preferred mode of transportation. On these marshy islands, it's possible to find a comfortable home for $300,000.
Still, some residents are concerned that the increased development in the area is setting the stage for a financial calamity for taxpayers. Hurricanes ravaged the original main island, Atsena Otie Key, so completely that the community relocated to Cedar Key. Those who visit the old island can still find remnants of the old Faber Mill pencil factory.
Residents such as Tammy Collins said they know they have chosen a precarious place to call home but that they live modest lives and are attune to the risks. They worry about all the new residents and the plush homes that sit atop the scrub.
Each time Congress tweaks the boundaries, exempting a lot here and an acre there, their view of the future darkens.
"We know we're changing," said Collins, who has lived on the island much of her life and tends bar at the Captain's Table, which juts over the water on pilings. "I wish it was like it was when I was a kid. It'll probably be like that again once we have another hurricane."
The Cape's Lure
Coastal landowners across the nation are watching a proposal to exempt the Cape San Blas area from the protection act, which critics argue is the most direct effort to undercut the conservation program in Florida.
Cape San Blas is a 20-mile-long ribbon of sand and brush that creates a peninsula on the Gulf of Mexico, southeast of Panama City.
Congress included the land in the coastal protection act, in part because of its history of washouts during hurricanes. Eglin Air Force Base and St. Joseph Peninsula State Park occupy more than half of the land, which was hit hard when Hurricane Ivan socked the Panhandle in 2004.
Despite the lack of federal subsidies, more than 900 homes have been built since the land was included in the protection act.
Trouble emerged in 2002 when the Federal Emergency Management Agency designated parts of Cape San Blas a severe flood area, which is generally a trigger for mortgage lenders to require flood insurance.
Unable to turn to the federal flood program, homeowners found private flood insurance rates had skyrocketed. The owner of a $400,000 home in the worst flood zone could expect to pay more than $1,400 a month for flood coverage.
The real estate market tanked, and property owners came up with a solution: get exempted from the coastal protection act.
Sherri Dodsworth has lived on Cape San Blas since 1994. The real estate agent said the thriving development on the land is proof the coastal barrier act failed. "It now amounts to nothing more than obsolete, congressionally mandated eminent domain."
Dodsworth and other residents said it's not fair that they can't get federal flood insurance while New Orleans homeowners qualify even though they are below sea level.
"Personally, I don't think the federal government should be in the insurance business," Dodsworth said. "However, as long as the feds are in the business, it ought to be a level playing field."
Last year, U.S. Rep. Allen Boyd, D-Fla., tried to exempt the area from the program. The bill died in committee.
Residents said they will try to persuade Congress to at least allow them to buy federal flood insurance.
As Boyd's legislation moved along, Dewey Blaylock, president of the Coastal Community Association of Gulf County, wrote a letter to members saying they hope to prove there were mapping errors when the land was included in the program.
Gilchrest won't be on their side.
"I am not going to let taxpayers pay for that mistake," he said. "Eventually, those barrier islands won't be there. And then what?"
Reporter Baird Helgeson can be reached at bhelgeson@tampatrib.com or (813) 259-7668.