flood insurance, not
Topics: Safety
15 Jun 1994
From: ervan
Another story from the farm: About 3 miles from where my parents live
is one of the Mississippi bottom lands that flooded last summer.
The government has changed the law to make it illegal to rebuild there.
It doesn't matter whether or not you had insurance, applied for, or
received aid. It's flat illegal to rebuild there. This was the first
time the levee ever broke (in this section) since it was built in the
Depression. 60 years is a decent depreciation schedule for even a good
house. But, nope, it's illegal. Even people that want to pull in a
trailer or build a river cabin (things you expect to lose), are out of
luck.
In this regard it is rather like the wetlands protection act, the
government destroys the value of your property by preventing you from
using it but leaves you with a now worthless deed. Since you have the
deed, it isn't officially a taking and therefore no compensation is due
under the Fifth amendment, "nor shall private property be taken for
public use, without just compensation". What a joke. People should be
able to sue for any value the government takes from them.
From another angle, this is rather like the argument that says we must
have helmet laws because we have taxes to pay for hospitals that cannot
turn away anyone at the ER (never mind you might have your own
insurance, or ability or pay, or gawd forbid, freely consent to accept
the risk). The government balied out people living in the flood zone,
underinsured people who understood they were taking a risk. Now that
the fisherman in Alaska and the urban poor in New York have been forced
to pay for flood victims in Missouri the government is going to
'protect' the very taxpayers it just finished screwing by not letting
people 'put the taxpayers at risk' again. Again, it doesn't matter if
you are insured, build a structure that you expect to lose, or agree to
accept the risk of the levee breaking again.
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A side note: there is a Cyanamid plant (they make herbicides and
pesticides) in the 'bottom'. They didn't trust the governmet to
maintain its levees. Cyanamid built its own several years ago. Their
levee and their plant survived, even though it was an island in the
middle of the Mississippi for a couple of weeks. As you know, every
government levee within 80 miles collapsed. I suppose the only good
news here is that they have enough money to buy a loophole in any law
that would prevent them developing, ugly but at least not catastrophic.
---Ervan
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