EDITORIAL: Wednesday Changes must be made to flood insurance program

Nov. 22--Flooding is high on the minds of Jacksonville residents following the historically bad impact of Hurricane Irma.

So it is worth noting that the nation's flood insurance program was described in The New York Times as "broke and broken."

And that Congress is working to overhaul it. In fact, the House voted to revamp the flood insurance program, which expires in December.

Keys to the revamp are to spur more private flood insurance coverage and to deter repeated federal payouts for flood damage.

The program is basically bankrupt, meaning that Congress had to write off $16 billion of its debt. The program has been in the red since Hurricane Katrina in 2005. In October, the program exhausted its borrowing capacity.

The House bill would bar the program from offering insurance to homes with future claims in excess of three times the replacement value of the structure. There may well be a better way to achieve that goal, however.

One home in Spring, Texas, has been repaired from flood damage 19 times at a cost of $912,732 though the house is worth only $42,024.

And Florida alone has more than 1,600 properties that are considered "severe repetitive loss properties" -- structures that flood every two to three years and have been repeatedly rebuilt with taxpayer money, according to Vox. While properties like these represent just 1 percent of the government's flood insurance policies, they account for 10 percent of the claims.

Harris County, Texas, has purchased 3,000 floodplain homes since 1985, an investment that saves $4 for every purchase dollar. Another more economical idea would be to provide federal funding to mitigate flood damages, such as elevating a flood-prone home.

Reformers include many conservatives who see the government bailouts -- and lots of environmentalists who think the flood insurance program is an enabler for construction in flood-prone areas.

If the government is going to interfere in the flood insurance market, then that means taxpayers are subsidizing a few homeowners in flood-prone locations.

The government can't force homeowners in flood-prone areas to buy flood insurance, though it would seem that mortgage companies could, just as car owners are required to have insurance.

There also is evidence that the government's flood insurance is badly designed.

Rather than using detailed flooding maps to assess the risks of individual homes, the program uses communitywide averages that overcharge half the risks and undercharge half the risks. In addition, the flood insurance program was not designed for these catastrophic events that are breaking historic patterns.

In short, past history has become a poor predictor of the damages of natural disasters.

TURBOCHARGED STORMS

A warmer ocean doesn't produce hurricanes, a warmer ocean produces more extreme ones.

Though the hurricane season ends Nov. 30, it already has set records. This is the first hurricane season on record with two Category 4 landfalls in the U.S., Harvey and Irma.

This new normal of extreme weather events was underscored by a National Climate Assessment produced by 13 federal agencies and approved by the National Academy of Sciences.

The last 115 years have been the warmest in the history of modern civilization.

Much of this is due to human activity, specifically the emission of greenhouse gases produced by fossil fuels.

Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has reached a level that last occurred about 3 million years ago.

These are the sort of extremes that are expected on a warming planet when extreme weather events become more commonplace.

A nonpartisan federal watchdog agency reported that climate change has already cost taxpayers billions of dollars each year and the bills will only increase in the future.

The federal government has spent more than $350 billion in the last decade on disaster aid and losses from flood and crop insurance, reported the Government Accountability Office.

The government hasn't been planning for these losses, apparently considering them to be rare and high risk.

The report looked at regional impacts.

Florida is affected by storm surge and sea level rise.

The Midwest will be affected by lower crop yields.

The West will have increased drought, wildfires and heat waves.

SOLUTIONS

A businesslike risk management approach will seek to mitigate the impact of these extreme weather events, to remove taxpayer support for repetitive flooding risks and to plan more wisely for sea level rise and storm surges.

We need to stop filling in wetlands near the coast and use natural defenses like dunes and wetlands as protections against hurricanes.

"Strategic retreat" from coastal areas may affect a few households or entire communities

For instance, new bridges may need to be built higher and storm water systems will need increased capacity.

The Defense Department, which has many posts on coastlines, has long studied the impacts on its facilities.

A review of the cities at most risk to major coastal flooding and sea level rise begins with New York City at No. 1, Miami at No. 2 and a total of 22 Florida cities in its top 25. Jacksonville does not make the top 25.

As Hurricane Irma revealed, Jacksonville's severe flooding risks may be near Downtown rather than on the coast.

Cities like Tampa and Sarasota remain vulnerable to storm surges.

If Irma had hit Tampa as one predicted 9 feet of storm surge could have hit the city.

It's the new climate normal.

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