watch now! detail...
[ sound of the ocean ] [ wind blowing ] woman: when turned the corner and looked...to find my house, it was... like you were in a war zone. like, what could do this? and i know, i remember i could breathe in, but i couldn't
breathe out. and i guess it's what they mean by "takes your breath away". [ loud engine buzzing ] man: and this, who's house is this? >> that's my parents' roof, their second floor. >> wow.
see, once... >> my husband and i came here with our kids. and my four-year-old got out of the car, and i said, "do you know where you are?" and he said, "no." and i said, "okay." so, we just stood there
for a minutes checking out the property, taking a deep breath in. and, you know, we got back in the car, and he actually asked, "can we go to nanny and poppy's house?" so, we just told them that nanny and poppy moved to a
new house. it really is unrecognizable. unrecognizable. [ chainsaw in background ] woman: one day, you know, everything's normal, and you're cooking, you're cleaning, you're schooling, you're shopping, and then the next
day, it's...it's gone. >> okay, i'm just trying to put all this stuff in the bucket. it's blowing away. i found a bucket on the deck. this is one of our foster sisters. beautiful girl. there's a cookbook here you
can't save. cookbook's going in the trash. >> this is my mother and father; it's the only picture i have. so... i'll save what i do have of it. i'm gonna put it in the car so nothing else happens.
>> it's your life on the curb. although, it's not really your life, it's just stuff. but, that stuff was with you for so long it makes you feel like it's your life. it's just, uh... on the curb. >> what bothered me the most
is that, when you turned your back when you heard the water, first time in my life i was scared. you need a lot more respect and... i don't even know. it's just... i don't know.
it'll just never be the same again. woman: i think people are just really attracted to water... all people. and some people are compelled to live by it. man: there's 300 million americans, and more than half
of them live in coastal counties, and that's only 20% of our total nation's geography. man 2: we're a coastal country. what happens here affects everybody. man 3: the amount of development on these coastlines,
how we pack houses into every little corner is incredible. and if you're gonna live they're gonna have problems, and they're going to increase. man 4: we're sort of upping the ante because we're moving more people to the shore. man 5: all over the world,
we see the same phenomenon, people crowding to the shore at the same time, but the shore is starting to move back towards them. so who's gonna win? man 5: and finally, we have major conflicts. man 6: 33 billion dollars,
loss of life, weeks with the city paralyzed. man 7: and now, water level is coming up a little bit faster, and a little bit faster, and a little bit faster. man 8: if the sea-level rise rate continues, there will be
changes of a major proportion of communities everywhere on the planet. man 9: maybe mother nature is telling us something. one time, two times, three times... man 10: and yet, we're running back to do the same thing
over again. woman: human nature plays a huge part in this. denial is a powerful emotion. man 11: it's hard to imagine telling people their homes are going to fall into the sea. woman 2: we're trying to change the course of nature.
ultimately, you're gonna fail. what god giveth, god taketh away. man 12: there are limits to growth on a pile of sand. [ upbeat movie music ] male announcer: fun in the sun is a byword here where everything is provided for your
health, relaxation, and comfort. >> the biggest money-maker on this island is its beaches. its beaches are what bring people to long beach island. it's families who just don't wanna ever let go of that part of their family history, spending summers on the island
or spending summers at the seashore. >> you'll enjoy the invigorating ocean breezes and the average summer temperature of 75 to 80 degrees. >> you're always thinking about gearing up for the summer: what do you need to do to be
ready to be on the top of your game for all the people that come to have a vacation here in the summertime? >> with the coming of the summer season about the middle of may, the population expands to over 125,000. >> memorial day weekend is big.
there are a lot people here memorial day weekend. but the summer really doesn't start 'til july 4. and it really ends on labor day. i mean, when labor day hits, right after that it turns into really a ghost town. >> summer here is a time
to work. if you live here, you're just making money. even when i was getting started writing, there wasn't enough money in it, so i would wake up in the morning, take people on a kayak tour, and then go wait tables all day, and then go into
a bar and bartend all night. at some point in there, i would write a few articles for the local newspaper. but, we always joke about it that we're like tap dancing monkeys, you know. when people come down here for the summer, you just do
everything you possibly can to, you know, to make them happy and make money off of them. but the best time of year is the start of winter. ♪ there's three months in the summer where the water's, you know, subtropical.
and then, within a few months, it's down to mid to low 30s. me and my brother actually went during a snowstorm. put your wetsuit on in the house, dig yourself out, get to the beach, and surf. and we were just taking off on amazing waves.
why do i live here? that's why. i'm not the type of person that is gonna light incense and play a guitar and sing a song about riding beautiful waves, but you are part of something that is so much bigger
than yourself. in some ways, we are at the mercy of the weather here. you don't have a lot of control over things. you're out there riding nature. people who live completely in the realm of the man-made world where everything runs on
a schedule and, you know, the weather doesn't really affect your life that much, you don't have that. you don't have that awareness that we have here. the winter is generally when we get powerful storms. and it makes sense that there's
gonna be more wave energy there, and that's why the same storms that bring waves are the ones where you get a lot of erosion. >> basically, we're right in the middle of the island here. either direction's about the same, north or south, about 8, 9 miles.
in the winter time, it's about 95% locals. this time of year, it's a lot easier to cruise 'cause the lights are on blink, but in about a month or so, they're gonna put them on standard, which is a slow drive. you get about 3 blocks, and a
light hits you. of course, we also have around a couple hundred thousand people on the island. this is the famed "end of the road". it's also a prime surfing area here. i surfed here most of my life.
and then we go on to the wilderness area of holgate, an undeveloped 2-mile stretch, which is pretty miraculous considering every square foot of the island is developed on. hi, stu. how come you're not out surfing? >> i did that 40 years ago.
>> yeah. how's the beach looking? >> it's eroded. you know? >> up here you see part of the erosion. this actually, only 10 years ago, was almost a quarter of a mile inland.
so, if you just imagine out way beyond those waves, that's where holgate used to be. when i started coming here as a kid in the 60s, it was a forest. i mean, you could literally get lost trying to reach the ocean to the bay.
>> now, it's practically a desert. what's gonna happen in the next 10 or 20? >> the kids will say, "what's holgate?" >> barrier islands are constantly shifting. millions of tons of sand,
every year we lose more and more. >> new jersey, in general, loses somewhere around a half a foot of shoreline per year. it is being eroded. >> and it's only since we began fixing investments in place, our roads, our bridges,
our houses, our beaches. we've been trying to keep the islands in one location. but in fact, they're constantly moving. >> at the water's edge, there's always a mass of sand being moved around by the waves and currents, silts and clays,
and sands and pebbles, and shells. that mass of sand was very transitory. it was constantly shifting, it was being reworked, never really had much opportunity to sort of form a very coherent mass.
but, there was sand. and then somewhere around 2500 years ago, the rate of sea-level rise slowed to the point that that sand was able to sort of accumulate in place. waves and currents were not moving it around quite so much, and the island began to widen,
began to lengthen, began to gain elevation. it essentially gained the things that we see at the present time. and then, we sort of used up all the sand. there's no more material out there that is moving onshore. it's been used up.
every major storm now will take some of the sand on the island and throw it into deeper water, and for all intents and purposes, be lost to the barrier island. the house at one time that was sufficiently far inland begins to get closer and closer
and closer, and finally, the shoreline is interacting with that structure. it's sort of time to move it. that construction line is now in the beach, in the dunes. and even though we have these lines on maps that tell us it's permitted to build, indeed the
natural system has caught up with those lines, and it's not wise to be in some of these locations. >> storms are one of the demons that we live with here. you know, like if you live in california, you worry about forest fires.
here, we worry about hurricanes, and we worry about storms. >> i built here, and i reside here, and i have chose to die here, knowing full well that a major storm--it doesn't even have to be a hurricane--a major nor'easter could wipe this area out.
>> it was a concurrence of various weather systems that caused the northeaster to sit in one spot. normally, a northeaster will come and go, and in two or three tides blow itself out. but not this one. >> i was just a kid in 1962.
in harvey cedars, we lost half of our homes here. we had 500 homes at the time, and we lost, 250 of them washed out to sea. >> after each high tide, the second high tide came on top of it, on top of it, on top of it.
so, there was never any relief. the first tide washed away the beach. the second high tide washed down the dunes. after the beach and dunes were gone, the third high tide started knocking the houses down.
and as it knocked those houses down, they would wash and bang into other houses. people who stayed here in their houses for that first night were really scared to death and got out of their houses the next day. >> half of the town that was
here during that time went to the firehouse. half were actually at the bible conference. >> they gathered food from the freezer from any houses they could break into nearby. and a helicopter went over the bible conference, and they wrote
a sign, "all okay in here" and an arrow pointing to a house that had a sheet out of the window; they needed to be rescued, so the helicopter went down and rescued those people. on the second day, the ocean cut through to the bay on 79th st. and it was a rushing of water
from the ocean to the bay, 50 feet wide, 20 feet deep. >> the ocean met the bay. and everything in between was gone. >> on the third day, i came down from philadelphia and met my father by chance at the bridge.
my father was mayor. he had been mayor since the 40s. he was mayor in 1962. the state troopers brought us onto the island. the road was only good up until, through north beach and the beginning of harvey cedars, and then the trooper couldn't
take us any further. we had to walk in. at that point, the road was in chunks. water mains had been broken, the telephone poles were down, and there was about a 9-block stretch, where those big houses had been in 1944,
they were all gone. on the right, we saw all these houses. these houses were ranches, and they were sitting on land before. so, that's how much land was washed away. the dune went in 20 feet
of sand. they looked liked spiders, they were sitting on their high pilings, their little houses waving back on top. only those few were left up on the beach. and they were eventually all knocked down.
i don't think any of them survived. they were just demolished. there were just broken up pieces of houses everywhere, tops of houses. there were houses floating out in the bay. and it was a very emotional
time for me because it's the first time i saw my father cry. he was just crying when he saw what had happened to his town. it was as though some little boy had just gone "swoosh" over his toys and his play on the beach and just
flattened it all out. so, it was a mess. it was a mess. the island was broken, broken in 3 places, i think. the army corps of engineers did bring a dredge in within days, and the corps went in and filled the break,
probably in a week. and lots of people after the '62 northeaster said, "i'm getting out of here. i'm not going to live like this." and they left, and they sold off. but, twenty years later,
there's a whole new generation coming down. twenty years after that, you can look at the oceanfront houses here. they just built one down in loveladies with 14 bedrooms. >> the barrier islands didn't really have great populations
until post-civil war times. what you see is a coastal area that has very little development, virtually no roads. it's a kind of natural environment. and then in the 1950s, then you began to really see development. >> by the 60s, almost the entire
island was developed. and then after that, big houses started getting built. rich people started coming here. up to that point, it seemed to be middle class. then the rich people started building houses. what had been a very lightly
developed island has become more densely populated than most neighborhoods i visit. >> when i talked to some of the old developers, they had no concept of how dynamic the place was. it was a plot of land to be subdivided, to be built upon,
to be occupied. >> in the united states, barrier islands are a very important coastal environment because they comprise almost 50% of the mainland u.s. coastline. >> on highly developed barrier islands, they have
nowhere to go in response to storms. so, what will happen is the islands where both sides are fixed by development will begin to narrow in place. the water is simply coming up, and then it becomes a matter of when certain fortifications
along the coastline may fail, in which case, then you have a potentially catastrophic problem instead of a gradual problem. >> we've kind of done something unnatural because nature wants to do something else. we've also said that you can
build up to this point right here. if the ocean wants the island to move, and you have to do something unnatural to say, "okay, we're gonna allow that to stay there"... it's pretty difficult to fight mother nature.
i mean, god kind of set it up in a regular way to work that way. >> the top of the dune is where the shoreline was before we got here. there is very, very little beach left in harvey cedars. i think we're down to virtually
no dunes left-- literally almost one storm away from sustaining large damages. >> my name is keith watson. i'm a project manager with the u.s. army corps of engineers in philadelphia. i've worked on beach fills up and down the coast of
new jersey and delaware. i started my career with the corps as a hydrodynamic engineer, coastal engineer, designing these projects. harvey cedars had very little beach. in fact, where were standing
right here on top of the dune was actually in the water before we started our project. the purpose of these projects is to reduce damages that would otherwise occur to the infrastructure, the communities, the property, the beaches themselves.
the total amount of sand we're gonna end up placing is over 11 million cubic yards of sand. so, the dredge is dredging about 2 and half miles offshore, sucking up the sand from the bottom, down the pipes on the beach. when it comes out the end,
dozers take over and shape it into what you see here right now. this is beautiful sand. that's absolutely beautiful. these are the grade stakes that the contractors use to place the elevation of the beach berm and the dunes.
they survey in the rods, and they fill the sand up to the little marks on the rods, and they know they're within inches of where they need to be. this beach berm will be 300 to 400 feet wide. we placed the beach that wide because we know nature's gonna
work with it to slowly readjust the sand back into the natural configuration of the bathymetry in the area. society has made the decision to inhabit the coastal regions. it's not a pretty picture in the future if beach nourishment isn't continued.
>> i've always said that beach replenishment is like putting a bandaid on a hemorrhage: it's only gonna work for a few seconds. it ultimately--it will fail. a single cubic foot of saltwater weighs 64 pounds. that's a lot of weight, and
people wonder, they can't imagine how the ocean could take away entire buildings and structures. they don't understand the power of water multiplied billions of times. we have some beaches that have next-to-no sand at all
at high tide. it's the immense force and weight of water that is responsible for shifting those sands, and there's nothing any one of us can do about that, nothing. beginning in 1927, all of this was gone.
everything below this green line is gone; it's part of the ocean. you're getting massive amounts of sand and property moving from one area to another, and it's a natural process, and no matter what you do with beach replenishment--you could lay down 10 million cubic yards
of sand one day, and a week later, it can be gone. and that's just the nature of the beast, being nature. new jersey has such development of the barrier islands, you can't unring the bell. it's here , and we have to deal with it.
>> north carolina's fortunate in that all of our barrier islands aren't urbanized yet. we have probably 150 miles of coast that has not been urbanized and represent the wild outer banks that we're on >> many years ago, before most other folks in the country had
identified the harmful effects of coastal engineering structures, we banned groins , jetties, sea walls from the state. >> they looked around at some of the earlier states that had been developed in the earlier part of the 20th century and said,
"we don't want that to happen here." >> that forward-looking perspective served us for a long time. the problem today is it's 25 years later, coastal erosion has continued, development has continued, so there's a lot more
property that's at risk now. and there is a movement afoot in the state to turn back some of our protections and restrictions to protect that development. >> i was one of the star supporters of the terminal groins legislation in
north carolina. a terminal groin is a perpendicular structure that helps prevent sand motion. a groin's job is to hold sand in place that you put there. >> for many years, the environmental community and science, to some extent,
has felt strongly that building terminal groins out into the ocean causes what they call "down beach erosion". so, when you stick something out in the ocean, all the sand that's being washed ashore is no longer being washed all the way down the shore, it's being
stopped by the groin. this year, the senate sent a bill over to the house asking for the authority to build 16. >> it was never written with 16. that's baloney. >> i got one of my fellow members on that committee, since i'm not on that committee, to
run an amendment to change that to 2. >> no, there never a number in there at all until we put 4 in. >> the bill that ended up in what's called a "conferees committee" since the house changed the senate version, and through the conferees
process, it was up to 4. >> four inlets is just the beginning because as the storms continue, there'll be more houses, the problems will just be moved down the coast. there are many more inlets and many more towns who will, are looking at this very
closely in desperate ways to try to save what they've got. >> i think the fear is unfortunate because i believe if they were truly engaged in the issue, they would understand that we have no intention of going down that path. >> okay, these houses may be
saved, but this guy down here, he's gonna start to see his shoreline change even more, and pretty soon, "well, okay, we'll allow some jetties to go in here." >> until you have a new jersey situation where as far as you can see there are groins.
>> it's convenient to beat up on new jersey because they have, close to, i believe, 480 groins on their ocean beaches, structure after structure. and yet, they continue to have erosion and struggle with the same type issues that we do. >> i know that there a lot of
folks who have concerns about a slippery slope. i can tell you as a leader of this effort in north carolina, this is what we wanna do. i don't see it as a slippery slope. >> no, it is a very slippery slope.
once you start, you can't stop. >> if you allow a terminal groin to protect the first mile of beach, and you experience erosion in the second mile or the third mile, those property owners are going to make a legal claim that they've been discriminated
against. so, we see that this is going to turn into a precedent-setting problem for the state because how are they going to say "no"? >> yeah, they're gonna sue the shit out of everybody. that's comin' down the pipe. >> we've already seen lawsuits
in other states. >> the lawsuits are gonna come from places that the advocates of terminal groins don't even anticipate right now. there gonna come from within their own community of property owners. >> you can sue anybody
over anything. i've been sued before and never lost, so i think the key is: don't lose if you get into this situation. >> it's very difficult to say that we should be protecting property owners in our inlet hazard zones, but we shouldn't
be allowing the same protections for those down the barrier islands. >> in new jersey, we learned that hardened structures don't build good beaches. and, in fact, they work the opposite. in north carolina, we've watched
a policy of not repeating that and trying to do better than that, but we've now eliminated that law, and we've gone back to trying to salvage and save things that shouldn't have been built where they're built in the first place. >> so, the house behind me i
visited during construction. this was maybe 10 years ago. and it was not much further from the water than it is today. the property owner asked if i could offer any solutions on protecting his shoreline naturally or with any sort of non-structural approach, and i
told him, "no, you're so close to the water and this is such a high-energy area that it's just going to be very difficult." and at that time the property owner said, "well, do you think i can get 5 years before i lose the house?" and i said, "yes," and he said,
"well, then i'm fine. that's good." and now, this property owner and others are among the strongest advocates for hardened structures to protect their properties. it is a little counterintuitive if you look at this from a
conservative standpoint, and that is, we're going to protect a very few at the expense of taxpayer money. so, it seems counterintuitive to me that we're gonna put all of our eggs in that basket, and at the same time, we're saying, "no bailouts, you know.
let's not let big government take over, and let's let everybody take care of themselves," but we're going to great lengths to essentially bail out those that built in the most hazardous, the most volatile ecosystems of our entire coast.
>> i think when you say that you're a conservative, i assume that you're saying it's important to conserve, and i would think that would mean in fiscal policy, when it comes to money, and in our resources. if we don't conserve them,
they won't be there. and i don't see any difference in the two issues, and i have a hard time understanding conservatives who don't see the need to conserve our resources. >> it's really easy to see why we're interested in preserving what we have, and everything
that you see around us is part of our shared resource, everything from that wonderful surf break right out there to this strand of unencumbered natural beaches. >> we try to engineer this barrier island into something that is like the status quo.
we don't want it to change. well, it's gonna change. it always is changed. this is the resource, the energy, the wildness of it. and it's beautiful. this is what we oughta be selling as a tourist resource and building with it,
and living with it and those energies and dynamics, not trying to control and stabilize and stop that system. we aren't going to stop it. >> super-sized "mcbeaches". there's more to a beach than width. you know, i mean, width provides
storm protection for sure, but there's a lot more to a beach than just being wide. a good beach should be used by a variety of people for a variety of reasons. >> harvey cedars was one of the best breaks in new jersey. you know, we had those long,
peeling hollow waves. killed that wave. since replenishment, it's not what it used to be. they have protected those ocean-front homes, so if that's how you value, if that's how you're measuring these projects, then it is a success.
>> they're using one criteria here, it's protection of structures. the value in these homes isn't the structure, it's where it is. if you ruin the swimming and the surfing and the fishing by putting sand here to protect
those structures, you've taken away the reason you're here in the first place. >> i always use to walk the beaches in the winter. they used to be wild . they had this beautiful organic formation to them, and now they're square.
the romance of that wild dune barrier island feel that i came for and loved, um, is gone. and i don't know that anybody cares about that. i mean, people may love this. they might. but to me, it's ugly. it's terrible.
>> they seem to like programs that they can quantify, that are standardized. you know, there's been a mcdonald's-ization of this. you know, is it food you want to eat or is it a beach you want to go to? >> there's a fantastic,
natural attraction to these places, but there's also this impact associated with being there, so you can't have all this development and maintain all the qualities. there's a trade-off, and that trade-off has been, we've been going through that
for some time. it's been the history of the u.s. army corps of engineers, this constant--i'll call it "battle"--of the engineers working to stabilize the shoreline of the united states of america.
what it really is doing is forming a line that says, "this line is where i'm defending my barrier island, and i will defend the position by putting in groins. i will throw sand in front of it. i will do all sorts of things
in order to prevent loss of buildings and infrastructure." all those hard lines... eventually, will succumb. >> they're calling it "frankenstorm". you can see it's really what's being called a "superstorm" tonight.
hurricane sandy is more than 200 miles off the coast and is about to crash into 2 other systems when it makes landfall. and look at this picture tonight, this is from space from nasa. it's a massive storm, a thousand miles across...
>> obviously, everybody's aware at this point that this is going to be a big and powerful storm. and all across the eastern seaboard, i think everybody is taking the appropriate... >> you know, they use the term "perfect storm" for a lot of
storms, but i think this is going to put prior storms to shame. i think it will redefine "perfect storm" with this one. [ siren blaring ] firefighter: the governor has declared a mandatory evacuation of long beach island to be
completed by 4pm tomorrow. >> you can see these are the areas we are most concerned about. in fact, we are anticipating catastrophic damage for some people that live along the coast. >> here is a look at the radar
picture. you can see the core of the storm, which now is probably about 4 hours from making landfall in southern jersey. and as it gets closer, we're gonna see stronger and stronger winds... >> i'm really concerned that
there's still people in harm's way on the barrier islands. if any of you watched as i was watching this morning some of the news folks on the boardwalk in seaside heights, the storm's 200 miles away. what do you think that's gonna be like in 12 hours?
>> taking a look at the winds now, they're very strong. >> it is happening now along the jersey shore. >> pretty, pretty tough circumstances, and it is supposed to get worse. >> this will be an all-time record for water in the lower
end of manhattan. >> ...a tanker that has run aground. >> are you kidding? >> everyone who's at home, stay there. >> this is from the borough of queens, new york, where a fire there has destroyed
at least 50 homes. no word yet on exactly... >> when you look at those areas that were able to withstand sandy, what's unique about them or what do they have in common? >> on long beach island in the towns of harvey cedars, surf city, and brant beach
all were segments of long beach island, which essentially built dunes that withstand the kinds of storms that occur on a 50-year interval. and so, where that happened on long beach island, there was far less structural damage. >> i believe that the beach
replenishment is really the reason why we're still standing here today. i've kinda questioned myself, "did we do the right thing here in harvey cedars?" and after this storm, it really kinda validated, to me, that this was a necessary thing
to do. >> beach replenishment, rebuilding dunes, that's the best defense against the next big storm? >> i'm saying that where it was done, it seemed to work pretty well, and if it was done state-wide in front of the
developed shoreline, we might have done a whole lot better. >> but do you think that there's some parts of new jersey, just because of their design, their location, their vulnerability, that just should be let to see what happens,
rather than trying to, i guess, rebuild it or replenish it? >> well, my tourist industry friends have said that it's a 30-plus billion dollar a year industry. >> we're all here because the beach is there. our economy is really driven
by the people that come here and vacation. that kind of trickles down into a number of different things. construction is a big part of our culture here. you know, real estate, restaurants are big here. all of the things that are
tourist-oriented is really what our economy is about. you know, if there's no beach here, or we're washing away, there is no town, there is no island here. one of the things that's always been important to me is beach replenishment because
it's about the infrastructure of protecting our homes, but it's also about the tourism and the dollars that are involved in people coming here on vacation, as well. to get the thing really going, all the towns on the island got together, and we hired
a lobbyist. >> tourism is the largest industry we have in this country. it's also the only industry that you can't export. we have billions and billions of dollars that come in to the federal treasury every year
because of spending along so, you know, it's either here or nowhere. >> beach nourishment projects are a cost-share of 65% federal government, 35% non-federal sponsor. our non-federal sponsor for the project is the new jersey
department of environmental protection. >> of the 35% then, the state turned around to the locals and said, "look, you cooperate with us, and we will pay 75% of the 35%." so, you do all this head math, and the local cost is
about 8.75%. so, for every million dollars spent, the local government must come up with $87,500, which is a heck of great bargain financially for the locals. >> that is a fairly good deal for local municipalities
to participate in these projects. >> you know, if beach nourishment is so incredibly valuable to the local community, and if this coastal economic engine is so vital, you'd think that they'd oughta be able to pay their own way.
>> new jersey has one half of one percent of the nation's coastal shoreline and has garnered over 37% of all the money that the feds have spent on beach nourishment projects in the nation since they started doing this.
so, you think they've been successful? i would agree that they probably have. the average house on the ocean front in new jersey sells for in excess of $2 million, and the better ones as high
as $25 million. you can get a pretty nice place, though, for 6 million. >> the vast majority of that oceanfront property is investment property. and why should everybody be paying to protect oceanfront investment property?
>> the money is there. i mean, these people spend more on shrimp for the barbecues on the weekends than they pay in taxes. i'm certain of it having watched many of these things unfold over the years. so, it's not that they can't
possibly hold onto the house if the taxes went up 50%. it's that they just don't wanna pay more taxes. >> so, follow the money, and it's clear that the priority is to preserve what these individuals have at the expense of, you know, the majority
of the people. >> is this one condemned, do you think? >> i don't know. >> that one down there is undermined. >> yeah, that one down there is i don't know that it's condemned , but it's certainly
in danger, and this is the absolute worst spot on the island. >> we're in the southern part of beach haven. and this was, like, the hardest hit in this most recent nor'easter. and what's really interesting
is that here, bad as the damage was, they're clearly building more. >> it seems irrational, but from an individual perspective, this is so valuable that it makes sense for them. the replenishment doesn't just protect existing
structures, it's encouraging more of it because they're confident they can get their money back. even in the single worst place on the entire island, i don't know that they'd be building here if they weren't confident that someone else was gonna
help them pay for this sand. >> to get a beach replenishment project, it has to be valuable property because the way it's set up is is that they're trying to figure out how much money is gonna be saved by having a beach there to erode away rather than
having the storm damage directly on the homes. and so, essentially, the more valuable the homes are, the more likely you are to get a beach replenishment project. >> the value of the community and the structures behind the project needs to equal or exceed
the cost of the project itself. as the projects get more expensive that means you need more dollar value on the other side. >> that has happened, that has happened in new jersey where they changed the equation with the replacement of the
smaller single-family summer house to this multi-million dollar mansion. now, there is enough value of the properties being protected, and now they throw sand on the beach. >> yeah, there's a whole lot more money involved now.
money changes everything, as they say, right? >> it's just this endless cycle: they replenish, then they build more, that hastens the call for more replenishment, and then more unwise coastal development seems to follow right behind
these beach replenishment >> it's one of the great ironies that a project that's intended to prevent flooding would encourage putting more development at risk of flooding. and in the end, because the projects are designed to
a certain type of storm, that next one-step-higher, bigger storm's gonna come along and simply erase that whole value. >> it's almost like a sisyphus rolling the rock up the hill. we are pumping sand on the beach to watch it wash out to sea,
watch our tax dollars wash out to sea, only to pump sand on the beach again. in an ideal world, this could be stopped, or it wouldn't have happened in the first place, but we're all here now. and so, we can't just tell these people to give up their assets
and whatever; that's why this is a difficult problem. it's not an easy one to solve. >> two and half million dollars a house, so you gonna tear them down, move them back half a block? not gonna happen. we're gonna keep the beach where
it is, if at all possible. and that's where beach replenishment comes in because it's a mechanism to do this until sea-level rises and drowns them in place. ♪ there's a cloud ♪ ♪ hangin' over me ♪ ♪ when the wind blows ♪
♪ you can't breathe ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ the town shuts all its doors ♪ ♪ they don't wanna see ♪ ♪ don't wanna see ♪ ♪ my face again ♪ ♪ >> when we compare sea-level over the last 2,000 years
versus the 20th century, what is the stand-out conclusion is that the rate of sea-level rise in the 20th century is far greater than any of the natural variability that we've seen over the last 2,000 years. one of the most strong pieces
of evidence for global warming is the michael mann hockey stick curve. it shows temperature being relatively stable for 1500 years, but in the 20th century temperatures start to increase. so by the time we reach the 1990s, we're recording
temperatures that have not been seen for the previous 1500 years. there's a very strong relationship between sea-level and temperature. when temperatures started to increase in the latter
part of the 19th century, sea-level started to increase. so, if we project that into the future, we're very confident
sea-levels will rise at an increasing rate in the 21st century. if we think about sea-level rise or fall, there are factors that affect the oceans,
and there are factors that affect the land. so, if we take the ocean, if you warm ocean water up, it occupies a greater a volume, and sea-level rises. the other thing is water held in ice sheets. if the ice sheets melt,
the water goes into the ocean, sea-level rises. every object has its own gravity. and an ice sheet is a colossally large object, so it has a colossally large gravity associated, and water is attracted to those ice sheets.
so if sea-level rises as a result of a melting ice sheet, you also lose gravitational attraction of the water to the ice sheet, so this really strange phenomenon. if west antarctic ice sheet melts, perhaps the most sensitive ice sheet on our
planet, the hotspot where the sea-level rise will be greatest will be washington, dc. it's a very complex phenomenon, and that's not thinking about the land at all. if we think what sea-level was like 20,000 years ago, well, temperatures on our planet
were much cooler, but we had 2 large ice sheets. we had a large ice sheet in northwestern europe, and then we had this colossal laurentide ice sheet. it's thickness was huge. over hudson bay, it was approximately 4,000 meters
thick. because lots of the ocean water was on these ice sheets, the sea-level was some 120 meters below present, and the shoreline was hundreds of kilometers offshore. the earth is not a brittle, hard solid, it's a deformable
ductile plastic, so when the ice sheet sat on it, it depressed the earth. and at the margins, it uplifted the earth. when the ice sheet melted, the areas underneath the ice sheet bent up. but the areas at the margins,
jersey, carolinas, going through to georgia and florida, subsided, and they are continuing to subside. so, the coastlines of much of the u.s. atlantic coast are sinking, subsiding at rates of 1 to 2 millimeters per year. and this has had happened
through geological time since those ice sheets started to melt and will happen continually into the future. >> water level is coming up and now we begin to see that sea-level is coming up at a rate faster than at any time in the last 8,000 years or so.
the storms operating on top of that--we'll be experiencing surges, inundations unlike anything we've had in the past. >> okay, so what i can do is i can actually pull up a graphic that shows our sea-level rise scenarios that we're working
with for the corps. so, in this case, if i look at the chart that we've just got here, we can see that the extrapolation of the current tide gauges are potentially a little bit over 2 feet of change. the intermediate scenario is
about, let's see, about 5 feet and then the upper limit for the scenario is about 13 feet or a little over 13 feet. so, that's a lot of change. if you're considering a beach renourishment project as your primary risk-reduction measure
for investments, public investments and private investments in homes and land and businesses, and you're in an area where you're projected to have a lot of sea-level change that could be causing erosion, then you're in an
unsustainable position. >> beach nourishment is not solving the issue of sea-level rise. the coastline of new jersey, essentially, will be underwater in a major storm whether there's beach nourishment or not.
>> the united states geological survey put together a sort of "coastal vulnerability index" it was called, where it took into account, for the whole of the u.s., landforms and sedimentation rates, took into account historical sea-level from tide gauges,
took into account beach slopes, even came up with an index of which were more vulnerable and which weren't. and from that, you can identify which areas are more prone to retreat than others. but has this been taken into account by policy makers?
i very, very much doubt. >> we've been dealing with sea-level rise in the science panel so that we can begin thinking about the future. if this is what's happening, we shouldn't just go forward blind and building as usual. >> in north carolina, we were
asked simply to recommend a planning number, not specifically to make a prediction of exactly what was gonna happen with sea-level, but to recommend a planning number, which is what we've done. >> it was a consensus of the
group that the likelihood sometime in the future, probably by 2100, of seeing a 39-inch rise in sea-level with a possibility that it could be as high 55 inches. it was a consensus, and it was a conservative consensus. it didn't represent the
extremes. it was a conservative consensus, and that's how science works. >> we were here to be talking about a draft sea-level rise policy that the commission put together. so, this is what we have before us.
we have not heard any additional comments from the public, from local governments that would lead us to believe that additional changes are necessary at this point. >> my name is tommy g. thompson, and i am the chairman of a group called "nc-20".
our group represents the county governments of the 20 coastal counties of north carolina. and our concern is that if sea-level rise is projected at too high a level, it could have serious economic consequences. >> in north carolina, we have
a group called "nc-20" that is actively trying to counteract the recommendations of the science panel which advises the coastal resources commission. >> sea-level rise is linear. in other words, if you go back a hundred years, and some of
the tide gauges go back farther than that, it shows a straight line. now, that straight line is increasing; it shows an upward slope. but over the next 88 years, that upward slope is about 8 inches.
>> the scientific consensus is that sea-level is likely to accelerate its rate of rise over the next 100 years and that it could rise as much as one meter, or a little bit more than 3 feet. >> so, where is the acceleration argument coming from?
it's coming from those who are using computer models and then introducing assumptions into the computer models about global warming and the rate of global warming and the melting of the ice caps and all that. >> the standard that we use is you have to use only studies
that have been vetted, that have been cleared, that have been published in peer-reviewed journals, journals where the science has been examined. that's sort of the gold standard of understanding what science is good and what isn't.
>> we'll take whatever the evidence shows. we are not willing to use computer models based on somebody's assumption about what's gonna happen. when we see regulations that essentially try to stop everything based on hypothetical
assumptions or something, we tend to get involved. >> north carolina republicans have drawn a line in the soon-to-be underwater sand. they have written a new bill that would immediately address the crisis predicted by these climate models by outlawing
the climate models. >> we have reworked that piece of legislation to include some language dealing with sea-level rise. and i don't know about you, but it's not something i've thought about all my life, sea-level rise.
>> here's how it works: the law makes it illegal for north carolina to consider scenarios of accelerating rates of sea-level rise due to global warming. >> to those of us in the scientific community, the language in this bill is
thoroughly confusing. let me give you a couple of examples. "to mandate the use of historical rates of sea-level rise is inconsistent with the historical record itself and with the best science." every major scientific
organization in the country, including the national academy of sciences, the american geophysical union, the american meteorlogical society. the geological society of america has position statements, consensus documents, that say sea-level rise is accelerating.
it will be faster, much faster, this century than last century. >> the economic value of coastal property in those counties was 1.6 billion. you got 8,000 oceanfront structures along north carolina's beaches. so, when you're talking about
sea-level rise and the implications of this, you're talking about affecting land use. property values. and you're talking about insurance rates and everything else. >> this is a brilliant solution.
if your science gives you a result that you don't like, pass a law saying that the result is illegal. problem solved. in fact, i think we should... >> are you familiar with nc-20? >> yes, i know them very well. >> can you talk a little
bit about-- >> no. >> no? i'm not, we will... i won't even say that. they will go away with their heads buried in the sand, and they will, um... they will pay for their price,
a price for their position in the end. they're not helping the state of north carolina one bit. >> almost every state has a group something like nc-20 that's arguing that the scientists don't know what they're doing.
>> i work with undergraduates and graduate students, and do i trap them into my lab and say, "right, okay, you wanna come work for my lab, what were gonna do today is make up some numbers to show that sea-level's rising"? how ludicrous is that?
do you not think that i get them in here and we try to investigate a problem? and we come out with a conclusion that the 20th century was greater than anything over the last 2,000 years. we didn't know that. that's just what the
data shows. >> the part of the anti-intellectual environment that we seem to have in this country now when it comes to global climate change... >> you know, it's sort of like this: if you went to the doctor
because you had a cough, and 98 doctors told you that you've got lung cancer and you need treatment. but you found 2 doctors who told you that you just have a itchy lung, and you really don't need to do anything about it other than maybe chew gum.
i'm guessing that most reasonable americans would probably go with the 98 doctors who said that you've got lung cancer and would probably seek treatment. well, that's what sea-level rise it. it's not something that's
abstract. we're watching it happen. and it's happening because the planet is warming. and as of yet, we're not doing a great job in responding to it. the coastal economy needs to be able to respond in better ways to storms and to long-term
sea-level rise in a way that will preserve the economy, not destroy it. >> this is why nc-20, this group that is trying to say that there is no sea-level rise, is doing us such a disservice, such an irresponsible, almost
criminal-like irresponsibility, that we need this discussion. >> president obama promised to begin to the slow the rise of the oceans... [ laughter ] ...and to heal the planet. my promise is to help you and your family.
[ applause ] >> nobody has a clue what they're doing. nobody can get that far yet. you know, each time we take one step, it's something else you have to do. then, you're taking another step, and you gotta do that.
it's just, basically, step by step, one day at a time to find out what you're gonna do with your life after this. what can you do? besides all this? you're paying a mortgage that's not there, and you're paying high rent for some place
to live. and there's not much you can do about that. mortgage company said they'll let you go for 3 months, but on the fourth month, they want the full thing paid upfront, so, like... those poor souls with katrina,
i mean, that's unreal. you're watching it on tv, and it's hard to comprehend how all that happened. and then you turn your corner, and it's there again. like, how? that's real. it's real now.
it's not on tv, you know? it's real. >> you hear, you know, things like this happen, and they don't happen here. and they do; they happen everywhere. >> they happen everywhere. >> and when you live by the
water, you have to be careful. whether my family wants to rebuild, can rebuild, i think all that's gonna take time-- >> is it gonna be safe to rebuild? i mean, just everything seems to be changing.
it's changing all over, not just here, but the waters are rising and-- >> the homes on this street, the next street, you know on the street perpendicular to here--is it safe? probably not. they probably need to be
protected by a sea wall or something i don't know what they can do, but it needs to be protected. nobody's able to live on this block or the next... not for a while. >> a long time, a long time. >> there are always winners
and losers. there have been winners because of the development and the real estate. there have been losers who have had to pay the costs of cleaning up after these storms, folks that haven't been quite as fortunate.
>> the fact that sea-level is rising, whether it accelerates or not, means that every single erosion problem and storm hazard problem you have right now is never going to get better. if the one meter projection is anywhere close to being
correct, then there will come a point in the not-too-distant future when we're gonna need to start spending significant amounts of money, uh, protecting and revamping places like miami, charleston. >> when 3-foot sea-level rise
comes, manhattan and queens, and boston, and so forth will be in trouble, and who's gonna get the funding for that? is it gonna be this island, or is it gonna be boston? >> i mean, we're not gonna abandon manhattan. >> those priorities are going
to be very high in our society, and the costs will be huge from a 3-foot sea-level rise. it would appear that this kind of development is, uh, does not have a healthy future several decades down the road. >> now we've made investments in these places.
you have sea-level rising, so the danger zone is going to get larger, it's gonna get more intense. we have a tremendous political debate going on about taxes. and yet, we don't seem to look at these very, very long-term structural costs to society
to keep ourselves in these risky places. >> any way you look at it, the federal government is backstopping and subsidizing coastal development backwards and forwards. flood insurance really helped fuel the coastal development
boom because it made it safer, at least financially, to your wallet, to build on the coast. so, somebody wants to build a home, so they're able to get federally subsidized flood insurance for the value of the home, up to $250,000.
after the storm comes, and the home is destroyed or damaged, the homeowner turns to the flood insurance program to say, "hey, i want my $250,000 to rebuild my structure." and if enough homes are damaged, well, then, they're just gonna borrow from the treasury.
2005 comes by, you have katrina, rita, and wilma--huge losses. and now you have a program that takes in about $2 billion in premium that's $20 billion in the hole to taxpayers. by the time that sandy hit, the program was already more than $17 billion in hoc
to taxpayers. and on top of that, congress allowed the program to borrow another 10 billion to pay off claims. there's no way they're gonna pay that back, especially when you think about how future storms are going to continue
to increase, and the losses are going to continue to increase. in addition to the flood insurance, you also have disaster aid. fema steps in, and they're rebuilding the road that goes to that house. they're rebuilding the water
treatment plant and all this other structures around it. these coastal states and these coastal communities come running to uncle sam to get subsidies, and they talk about all these economic benefits, but in reality, the lion's share of the economic benefit actually goes
to the state and the locality, and the lion's share of the cost ends up going to uncle sam and the federal treasury. you subsidize what you want more of. and so, do we want more development on the coast? do we want to do more of this?
>> we are absolutely paying people to live in very and we don't do a very good job of letting people know what those risks are so that they can make an informed judgment. and because there won't be enough money to go around, we are going to be faced with
tougher choices, particularly in blue-collar communities where the properties are generational. and those are actually the ones that are most vulnerable because they don't have as many options to get themselves out of that situation.
at the end of the day, the danger will be, "oh my gosh, we forgot these folks, and we kind of left them on their own," which is what's happened to them time and time again throughout history. >> and that's why at least beginning to consider how you
might change the footprint of your community as sea-level rises just seems like a sensible thing to do. >> we're looking out over harvest cove. this is harvest cove right out here, and then you can see the atlantic ocean out beyond that.
a very similar view to my mother's picture that's in the national geographic of 1962. after the storm, all of the homes out this vista were gone except for the one right across the cove here. everything else was gone. for storms, what you need is
time, and sand gives you time to protect you from that ocean rolling down. i don't know that there was any other option that we really had. you know what? not everybody loves this project.
people have a hard time with change. i have a hard time with change. but i also know that we've protected the town. and i sleep very well at night when the storms come, which i wouldn't have done, and i probably wouldn't choose
to be mayor of the town knowing what the problems are if that project was not there. i wouldn't want that responsibility. >> these nourishment projects that are being done today, they are for 50 years. well, at the end of those 50
years, we're going to what? abandon you? or we're just going to continue for 50 years. abandoning is politically not viable. say continue it for another 50 years? it's possible, but what happens
at the end of those 50 years? at some point, it seems to me that the federal government had to realize that it needs to encourage, very strongly, local communities to adopt solutions. >> when the storm hits, people's response is to actually kind of
rebuild, right? they feel that, you know, this was their primary investment. "it may have been damaged heavily, but now is the time for me to rebuild here," because they're actually afraid to walk away.
what's going to happen to them if they walk away from this investment? this is their biggest >> we're gonna try to take out that roof... >> you have to provide local citizens and states with all the planning assistance that
you possibly can. >> and we need to come up with a creative way to ensure that if they have to walk away that they're not walking away with nothing. >> as long as we're in the kind of antagonistic political situation we're in where nothing
happens, then how can you deal with a problem like sea-level rise? we can't move a piece of legislation with policy in it because it's either "republican" or it's "democrat". and it needs to be "american". right now, there's no
give-and-take. if you have no give-and-take, then you have no action. >> i think what struck me when i saw those images after the storm was this was one fell swoop. we saw towns under water. we saw the streets were flooded,
houses that were completely reduced to piles of lumber and rubble. the subways were full of water. there were trains and cars that were, you know, submerged. the rockaways burning, and the inability of anybody to get there and stop that.
the fact that, you know, the country's largest city had basically been paralyzed as it was being destroyed by the storm. it was very much an apocalyptic vision of what had come to the shore. >> there is a wake-up call here,
and there's a lesson to be learned. there's a reality that has existed for a long time that we have been blind to, and that is climate change, extreme weather--call it what you will--and our vulnerability to it.
it's undeniable that the frequency of extreme weather conditions is up. there are places that are going to be victimized by storms. once you accept that reality, that this could happen again, we have to start to ask some tough questions and work our
way through it. the first question is going to be: what should we rebuild? where? and how? >> we have never successfully controlled nature. if you stop water from going one place, it goes to another. the disaster happens when
we try to build in places that the water wants to go. >> we've always liked to live along the coast. the birth of civilization occurred because sea-level stabilized. the success of a civilization is very much dependent upon
the stabilization of that we're now moving into the 21st century while our environment is now becoming unstable again. >> everyone wants to live in paradise, and it's a wonderful place, it's a beautiful place. but you also have to never forget that you're just
a visitor here. i mean, you know, long after we're all dead and gone, that ocean's still gonna be there, those waves are still gonna be there. they're all still gonna be there... long after we're gone.
we're just passing through... just passing through. ♪ there's a cloud ♪ ♪ hangin' over me ♪ ♪ when the wind blows ♪ ♪ you can't breathe ♪ ♪ the town ♪ ♪ shuts all its doors ♪ ♪ they don't wanna see ♪
♪ don't wanna see ♪ ♪ my face again ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ lost my mama ♪ ♪ lost my friend ♪ ♪ lost my woman ♪ ♪ oh, where will it end? ♪ ♪ the rage boils and overflows ♪ ♪ for so many years i hide ♪
♪ too much dust on this ride ♪ ♪ but on my face ♪ ♪ and in my eyes ♪
