barbarow wrote:
What is equally disturbing is the fact that the government and the insurance
companies continue to condone and insure building in areas where it is known
that they will have disasters and large insurance losses.

Floida made pretty severe restrictions after Andrew - if 50% damaged,
have to rebuild on stilts, etc. I can imagine the howling if anyone
even THOUGHT of passing laws against building "on the water". There is
a feeding frenzy already, town ignores it's own regs on density, etc.
There are lots of folks wealthy enough to gut a nice waterfront home and
rebuild 3x as large; those same folks are wealthy enough to make large
campaign donations to political party of their republican choice )I
have met only one person, in 10 yrs. in Florida, who admits to being a
Democrat. Honest. I wouldn't kid ya'. A local planner recently
suggested a moratorium on building permits, and they haven't found his
body floating yet, but the response was negative.

I grew up in a nice city that didn't build up to the water's edge and
knew how to reverse rivers when they flowed the wrong direction )