Tossing Mullet

Dauphin Island troubles were foreseen

There are times when there is a glorious rush associated with saying, “I told you so” – and there are times when it borders on the painful. And occasionally it can be both.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers designed the sandy barrier on Dauphin Island to last five years – not even close! The project was funded this time by post-Katrina federal funds, a.k.a. our taxes, under the FEMA objective of protecting infrastructure for the Town of Dauphin Island.

The Dauphin Island town council is unflinchingly committed to maintaining the rental units on the west end because a large portion of the town’s revenues derive from the property and lodging taxes generated by those properties. Under the Stafford Act, which amended the Disaster Relief Act of 1974 in 1988, the town is eligible for funding under the Public Assistance Program and the town also participates in the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP).

The latter provides federally subsidized flood insurance to property owners within the town limits. Such subsidies are made contingent on the town meeting the federal standards of the NFIP. The town meets those criteria and all of the support provided over the almost 30 years of the NFIP is quite appropriate – at least it seems that way to people with property on Dauphin Island, particularly the west end. To the rest of us – not so much.

Most often everyone has referred to the long sand pile along the water’s edge on the Gulf side of the island as the “berm.” The most common definition that I found describes a berm as a narrow ledge or shelf typically at the top or bottom of a slope. So the berm is more properly what you and I call the beach – not the linear pile of sand.

After watching the contractor’s efforts to shape the thing precisely to the Corps’ specifications, it became obvious to me that the thing is really a levee and we have heard enough about those over the past several years! Then it seemed even more appropriate to consider it to be similar to the Dutch dikes, since we are trying to keep the ocean off the island. The language of the Stafford Act is probably the only definition that is easily understood. The act calls it an Emergency Protective Measure or EPM in government jargon.

Surge flooding from the north has always impacted low areas on the east end of the island and the bigger storms of the last few years have made it more noticeable – as have the increased number of human structures. But the natural vegetation of the wetlands and the maritime forest combined with the elevation of the structures seems to deal with the threat rather nicely (so far). So an EPM may not actually be needed there.

Meanwhile the town had worked hard to keep filling the several holes that appeared in their EPM, even before it was completed! Remember – the dike is there to protect their infrastructure and subsequent tax revenue, so it behooves them to keep putting sand on the dike. Can you say “thumb” in the dike? (I said “thumb,” not “dumb”!)

The “dumb” applies to the system off the island. The island has been part of the National Flood Insurance Program since its inception in 1968 because Mobile County participated before the town was established. The community contains almost 20 percent of all the repetitive loss claims in the State of Alabama, and logically a majority of those claims can be attributed to west end properties.

A rough estimate of the land area of the west end comes to a couple of hundredths of one percent of the land in the state. NFIP claims through Ivan and Katrina have approached $500 million since 1968, with Dauphin Island receiving over $88 million. If you’re trying to keep up with this it means that about 0.02% of the state has received almost 20 percent of the NFIP payments – a slight disparity, to say the least!

Now, lest I be misunderstood – these people have paid their flood insurance premiums and followed the law to the letter. They are not dumb – it is a bargain by anyone’s calculation. Furthermore, the structures that have been built along the Alabama coast since Ivan are pretty well designed and constructed. The results are obvious in the wake of Gustav.

NFIP claims from Gustav and Ike should be modest. The EPM even worked in the sense that the road leading out the west end was carefully preserved under about three feet of sand from the dike – pre-Ike. The dike of course, is spread out across the west end. I doubt that they had completely removed its remnants from the road before Ike rearranged it all again.

But here’s the rub. NFIP and policy premiums don’t pay to move the sand back to the beach. NFIP didn’t pay for it in the first place. NFIP doesn’t provide “no less than 75 percent” of the cost of restoring the infrastructure. The Public Assistance Program of the Stafford Act does. You can rest assured (that seems unlikely) that town officials will be seeking relief from the feds for recovery efforts in the wake of the two storms that have impacted us recently – as they should.

On the other hand they could emulate the Governor of Alaska and turn down the federal largesse being thrown into the steadily rising ocean (excuse me, she took it, just didn’t use it for the bridge). The town is not required by the law to seek federal assistance. Like it or not – attractive or not, the revenue from the most heavily impacted portion of the island could be replaced by three more “fortress” condos similar to the newest built there.

Assuming that they were built in the protective shadow of the Sand Island-Pelican Island offshore delta, they could provide ample revenue to maintain the relatively stable portions of the island. One intelligent suggestion even included using the north side of the road toward the west end – with the stipulation that the south side lots be purchased by the developer and turned into a public beach and dune system. That natural system could work and be appropriately subsidized by the public – for the public!

George Crozier is Lagniappe columnist. Contact him at george@lagniappemobile.com.

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