Climate change and the end of American beaches

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Jul 30, 2024 View in browser   By Daniel Cusick Illustration by Claudine Hellmuth/POLITICO (source images via iStock) Calvin Coolidge was president when the federal government began paying to pump sand onto what was arguably the nation’s first beach resort town: Coney Island, New York. A century later, President Joe Biden has continued one of the most cash-bleeding civil works programs ever conceived by Washington, known as “beach renourishment.” As I write today, weaning Long Beach, New Jersey, or any other popular beach destination off of taxpayer-subsidized sand has proven extremely difficult. Americans’ demand for wide and sandy beaches along saltwater coasts is insatiable — even as sea-level rise and intensifying coastal storms erode public beaches at faster rates Experts say the cost of pumping and spreading sand, bundled under a suite of Army Corps of Engineers programs called Coastal Storm Risk Management, will spiral to new spending heights because of climate change. Nourishment is so ingrained in U.S. coastal policies, and so sprawling in scope, that no one knows how much the government has spent to rebuild beaches over the last century, including Congress and the Army Corps of Engineers. Since 2010, the Army Corps has spent roughly $3 billion on sand placement. The lion’s share — $1.8 billion — came via supplemental post-disaster spending bills. And when a beach is deemed to have been destroyed by a coastal storm, as opposed to normal erosion, the Army Corps picks up 100 percent of the tab. Since 2018, the emergency spending tab has climbed to nearly $600 million. “There’s no way the Corps stops pumping sand onto beaches until there’s no money or no sand left to put out there,” Andrew Coburn, associate director of the Program for the Study of Developed Shorelines at Western Carolina University, which tracks government spending on beach projects, told me. Buying time The alternative isn’t pretty. Lost beaches conjure grim visions of coastal blight where apartment towers and shoreline businesses become teardowns or collapse into the ocean. It’s already happening in places like Rodanthe Beach, North Carolina, where locals are desperate for sand. Congress and the Army Corps aim to please, even as routine beach nourishment has far exceeded — both in dollars and duration — what Congress intended when it first began authorizing 50-year periodic nourishment projects in the 1960s. Many projects have exceeded their original sunset dates and have been reauthorized for decades longer. The five largest beach projects have been replenished a combined 57 times since the early 1960s, requiring more than 30 million cubic yards of sand, according to Army Corps figures. That’s enough to fill nearly 340,000 transoceanic shipping containers. Molly Mitchell, an assistant professor at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science, said the projects offer a near-term solution to keeping local economies alive. But as seas rise and storms strengthen, current engineering standards and construction practices for beach building will become obsolete. There will come a day when sand infusions will no longer be practical much less affordable. “We can look to the past and say that beach nourishment has been a very effective strategy, but we’re really just buying time until we come up with a better solution,” Mitchell said.   It's Tuesday — thank you for tuning in to POLITICO's Power Switch. I'm your host, Daniel Cusick. Power Switch is brought to you by the journalists behind E&E News and POLITICO Energy. Send your tips, comments, questions to jkirkland@eenews.net. Listen to today’s POLITICO Energy podcast Today in POLITICO Energy’s podcast: Kelsey Tamborrino talks about how former President Donald Trump could dismantle President Joe Biden's climate agenda if he's elected in November.   Live briefings, policy trackers, and procedural, industry, and people intelligence from POLITICO Pro Analysis gives you the insights you need to focus your policy strategy this election cycle. Secure your seat.      In a majority opinion that was subsequently corrected, Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch confused nitrous oxide, commonly known as laughing gas, with nitrogen oxides, compounds that contribute to smog formation. | J. Scott Applewhite/AP Testing SCOTUS One day before a June decision by the Supreme Court erased the long-standing Chevron doctrine that defers to agency expertise when laws are ambiguous, a separate ruling showed that neither top jurists nor a team of elite law clerks necessarily get basic facts right, Sean Reilly and Pamela King write. In the court’s 5-4 opinion that stayed an Environmental Protection Agency smog regulation, Justice Neil Gorsuch repeatedly confused nitrous oxide, often known as laughing gas, with nitrogen oxides, the class of compounds that help form smog. The Chevron deference ruling has been viewed as an attempt to wrest decisionmaking power from scientists and technical experts at agencies like EPA and hand it to generalist judges. That has raised questions about the ability of courts to handle complicated science and complex technical information. Renée Landers, a law professor at Suffolk University in Boston, described the episode as “a cautionary tale about judges biting off more than they can chew.” Landers added, “Maybe courts aren’t the right place to be doing this because most judges aren’t technical experts.” Harris-Kelly ticket? Vice President Kamala Harris is eyeing a host of potential running mates for her presidential bid, including Democratic Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly. As a senator from a parched state, Kelly is well-versed in ongoing water disputes in the West, Timothy Cama writes. Kelly, a former astronaut, has seen his vice presidential bid boosted recently by congressional allies for his history of winning tight elections in a swing state and his record on immigration. Climate change advocates say Kelly's water and drought policy expertise could be a boost for environmental policy. Biden's uneasy embrace of oil Biden's approach to oil policy could echo for years. The White House issued rules that make it more expensive to drill on federal lands. And Biden reduced leasing on those lands by as much as 95 percent to shrink future development. He also banned new oil speculation across millions of acres of public lands and waters. The Biden administration passed a suite of new rules to update the oil program, including a seismic shift in how much money companies must secure to drill on public lands. One area of the federal oil patch the Biden administration failed to directly touch: oil and gas drilling on public lands. In Other News Glitch: Tesla is recalling over 1.8 million cars because of a software problem that could cause the hood to open. Subscriber Zone A showcase of some of our best subscriber content. Firefighter Christian Moorhouse jumps over a fence while battling the Park Fire last week in the Cohasset community of Butte County, California. | Noah Berger/AP Population booms in disaster-prone states are putting more property in harm’s way and driving up losses for the U.S. insurance industry, a new analysis says. Greenpeace USA quietly replaced its executive director with temporary leaders this month, offering little public explanation about her departure. Senate Democrats lobbying the Treasury Department for more flexibility when implementing hydrogen tax credits are facing opposition from more than 100 groups. That's it for today, folks! 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