July 18, 2008
The Surfside beach front property rights battle
On June 17, 2008, National Public Radio picked up on a property rights battle, previously covered by the Wall Street Journal, involving a friend of the Wizard named Brooks Porter. Brooks, along with his wife Merry, own a beach front property in Surfside Texas, near Freeport, which they have held for 25 years.
As the NPR story relates, the Porters purchased the house as a rental and occasional weekend beach house. The problem is that over the past 25 years, the Gulf of Mexico has eroded the local beach heads dozens of feet, sweeping grasses and dunes with it. The Porters, along with some other locals, now have housing that sits just yards away from the shoreline. That in turn puts them on the beach which is in violation of the Texas Open Beaches Act, which states that the beach is effectively a park.
Brooks told me a while back that the problem is that the beach erosion is not entirely a natural phenomenon, due to acts from the Army Corps of Engineers and other entities. He and the wife intend to stay put.
As the NPR story correctly concludes, this is a big looming problem. To quote NPR:
How this case gets resolved could set a precedent far beyond Texas. What if rising seas threaten one day to swamp skyscrapers in Manhattan or entire towns in Florida? Whose responsibility will it be to move buildings out of the way? Who will take the hit for the lost property value?
Mr. and Mrs. Porter have fought this battle for 10 years now. Stay tuned.
Sigh...
Wizard.
July 05, 2008
The Floodway Ordinance - Grinding the legislative sausage
This past week, several members of Houston City Council voted to tag revisions to Chapter 19 of the City of Houston's ordinances, which deal with flooding and development in floodplains and floodways. The story came out that several members of council were given short notice on what those changes would be before being asked to vote on them.
The Wizard has been counseling the Floodway Coalition in this property rights battle. I've spoken to some influential people about the matter, and was responsible for giving them some ideas which they have put into practice. Recently, I learned that Council members have seen those signs. I will leave it at that.
And so it was that in the past six weeks, an amazing turn around has come to pass where Council members have in fact come to officially revisit the issue. I have helped go over the revised Chapter 19 ordinances. The Wizard finds himself both puzzled as to why the Mayor is wanting to cement the ordinance revisions quickly, and strongly believing that a vote on this ordinance should be delayed, if for just a short time. The whole matter would not be so bad if Council were only revisiting Chapter 19-43 (the floodway ordinance itself), but the problem is that parts throughout the entire ordinance have been revised, which makes going over the volume of material and making sense of it all a vastly more complicated task. I've spent some 10-15 hours going over the ordinance and there are probably 2-3 pages of questions that I have come up with, much less what other interested parties will spot.
Without going into much detail, there is some language that probably does not need to be in the ordinance. Because of the volume of revisions, I have some doubts that busy, term limited Council members may not fully catch all of the revisions of what is now on offer. The ordinance could still have some unforeseen consequences, which is what the initial changes voted on in 2006 caused, and which are at the root of what started the controversy to begin with. Council members really should listen to what the people who have been the most active and have become far and away going the most educated citizens in this city over the past two years have to say on this issue. To Council's credit, they have stated that they are waiting for a response and the Wizard helped FCOH thrash through the revised ordinance to help put together that response.
I should say here though that the experience of having gone over the proposed revision of the ordinance has given the Wizard a new appreciation of how much effort it takes to get some hopefully decent legislation passed into law.
Credit must be given to Council and the Mayor, which did the right thing and took out the most destructive aspects of the current ordinance which were at the heart of the fight, including the 50 percent substantial damage clause, the no build provision on vacant land in the floodway, and some other onerous regulatory burdens that were laid on improved land with currently existing structures.
What is good is that we were given some time to look over the ordinance and come up with recommendations on changes. The Floodway Coalition probably will not get everything they want, but it seems clear to the Wizard that Mayor White finally realized that the issue was not going to go away and wants to settle the issue - equitably for all parties involved - once and for all.
Wizard
