In blunt and sometimes profane language, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie is promising to build a continuous dune along his state’s entire barrier island beach front.
Homeowners on Plum Island, Massachusetts, have the state’s okay to move sand around in a last-ditch effort to save their houses from the ocean. For now.
Lumber interests are pushing to get North Carolina off the LEED bandwagon.
Federal funds (and sand) are flowing in Delaware, where the Corps of Engineers is ready to put the beaches back the way they were before Sandy — and then some.
Increased premiums included in last year’s flood insurance reform package are starting to make waves in coastal states.
Federal authorities have approved hundreds of millions of dollars of funding to help New York State buy out homeowners in threatened shore areas. But most storm victims would rather rebuild.
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The oil stopped flowing two years ago. Much of the money hasn’t started flowing yet. And the Gulf Coast, some reports say, is still hurting from the effects of BP’s disastrous Deepwater Horizon oil drilling platform blowout.
Homeowners in Louisiana’s fragile delta are living outside the Federal levee system — and with FEMA policy changing, they’re worried about the future.
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The Texas legislature is taking on a reform effort for the Texas Windstorm Insurance Association, the state’s troubled insurance pool for high-risk coastal houses.
Richard Schifter’s house-with-a-view sits on a beautiful Nantucket bluff. But the ocean isn’t bluffing — and now the cliff is crumbling under Schifter’s footings. So Schifter is hedging his investment and moving the giant house back from the edge of destruction — swimming pool and all.
On the New Jersey shore, well-off beachfront owners are fighting dune construction by public authorities. In New York, the situation is reversed: big-house owners are building their own dunes, over the objections of other townsfolk. The fight is less about the view than about the question: Who owns...
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FEMA is set to revise its recently released “advisory” flood zone maps for Staten Island, the agency has told local leaders. Many areas will change from V zones to A zones. Velocity zones in New Jersey, already incorporated into some towns’ zoning rules, may also shrink.
Battered by hurricanes and nor’easters, N.C. 12—the Outer Banks’ fragile lifeline—is on life support.
An Inspector General report says more than half a billion dollars in Hurricane Katrina relief money may have been misspent. Most Katrina victims who were awarded $30,000 apiece to elevate their houses never documented that the work was done.
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Congress authorized funding for Hurricane Sandy emergency relief in January. But the actual money hasn’t started flowing yet.
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An engineer investigating flood insurance claims sheds light on the mechanisms of damage.
Carelessness helped create Florida’s Chinese drywall disaster. Cleaning it up is a job for a very careful builder.
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From small-time scams to major misappropriation of relief money, government is on the lookout for crooked use of rebuilding funds.
In the Barnegat Bay, side-scanning sonar and “picker” boats are the tools for a tedious cleanup.
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After a statewide tour, homebuilding market analyst Lesley Deutch reports: “Florida is on fire.”
An deck at an Alabama beach house failed suddenly in early March under the weight of students partying on spring break, sending several to the hospital.
On Plum Island’s unstable shoreline, panicked homeowners have taken matters into their own hands, building armored rock-wall defenses along their beach. But the legal ground they stand on is as shifting and unreliable as the crumbling dunes.
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New Jersey Governor Chris Christie has adopted FEMA’s tough new advisory flood maps for the New Jersey rebuilding. But he also says the maps may be eased when the final version comes out. Is he right?
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Some homeowners may be forced out. Others may be able to rebuild, better. But one thing’s for sure: Things are going to change in Union Beach, New Jersey.
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The NFIP paid a Staten Island homeowner $10,000 for flood damage to her first floor. Now they say the space was a basement — and they want their money back.
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As Hurricane Katrina taught in New Orleans, the road home after a hurricane is not a simple path.
In a first for the New Jersey recovery effort, FEMA has provided a trailer to a New Jersey family on land they already own.
Sand dunes saved some houses from Sandy's storm surge. But some beachfront homeowners still won't sign off on raising the dunes.
Homes flooded by Sandy are showing up in real estate listings at a steep discount — but it’s buyer beware.
The latest in a series of tough winter storms brought more flooding and more destruction to New Jersey and Massachusetts shore towns.
Authorities aren’t sure why a sewer plant in Hull, Massachusetts, flooded and broke down last week, forcing operators to spill untreated sewage into the ocean.
Spring is on its way in Florida — and with it, the rising threat of wildfires.
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As flood insurance rates get ready to spike sharply upward, buyers and sellers are worried about the consequences.
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”PVC farms” at the stalled developments around Savannah, Georgia, may finally start bearing fruit this spring.
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A Maryland builder says requirements for downspout sump pits are forcing him to damage tree roots.
A grassroots volunteer group called Respond & Rebuild has made mold its top priority, and they’re attacking it with a basic arsenal: wire brushes, detergent, and elbow grease.
“I cried all the way home,” said Staten Island homeowner Emilya Malkin after encountering New York City Parks Police on the beach near her house. Malkin says police threatened her family with arrest as she strolled with her husband and children.
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New Jersey authorities have sued a fledgling non-profit raising money for Hurricane Sandy victims, charging that the self-styled charity is making questionable claims and suspicious money transfers.
New Jersey Governor Chris Christie was quick to embrace FEMA’s new flood plain maps. But not everyone feels the same way.
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Manhattan business leaders are keen to let people know that parts of the island worst hit by Superstorm Sandy are bouncing back.
Communities on Long Island’s south shore are facing a new problem: with the protective barrier island damaged, tides flood their streets every day.
Four months after Hurricane Sandy, it’s not just the beach communities in New Jersey to Long Island that are still in rough shape. Parts of Manhattan are also far from recovering.
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For the nation’s polluted rivers and streams, it has been a long road back — starting with the passage of the Clean Water Act in 1972.
If you want to know how big a deal coastal construction and zoning regulations can be, you don’t have to look further than the tree house at Angelinos Sea Lodge, a bed-and-breakfast getaway at Holmes Beach on Anna Maria Island, Fla.
A South Carolina blue-ribbon commission working to re-envision the state’s 25-year-old Beachfront Management Act will likely give up on the law’s central notion, a policy of retreat from the shoreline to move development away from the water.
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BP and its partners in the oil platform are facing a civil trial in a New Orleans federal courtroom, as Gulf Coast states and the U.S. government seek to recover the costs of the cleanup, compensation for economic and environmental damage, and likely additional penalties for negligence.
Superstorm Sandy did not flood downtown Boston — but it could have. Had the storm arrived six hours earlier, at high tide, water would have surged through city streets.
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Was the Long Island Power Company at fault for the Breezy Point conflagration sparked during Hurricane Sandy? Some homeowners say yes — and they’ll see LIPA in court.
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Boaters on the Jersey Shore this summer risk collisions with everything up to and including the kitchen sink.
New Jersey’s mayors and city council members have been getting their first look at the latest flood maps from FEMA — and they don’t like what they’re seeing.
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New York City’s Staten Island shore took a beating from Sandy. Now, homeowners there say they’re ready to admit defeat.
Big dunes saved some neighborhoods in New Jersey and New York from the worst of Sandy’s wrath. Does that mean we should build more dunes?
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Senator Schumer and Governor Christie are taking the FEMA-backed flood insurance program to task for slow processing — and slower payouts.
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Baton Rouge police have leveled felony theft charges against a Louisiana builder after more than 30 unpaid trade contractors filed liens against four homeowners.
When it comes to rebuilding, can New Orleans put the ball in the end zone?
When the storm finally struck, even police were surprised at some locations by the combination of high tide, storm surge, and waves.
Whether roofs fail depends on specifics of the weather — as well as on the special vulnerabilities of particular buildings.
The American Lumber Standards Committee (ALSC) has voted to accept new design values for Southern Pine lumber, including all sizes and grades of dimensional lumber.
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Federal Judge Eldon E. Fallon has okayed a massive settlement that will cover thousands of houses whose value was degraded by sulfurous emissions seeping out of contaminated Chinese-made drywall.
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New Jersey, wants to get a little higher.
FEMA’s new flood maps for New York are coming out, and the new boundaries extend over more properties.
Sandy has been a drag on the U.S. economy. But will the long-run effect be good for the region?
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After months of political maneuvering, Congress has acted on a relief package for the region impacted by Superstorm Sandy, but there is no telling when the money authorized by Congress will actually reach the people who need it.
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There’s lively debate about whether rebuilding on the coastline is wise. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo wants Hurricane Sandy victims who live along the coast to consider rebuilding their homes on stilts or selling their houses to the state and relocating,
Unlike previous storms, Sandy affected a northern region where winter weather is a rough reality. And three months after the storm, people whose heating systems are still out of commission have been shivering.
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Rebuilding New Jersey and New York shore communities will take years. But the fight over the insurance money could last even longer.
University of Florida researchers are shedding new light on the strength benefits (and moisture risks) of closed-cell spray-foam applied to the underside of roof sheathing.
Florida is the slowest of the so-called “sand states” to emerge from the housing recession. One reason is the sluggish pace of court action on foreclosures.
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Ray Nagin, who was the mayor of New Orleans when Hurricane Katrina flooded the city, has been indicted by federal prosecutors for alleged corruption during his term as mayor.
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More than a hundred houses in Point Pleasant, N.J., were flooded by Hurricane Sandy. But now the town is fighting new FEMA flood maps that place much of the town in the “V Zone.”
A personal hardship is not enough to justify enclosed living space to be allowed below the flood elevation, Monroe County, Fla., commissioners ruled in early January. The reason: FEMA has advised the county that permitting construction below the flood line jeopardizes the whole county’s access to...
Superstorm Sandy caused sewage backups and overflows along hundreds of miles of U.S. coastline. But the sewage overflow problem in the affected areas is not occasional — it’s chronic.
Hard-hit Jersey Shore towns are re-opening, and the inhabitants are trickling back. But for many sections of the shore, the devastation is discouraging, and progress is slow.
Nearly a score of nuclear power plants along the Atlantic Coast were in Superstorm Sandy’s projected track. Nothing happened.
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Superstorm Sandy’s floodwaters “pushed around” some “highly toxic stuff” — but so far, testing shows that exposures for cleanup workers don’t exceed OSHA workplace limits.
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The Moreland Commission has recommended that New York scrap the public authority and establish a new structure for electric utility service in the million-household Nassau and Suffolk County market.
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Ten percent of the 948,540 households in New York’s Suffolk and Nassau counties were hit by Sandy flooding, and 38,189 structures suffered damage greater than 50% of their value, FEMA has told Long Island’s Newsday.
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Educational sessions at the JLC Live conference will cover topics of special interest to coastal builders and remodelers.
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Congress has passed a bill that limits the amount of sulfur permissible in wallboard products.
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South Carolina’s upcoming legislative session could feature a battle over funding for highway and bridge construction and maintenance.
Homeowner’s insurance — as homeowners sometimes learn too late — does not cover losses caused by a hurricane storm surge.
Authorities may come to a final decision this month about new design values for Southern Pine lumber.
The Mississippi Delta region of Louisiana is experiencing a combination of rising seas and subsiding land. The result: shorelines are sinking into the ocean.
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Homeowners with no flood insurance who received direct aid payments from FEMA to fix flood damage from Sandy won’t get any help next time, the agency says — unless they buy insurance coverage from the National Flood Insurance Program.
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Without an emergency appropriation from Congress, the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP)’s cash reserves will run out next week.
For anyone who would like to view the storm’s impacts from an aerial perspective, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has provided a web resource.
The House of Representatives recessed on Wednesday without acting on emergency aid for the victims of Superstorm Sandy.
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For one Queens, NY family recovering from Hurricane Sandy, Christmas arrived on schedule — if only as a quiet, low-key version of the usual raucous celebration.