Forget about the storms?

To the editor:

A recent story that appeared in the July 8 edition of The New York Times about New York developers building condos in flood zone areas is almost unbelievable. 

How is this happening in supposedly environmentally conscious, blue state/city, Democratic Party-controlled New York City?

Has everybody already forgotten about Sandy? And please keep in mind that NYC has as of yet never been hit with either a Category 4 or Category 5 hurricane since records have been kept. 

The last Category 3 was the Long Island Express in 1938, which was 80 years ago.

That was before the massive increase in carbon dioxide levels that have taken place along with increased atmospheric and ocean temperature changes in the last half-century. 

Am I missing something? Didn’t we have three gigantic hurricanes just last year in Texas, Florida and Puerto Rico?

And then if it happens here, we the taxpayers will be put on the hook for rescue operations, expected voluntary actions, invoiced for rebuilding expensive condos and houses, repairing damaged infrastructure, just because these developers and their arrogant self-centered buyers wanted a nice view just a couple blocks from the ocean.

This is either a news story or a documentary that should have been made decades ago. It’s so damn absurd and surrealistic as to be almost unbelievable. 

And it covers an issue that I’ve been concerned about for decades: Why has the government been writing subsidized “insurance policies” via FEMA that actually encourage people and developers to build in geologically unstable, known flood zone areas?

How can we justify taxpayer money being spent over and over again remediating flood damage in these same areas decade after decade? And just how did this idiotic, wasteful government policy come about in the first place?

And why, despite all of the accrued factual knowledge of these recurring events, have these policies continued unabated?

Lou Deholczer