I just love it when the federal government works against the public interest to give a helping hand to the rich:
OLD SAYBROOK, Connecticut — On an exclusive Connecticut peninsula, where signs warn outsiders to stay off private roads, eight multimillion-dollar homes with sprawling yards along the Long Island Sound are poised to become eligible for taxpayer-funded disaster aid.
That’s despite the fact that the Fenwick neighborhood of Old Saybrook is in a potentially perilous position, hovering where the Connecticut River meets the sound. A 1938 hurricane washed many Fenwick homes out to sea, including that of Katharine Hepburn’s family.
But a proposed massive overhaul of the protection system to correct mapping mistakes and other errors would lift the prohibition on aid for the Fenwick homes and more than 900 other structures along the East Coast from New Hampshire to Virginia. That would allow the owners to buy lower-cost flood insurance backed by the federal government and potentially benefit from millions of dollars in other federal aid to fix infrastructure including roads and bridges.
The eight homes, a short distance from the rebuilt Hepburn house where the actress died in 2003, currently lie in a coastal protection zone that bans homeowners from receiving federal funds to fix storm damage. The goal is to create a disincentive for new development in areas vulnerable to storms. Half the homes were built after the zone was created nearly four decades ago.
