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Comment by candiddevmike | Hacker News Reader

This is my fear as well. All of these coastal cities are at risk for relocation, who's footing the bill for the government to buy the houses, relocate the people, provide them new houses, jobs, etc? There is a ton of self interest in keeping people in places like New Orleans (and even growing the population), but we need to accept the reality that these places will be uninhabitable in the near future.

I already foresee a bunch of folks getting tons of money for Hurricane Ida claims only to rebuild houses in the same exact spot. We should encourage them to take the money and move away, not stick around.

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It's mostly river deltas that have this problem. A small sea level rise reduces flow at the river outlet, causing flooding out of proportion to the sea level rise.

The only big river delta in the US is the Mississippi. East Asia has far worse problems. Most of China's port cities are on river deltas. Tapei is on a river delta. Ho Chi Min City is on a river delta. Singapore is on a river delta. These are all areas where the land to water slope is very low.

The western US is mountainous enough that there's more than enough land rise to prevent flooding more than a short distance inland. Even in places that look flat, like LA near Venice, go three blocks inland and you're tens of feet higher. Places that built on fill, such as San Francisco and Foster City, do exist, but are small enough for barriers and not fed by upstream rivers.

Singapore is a small island, and the mighty Singapore River, located on that island, is all of 3 km long.

But it sits in the delta of a river that is, if not mighty, at least bigger than 3km. The real question is, is the island flat enough to trigger the river-delta problems the gp post indicates.

I remain genuinely confused about what river you are referring to here. The Johor River?

I can't imagine flood insurance is very cheap in these locations and I don't think this is an imminent domain type situation where the government would buy houses. At some point, people will be ruined financially and won't be able to rebuild.

Other wealthier places may be able to use municipal bonds to fight sea level rise. In the valley in Foster City, the choice was between pricey flood insurance and a cheaper municipal bond to construct a robust levee and the latter was chosen. The city is small enough and the residents were wealthy enough to do it.

I'm kind of curious if anyone will attempt to damn up or construct locks under the golden gate bridge. I think the valley could be wealthy enough to do it.

The federal government actually does have block grant programs to buy out homeowners, or will pay to raise their house, if the cost is cheaper than building a levee or similar flood protection.

Interesting.. That kind of sounds like it would be impossibly expensive for the government as the sea level rises.

Depends- at some point it usually becomes cheaper to provide flood protection, if enough houses are close to one another.

Plus those grants are kinda complex to navigate, and you can't do it as an individual. It has to be part of a local communities overall flood mitigation / risk-reduction plan.

Government doesn’t need to do a thing.

Assuming flood insurance prices are realistic (not propped up by government), eventually no new construction will happen because no one will approve/afford insurance.

Existing places will get cheaper / hell hole as rates keep going up.

Federal flood insurance has distorted market prices drastically in many places

New Orleans and Port Fourchon are pretty vital to US economic interests because of their ports.

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