Introduction

Each year, more and more Americans are at risk from a variety of natural hazards that affect the coastal environment. In the past 30 years, there has been explosive growth along the Nation’s coastal margins such that today more than 50% of U.S. citizens live in the coastal zone (coastal waters and the adjacent lands of the coastal states, including islands, territories, and the Great Lakes states). Many of these citizens build their homes, businesses, schools, and hospitals in locations that are particularly vulnerable to catastrophic and chronic coastal hazards such as hurricanes and severe storms, coastal erosion, ocean flooding, riverine flooding or landslides.

Improvements in the science of forecasting severe storms and other coastal hazards and the subsequent increase in warning times have reduced fatalities from coastal disaster. Even disasters of the magnitude of Hurricane Andrew cause only a handful of deaths. Although fatalities are decreasing, insured coastal property values have soared 69% since 1988, to over $3.15 trillion. Ironically, some of this increase has been fueled in part by coastal disasters: using insurance payments and federal recovery dollars, property owners often rebuild larger and more expensive structures than those existing before the disaster. As a result, there is increased risk exposure to both the private and public sectors, domestically and internationally.

Hazard mitigation is defined by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) as "action taken to reduce or eliminate long-term risk to people and property from hazards and their effects." The primary purpose of FEMA’s hazard mitigation emphasis is to ensure that fewer Americans and their communities are victims of disasters. However, another purpose of hazard mitigation actions is that they help to reduce future disaster-related expenditures and reduce the economic disasters that often accompany natural hazards through destruction of property, loss or interruption of jobs, and closing or disabling of businesses.

An increasing emphasis is being placed on hazard mitigation by both the public and private sectors. The United Nations and the United States Congress designated the 1990’s as the International Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction. In 1995, FEMA developed the National Mitigation Strategy to encourage partnerships between the public and private sectors for significantly reducing the impacts of natural hazards by the year 2010. In 1996, the President’s National Science and Technology Council Committee on the Environment and Natural Resources developed the Natural Disaster Reduction Plan for the Nation to complement FEMA’s Mitigation Strategy. The goal for all of these activities is aimed at taking action to prevent or reduce the impacts of natural disasters.

There are two broad categories of hazard mitigation strategies: hazard avoidance and hazard reduction. Hazard reduction focuses on strengthening structures and providing safeguards to reduce the amount of damage caused by natural hazards, including:

• altering the coastal environment through erosion control devices, beach renourishment, or flood control works
• strengthening building and facilities by floodproofing, windproofing, elevating, or burial

Hazard avoidance strategies are designed to minimize the exposure to risks based on location, including:

• managing development through retreat, zoning and subdivision regulations, land use plans, land acquisition, economic incentives, location of capital facilities, information dissemination, education and training
• prohibiting development through direct land management of public lands or through prohibitions on altering critical habitat.

There are a variety of policy options which state and local governments may possess to reduce the expose of human life and investment to coastal hazards. For purposes of summarizing and comparing the legislative framework, the hazard mitigation strategies are defined as follows:

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