Development of Florida’s wetlands has saddled homeowners with a whopping $1.6 billion in flood damages, according to a new study.
The study, conducted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, found Florida’s wetland mitigation banking program has increased flood risk in urban areas by allowing developers to destroy wetlands and offset the loss by restoring them elsewhere, the Tampa Bay Times reported.
Wetlands act as natural sponges that absorb, store and slow the speed of excess water, reducing flood risk in the surrounding land. Because they are protected by federal and state laws, developers who want to build on them must make up for the environmental damage, often by purchasing credits from authorized mitigation banks, which fund the restoration of wetlands elsewhere.
In theory, the program promotes a “zero net loss” policy. But in practice, wetlands are often destroyed in desirable urban areas and replaced in less critical places farther away, increasing the flood risk where they’re needed most, the outlet said.
Daniel Aronoff, an economics researcher who co-authored the MIT study, suggested taxing mitigation banks and directing the funds to flood victims. Aronoff argued that it would compensate those whose property was damaged by the loss of a natural flood barrier while still protecting bank profits, which is $2.4 billion since the program’s inception in 1996, according to the Tampa Bay Times.
Aronoff estimated that implementing the tax from the outset would have lowered flood damage by 67 percent and reduced the acreage of developed wetlands by roughly 33 percent. His economic model also showed damages from storms and hurricanes over the past 25 years would have fallen from nearly $2 billion to $282 million, the outlet said.
A new state law has expanded offsite regional restoration and allowed developers to restore wetlands farther away from their project sites by eliminating a requirement that forced developers to confine their restoration efforts to the same watershed. The law also allows mitigation banks to receive more than half of a project’s payment before restoration is deemed successful, the newspaper reported.
Environmentalists have criticized the law and the mitigation banking program, calling it a “handout to developers” and arguing the no-net-loss goal isn’t always accomplished, according to the Times.
—Grace McClung
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