Due to Hurricane Ike coming ashore in Galveston, the State of Texas may take some of the beachfront property without compensation.
The reason: A 1959 law known as the Texas Open Beaches Act. Under the law, the strip of beach between the average high-tide line and the average low-tide line is considered public property, and it is illegal to build anything there.
Over the years, the state has repeatedly invoked the law to seize houses in cases where a storm eroded a beach so badly that a home was suddenly sitting on public property. The aftermath of Ike could see the biggest such use of the law in Texas history.
This is big government run amok. I’m sure they’ll claim that are just trying to prevent people form building near the shore, but there are other ways to do that besides basically stealing someone property.
A better solution would be to have the land owner upon purchase of the property or upon receiving state funds for repair would be to require them to agree that no future payments will be made to the owner in case of storm damage. In addition, the beach front would have to be repaired at the homeowners expense as well. This ensures only those financially well off could purchase the property and that no further tax payer money would be used on their stupidity of building along the shore. This remedy could also be applied to naturally flood prone areas saving the taxpayers billions of dollars.